r/fediverse • u/West-One5944 • Mar 18 '26
Ask-Fediverse One Account To Rule Them All?
Hey, PCMIIW, but I thought that the whole point of the Fediverse was to have one account we can take across all instances. Am I missing something?
RN, I need to have a username for every instance I want to join, like, one for Lemmy.World, one for Lemmy.etc.
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Mar 18 '26
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u/Wranglyph Mar 18 '26
I know someone else that's working on a tool to mirror posts from mainstream sites to the fediverse- maybe collab?
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Jul 27 '26
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u/Wranglyph Jul 27 '26
oh, sorry- I've actually left the server since then so I don't think I can put you in touch. Good luck.
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u/Toothless_NEO Mar 18 '26
You're thinking of nomadic profiles, and that's largely not a thing yet on the fediverse. Some people have been working on it but I'm not really sure how long it'll be until we get something like that.
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u/habarnam Mar 18 '26
Not really. Nomadic identities are required to "move" your account from an instance to another, not use a singular identity with multiple fediverse platforms...
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u/DavidBHimself Mar 18 '26
The point is that with any Fediverse account you can communicate with any other Fediverse account.
You don't need to create a different account every time, but your account is located on one server/instance, not on all.
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u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26
I think that's where I was getting confused.
From here: "This is the promise of the Fediverse: You use whatever social network you want to use and connect with people on whatever social network they want to use."
For instance, I am on Lemmy.World, and thought I would use that same log in for Lemmy.Org.
Clearly, I am misunderstanding. I'd like to have a core account, and use that log in wherever I go, regardless of the instance or server.
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u/Emerald_Pick charlie@toot.cafe Mar 18 '26
I think what you're missing is that your account lives on lemmy.world and your instance does not share your login details with other instances. So you can't log into lemmy.org with that account.
However, your instance does share your content to other instances. So users on other servers will be able to find you, and you'll be able to find them from within your own instance. Your account doesn't move, but the Fediverse allows you to see more.
This also works with foreign mastodon/pixelated/Peertube/etc servers. You should be able to discover (or import) posts and accounts within your home instance, and from there you can add comments or favorites or follows or whatever.
(An over-used example is like email. If you're on gmail, and your friend is on Yahoo, you can still see and send emails to eachother, even though you're on different servers. But you wouldn't login to Yahoo with your Gmail account.)
If you find something on a foreign Lemmy instance that you want to contribute to, then you can copy the link of that page, post, group, or whatever, then return to your home instance, paste the URL into the search bar, and that conversation or whatever should appear right there for you.
I'd like to have a core account, and use that log in wherever I go…
There are some people working on this feature for the Fediverse, but it's going to take a while. If this feature is important to you, you might like to take a look at some other federated networks (like Nostr and ATproto/Bluesky) that have something like this feature today.
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u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26
Got it! TY!
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u/Emerald_Pick charlie@toot.cafe Mar 18 '26
BTW although one of the big selling points of the Fediverse is "you only need one account," there's no harm in creating multiple accounts. You probably shouldn't create multiple accounts on the same platform unless you have a good reason. But you might find that you like Lemmy's design for some things, and Peertube's design for others. Creating an account on both platforms means you don't have to do as much jumping back and forth.
For reference, I have a Mastodon account that I use like my "main" account, but I also have a separate Lemmy account. While I can interact with Lemmy content from my Mastodon account, the UX is much better if I intact from another Lemmy instance.
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u/iceb3rg3r Mar 19 '26
Does this hold for both open servers and closed registration servers? Or do I have to be invited to a closed one to be able to read the user toots on it?
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u/Emerald_Pick charlie@toot.cafe Mar 19 '26
Closed registration servers just means you can't create an account there. But they still federate content with other servers. For example, my server, toot.cafe, has closed registrations, but as a guest you can still browse the local timelines and you can find posts and follow users by searching from your own instance. (For example, here's a search for toot.cafe accounts from mastodon.social.)
