This is technologically impossible to implement. And believe me, I’ve discussed this very same topic often enough.

Thing is, if you want to use a Fediverse server, any Fediverse server running any Fediverse software, if you want to use it like a local user with a local account, then you will inevitably require an account on that server, full stop.

Whatever you do on that server, it will inevitably have to store it in its local database. It can’t store that in the database of another server. So it will have to create database cells that are attributed to your Fediverse identity. But it can only attribute them to an identity on itself, not to an identity on another server.

You can’t log onto discuss.aethelgard.space, go over to hub.hubzilla.hu to try Hubzilla as a user, be automatically logged in as a user, do all kinds of stuff there, and then hub.hubzilla.hu stores all your content, all your settings etc. etc. in the remote database of discuss.aethelgard.space. Servers don’t work that way. Especially if they’re so incompatible.

Like, where in its database is a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space supposed to store the contents of your Hubzilla profile, considering Hubzilla has dozens of dedicated profile text fields, and Lemmy has literally none?

Where does a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space have the appropriate database fields for other Hubzilla-specific content and settings?

Where does a Lemmy server like discuss.aethelgard.space have the appropriate database fields for the various configuration options that Hubzilla offers for each contact, seeing as Lemmy doesn’t even know the concept of contacts in the first place, save for which communities you’re a member of?

If you want to do stuff as a local user on hub.hubzilla.hu, hub.hubzilla.hu must store your stuff locally. And attribute it to a local identity, like, on the same server. No, it can’t attribute your stuff to your discuss.aethelgard.space account.

Trust me, I know a thing or two about running Fediverse servers. I used to self-host a few private servers on a machine at home long before even Mastodon became so hugely popular, long before Reddit was so enshittified that people escaped to Lemmy. No Docker, no YunoHost, straight on the Debian GNU/Linux system, all the way to manually setting up and configuring SQL databases.

If you want to be able to use any Fediverse server running any Fediverse software, you’ve got the following options:

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One central login server for the whole Fediverse.

Like, go to fediverse.com, log in on fediverse.com and have full access to thousands upon thousands of Fediverse servers running 100++ different server applications.

Yeah. And then that server shuts down because whichever hobbyist runs it has no time for it anymore. Or Elon Musk or Sam Altman or Larry Ellison or whoever comes and buys it out. Or it’s running in the USA, and the FBI seizes it. With the one and only login server gone, the Fediverse as a whole is dead.

Mike Macgirvin, the most creative Fediverse developer ever (this guy created three Fediverse protocols and over a dozen Fediverse applications in over 16 years, four of which still exist, two of which he still maintains), hasn’t invented nomadic identity in 2011 without a reason. That reason is servers shutting down with no warning, and people losing everything, because their home server was a single point of failure. Reducing the Fediverse to exactly one login server gives the whole Fediverse a single point of failure and goes into the exact opposite direction of nomadic identity.

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You create one account, you create it literally everywhere.

Go anywhere in the Fediverse, and your login credentials work all the same everywhere, regardless of where you are.

Yeah. That’s like 30,000+ individual servers. Maybe minus servers with closed login if you don’t want to be able to use these. Also, any Fediverse server that’s being spun up for the first time is public with open registration by default. Which means that anyone in the Fediverse must be able to use it. Which means that when it spins up, it’ll have to create one account for each of the 10,000,000++ Fediverse users. Like, I set up my own little Forte server, I start it for the first time, and a few freaking days of automatic account creation later, that thing has over four times more registered users than mastodon.social. Just in case one of them may come over to try Forte. Because you never know.

But now you’ll say, “I don’t want to use 30,000 servers! I only want to use a few!” Believe me, I do have heard that before.

Yeah. And how, pray tell, are these servers supposed to know in advance that you want to use them so they can create an account for you?

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Each server can look into the future and knows whether and when you’ll want to use it. Only those servers that you’ll want to use will have an account for you.

Unrealistic for hopefully blatantly obvious reasons. If they aren’t obvious: How is a Web server supposed to see the future, all the way to your own spontaneous decisions?

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When you arrive on a Fediverse server while logged in on discuss.aethelgard.space, there’s automatically an account created for you with the same login credentials as on discuss.aethelgard.space, and you’re automatically logged in.

I call it “drive-by account creation”.

Not only isn’t that realistically possible (if anything, the other server will only be able to pull the password hash from discuss.aethelgard.space and not the password itself), but it’d open its own can of worms. For example, admins who have configured their servers so that new accounts must be manually approved and activated by the admin are probably happy whenever someone creates a new account just by coming by while logged in elsewhere, and it’s activated immediately, and they’ve got no control over it.