This is a critical feature missing. Especially considering when one instance goes down, so does your account.
If announced, we should be able to easily transfer the account.
But an instance might also go down unannounced (especially now with so many hosting instances just for fun or to experiment with it).
While in such a case your posts and comments on this local instance will be gone, there needs to be a way to recover your account on another instance with all your posts and comments made on other instances still connected to your account, being editable or deletable.
For robustness against disappearance we kinda need multi-account linking. You set up accounts on a few trustworthy to be resilient instances and link them.
At the moment you are completely dependent on the instance [operator]. Which could disappear for a multitude of reasons.
The average user will be confused enough as it is about the federated aspects. They may choose any random instance to register. And suddenly it's gone.
The developers have said they're working on it, this is something the Fediverse supports. Kind of.
Not yet! I hope that eventually this is implemented. Mastodon had a similar problem and they kind of, sort of solved it?!
You have to create a new account on a new server then use the account migration tool. It’s not perfect; you’ll keep your followers but I think your posts won’t transfer over. Notes from the tool:
Before proceeding, please read these notes carefully:
- This action will move all followers from the current account to the new account
- Your current account’s profile will be updated with a redirect notice and be excluded from searches
- No other data will be moved automatically
- The new account must first be configured to back-reference this one
- After moving there is a waiting period during which you will not be able to move again
- Your current account will not be fully usable afterwards. However, you will have access to data export as well as re-activation.
It seems that the answer is complicated. Check this out: https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-migrate-to-different-mastodon-server/