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Comment by lofties | Hacker News Reader

HNStatus on Mastodon when? :-)

Hopefully not before it's on Farcaster, which actually has sufficient decentralization without sacrificing a global name registry ;)

The Fediverse has a global name registry. Your instance-name is part of that.

(That is, names are globally unique. They may not always be findable, but for a sufficiently federated profile, searching from a sufficiently federated instance, that shouldn't be a hurdle. And I strongly suspect third-party directories will emerge.)

The problem (other than disastrous security concerns stemming from server admins being able to read everyone's DMs) with Mastadon and similar is that once you move to another instance, your username changes.

With Farcaster, user names are both decentralized and global.

Gotchya.

Having migrated a few times (both before and after official support for this existed), I'm aware of the Fediverse's non-portable namespace issues, and some way of resolving that would be useful.

The idea of not having your identity tied to one specific instance is very appealing.

Is there some way to create an account on desktop or web? Or at least view content without an account? It seems to only push some smartphone app, which is a big step down from Mastodon if that's the only option.

It’s a protocol and isn’t tied to any one implementation. There are a lot frontends for it and anyone can make another.

I had a look through frontends. Plenty let you sign in/connect some existing account, but I saw none that offered the ability to create an account. The Farcaster page on clients[0] seemingly reflects this by saying you use that app to create an account and then use an alternate frontend "once you've created an account". Given the 2.0 star average due to reviews claiming that the app requires a $12 payment then often doesn't work[1], I'd be hesitant to use it even if it was available on desktop/web or compatible with my phone.

If there's something I'm missing and there is somewhere to create an account, would you be able to link me in the right direction?

[0]: https://www.farcaster.xyz/apps

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/8PC1Jit.png

I use the Warpcast client and never paid anything for it. Thus far, the app has just "worked".

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