Just a random thought experiment. Let’s say I have my account on a lemmy instance: userA@mylemmy.com. One day I decide to stop paying for the domain and move to userA@mynewlemmy.com, and someone else gains it and also starts up a lemmy instance.
If they make their own userA@mylemmy.com, how do federated instances distinguish who’s who?
Have I misunderstood the role of domain names in this?
It absolutely makes sense to secure content and especially moderator positions in other communities by public/private keys.
But look at my replies to /u/Dirk below. If someone actually takes over a domain, sets up a new Lemmy instance and creates the same user again (but without matching keys), how should other instances treat that user? Like a new one? Or block all federation? Do you get warnings interacting with that user (as they could just write another community moderator to invite them “again”)?
All valid arguments, code needs to be checked abou what is possible to implement. Even if we start with one way of dealing with those instances, it will be possible to chamge in the future.
Thank you for good discussion in this thread.