How can someone change their handle on mastodon if e.g. it includes their deadname? Is there a way to migrate an account within-instance?
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@jonny@neuromatch.social I suspect that if you went through the process of migrating an account, but it was from and to the same instance it would work. It honestly should be more straightforward than that process, but it’s not too bad.
@jonny from the database end of things, it's not easy. It works like email. So your post is like an email you sent out and others can reply to it, like a "reply all". Imagine having an account at myemail@aol.com and then trying to convert all your old emails and their replies and forwards and such to a new email. You might be able to do it in your own account (instance), but what about in other people's email-boxes? You can't reach out and change those, they're literally on different machines that you don't have access to, nor do your admins.
It's a brilliant system, but it's got it's drawbacks. :)
I'd recommend simply following all the same people on a new account and bit by bit getting the people you care about to follow you there.
@coldfish
Well the difference is that email doesn't have an
Well the difference is that email doesn't have an
Update action and messages aren't resolved against a server that can do redirects, among many others
I'm finding this: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/15320
I am not sure why it would be impossible to issue Update activities for all the old statuses that include a new URI, and then migrate followers with the existing mechanisms.
![Ruth [☕️ 👩🏻💻📚✍🏻🧵🪡🍵]](https://cdn.masto.host/glammrus/accounts/avatars/000/000/003/original/c5b5d6d082cc69c8.jpg "Ruth [☕️ 👩🏻💻📚✍🏻🧵🪡🍵]")
@jonny not that I know of easily. There might be a way to do it by touching the database? So that’d be an admin thing. Otherwise it would be like a normal account change so with lost posts
@jonny I know there is a way to rename using freely available finger tools to link your old to your new. But you could always migrate then migrate back. Idk. Good luck!
@jonny I migrated my original account to
@oliphant from the same server. You just need a second account on the same instance, and to go through the usual migration process.
I've changed the handle of this account in the past. Surprisingly enough it worked.
The thing is: Mastodon ties too many things to the handle for it to be convenient. If they used a different application architecture, where more stuff is opaque stuff like changing a handle or supporting multiple top level domains would be trivial. However, doing this would probably require a complete rewrite of core mastodon.