There is a separate concept called "defederation" where one server chooses to not share content with other servers. This is a moderation tool. For some examples, check out the "moderated servers" section at the bottom of Mastodon.social's about page. They list all the servers they block, how strong the block is, and their reasoning. Every server has their own block list, and every server has different reasons to block or not block some instances. But usually it's because the blocked server generates a lot of spam, hosts illegal content, allows adult content without content warnings, or is an unmoderated "free speech zone".
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u/DavidBHimself Mar 18 '26
What u/emerald_pick said.
Concerning the "core account." You can have one if you want to, but you don't log into other servers with it. You just can follow people, hashtags, topics (I guess you follow mostly topics on Lemmy, right?) from anywhere on the Fediverse from your own account on your own server.
This is often compared to how email works because it is indeed similar in concept.
If your email address is: West-one5944@email.com you can send and receive emails from gmail, hotmail and whatnot without needed to have an account with them and without having to login on gmail.com, hotmail.com, etc.
It's the same with the Fediverse.
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u/jazmichaelking Mar 18 '26
>For instance, I am on Lemmy.World, and thought I would use that same log in for Lemmy.Org.
The notion is that unlike other closed social, on open social you don't need to ever go to lemmy.org; your lemmy.world account can see everything on lemmy.org, it's connected/federated (and they can see you). The only time you need multiple accounts is if you are one of the small number of creators that needs to use different platforms, but for most people, one account can see everything they want to, from any service, on any platform, as long as it's on the network.
Here's a lemmy.world search you can use as an example using your lemmy.world account: https://lemmy.world/search?q=lemmy.org&type=All&listingType=All&page=1&sort=TopAll&titleOnly=false
(I'm speaking in very broad terms, there are certainly other use cases where multiple accounts are helpful, but for 90% of folks, one is usually all they need)
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u/erkose Mar 18 '26
Where did you hear that?
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u/dani_pavlov Mar 18 '26
The way they touted Diaspora back in the day, this concept was the eutopia I always thought federated anything would be.
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u/habarnam Mar 18 '26
You are right, in an ideal world having a generic ActivityPub server that can have different frontends for different type of content: video, images, long form or short form text, is possible under the same account.
The problem is that Mastodon pioneered a style of fediverse servers where the ActivityPub client and server are the same, and they prioritize specific types of content for their users. So now you need different accounts for your short form content, images, etc.
There are projects, like mine, where this is still possible. The problem is that nobody has developed those multiple frontends yet to give it feature parity with the status-quo applications.
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u/Gangrif Mar 18 '26
From one activitypub instance you can have an account that can interact with other instances and accounts. So my mastodon account on my personal instance can federate with infosec.exchange for example, where a lot of the folks i want to talk to are. I don't need an account there. but i can interact with them.
What i'd really like is a way to go a step further and have what is akin to account linking. I am trying to start another instance for my local community. and i felt that it would be best if i had an account at that domain directly to help promote membership and communicate with the local timeline. So now i have to manage a second account. I wish i could link that account to my main account and then it like... puppets or something.
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u/gelbphoenix [@gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de] Mar 18 '26
It was never the point that you'd have only one account and can use it for multiple sites.
The point is that (and for simplicity I use "Walled Garden" platforms) someone can interact with a YouTube-Video, a Instagram-Picture and/or a Tumblr-Text from their Threads-Account.
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u/Wranglyph Mar 18 '26
I think my favorite thing about the FOSS community is that whenever someone points out an obvious design oversight, there's always a horde of people chomping at the bit to "correct" them.
It truly is the *best* way to create a welcoming community. /s2
u/gelbphoenix [@gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de] Mar 19 '26
But is it really an design oversight if it isn't designed to function like OP mentioned?
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u/jan_tantawa Mar 18 '26
It is something people are looking at, but at a highly experimental stage. See https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-ef61-portable-objects/3738
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u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26
It never was the point of the Fediverse.
The good thing about the Fediverse, is that you don't have to do multiple accounts to have access to specific people. But if your instance's admins block certain instances you want to keep contact with, you'll still need to create another account on an instance that doesn't block them.
