to me, it was surprising just how easy the fediverse was to understand if i stopped trying to think about it how i was taught to think by centralized platforms.

at first, i was really hesitant to migrate. i was confused by kbin, lemmy, mastodon, and especially the fediverse. i didn't think i could ever understand it. i wasn't confident in it. but, after a few hours of exploring, interacting, watching people talk about it and reading explanations, it clicked into place and suddenly made sense, a whole lotta sense. now, i am actually teaching others about what the fediverse is with little to no trouble and helping them migrate to kbin from reddit, and thats amazing. having tons of fun here! 👍

The two biggest surprises I've had so far:

1. Lack of federated login / single sign on. It seems bizarre in a land of federated instances to not have the identity provider decoupled (or even truly decentralized). Instance goes away? Poof, there goes your identity. "Backed up" your data and want to import it into another instance? That functionality doesn't exist today. And even if it were added, how do you validate?

I hate to even suggest it just because of how much of a buzzword it has become. But blockchain feels like a possible answer to the identity problem. It would couple one's identity to the network as opposed to the instance.

That's not to say that instance-level identities shouldn't be allowed as well; but it would be nice to have the option. Right now one basically needs to sign up for separate accounts on as many instances as possible to prevent bad actors from posing as them. A universal ID would solve that.

2. Lack of historical data. Are you the first subscriber to !bobswidgets@feder.icio.us through lemmy.world? Doesn't matter if the original community had fiftyleven posts. You only get to see any created after you subscribe?