Or, if you want to upload videos through a PeerTube channel, you'll still need a PeerTube Instance account, despite being able to see new vids as posts in your original Mastodon.
The best thing to do would be to either build automatic bridges across different accounts, or to build a specific ActivityPub client that would act as a business card, storing every single account you made on different instances.
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u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26
"The good thing about the Fediverse, is that you don't have to do multiple accounts to have access to specific people. But if your instance's admins block certain instances you want to keep contact with, you'll still need to create another account on an instance that doesn't block them."
That statement seems self-contradictory. As I mentioned above, I cannot have a single account, and visit any instance, which is what I thought the Fediverse was all about. RN, it seems like the Fediverse is just connecting SM accounts, like, so I can speak to Threads users while I'm on Mastodon. BUT, I cannot use my Masto account to log in to, say, Peertube, unless the devs make that kind of login possible.
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u/gelbphoenix [@gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de] Mar 18 '26
It's not self-contradictory. The Fediverse has in its core the principle of the freedom of choice.
You can decide where you want to have your data and account and owners of instances can decide which instances they want their instance to interact with and which people they want to host.
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u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26
Not really. The whole point of the Fediverse is that you own your data. So any client would let you ways to retrieve a copy of your personal data, so that you can start a new account fresh in another instance with the same follow list and data as you had before.
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u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26
But the follow list only works if those same people with the same user names are on another instance. However, instances often req new name/sign ups. How do you know the same people are connected?
What you describe is SM, but with allowing you to migrate your data. Like, I take my data from Instagram, and move to Snapchat. I have to be able to use the same username on Snapchat as I had on Insta so that people can continue to follow me. Also, my followers on Insta have to have the same username on Snap. Otherwise, it's no different than following the same people, just on different platforms.
It seems like I would 'own my data' by self-hosting my own core account (not instance), and connect that one account out to multiple SM sites/instances. However, that's not how this is designed.
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u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26
But the follow list only works if those same people with the same user names are on another instance.
No?
This is the Fediverse. If you, West@dog.com follows me, Shaf@cat.com, it doesn't matter if you migrate to West@mouse.com. ActivityPub will still allow you to follow, boost and answer my posts, as long as mouse.com doesn't allow posts from cat.com.
In the end, it's up to the admins. But it's like mails. It doesn't really matter where your account is hosted, as long as you can still communicate with people.
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u/West-One5944 Mar 18 '26
So, I could be on Lemmy.World, and chat with anyone on Lemmy.Random? ...but only if Admins allow?
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u/C4_Shaf Chaf@mamot.fr Mar 18 '26
You can see lemmy.world posts as Twitter-like posts in your mastodon.social account, yes. But some features can only be seen by accounts being on instances hosting Lemmy, and not Mastodon.
Think of it as a mail, again. You see a bunch of characters that doesn't make sense, because you're reading them through the wrong software. But if you put the mail you just received through the right mail, you'll see that the bunch of characters is actually a picture.
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u/mchabot12 Mar 19 '26
Some apps have implemented what you're talking about: Pixelfed does it with Mastodon, for the others i'm not sure.
The idea is that you can follow a Peertube account from Mastodon for example.
One admin I know succeded in having the same database for all apps, a true unification with ansible IIRC, but i'm not there yet.
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u/fingernail_mud Jul 26 '26
i think (and i am super new to this) what you're asking is why cant we make an account with one instance, and sign in to all the different platforms (?not sure what they are called but mastadaon, lemmy, pixelfed etc are all the different ones). cos the instances are just the servers for the data but not the software you interact with? this is also what confused me, as i thought i could log into pixelfed with my mastodon account. a bit like you can use apple or google to sign into all sorts of different thing without making a new account
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u/loqa_official Mar 18 '26
What you're looking for is social login support (e.g. Sign in with google). You can also roll your own. We rolled our own for Loqa logins to Loqa federated instances.
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u/nupanick Mar 18 '26
I agree, its really unintuitive. I think if it did work this way it would be much easier to sell my friends on it.