there is a longer discussion to be had about the political implications of nomadic identity, but suffice it to say the large question is “why should i have to trust my admin?”
and, well, my answer to that question is — ideally not. i have spent 20 years doing trust and safety work in OSS community spaces. the reality is that power structures where there is no accountability for an admin frequently get abused to suit the whims of that admin.
as i explained to andrew lee, before he decided to go run freenode into the ground, a freenode staff member had the authority to destroy the careers of people they found undesirable, with no due process. this isn’t something we should want for the fediverse.
the fundamental power imbalance is visible in the fediverse on a daily basis, both in terms of actual incidents, but also in terms of how larger instances get a larger pass because they are “too big to fail.”
the answer given is “move to a different instance with different governance,” which is a fine enough answer if moving were lossless and low cost. making that the reality is the goal of nomadic identity as pertaining to the fediverse.
right now, users are effectively locked into all decisions made by their admin, because if an admin decides to say, defederate an instance and they disagree with that decision, the relationships were already severed and the user has to go manually repair them from her new account.
in a nomadic world, i would have mirrored my account and preferences to other instances in advance, and when my preferred instance changes, the relationships were already mirrored ahead of time, thus protecting me against admins who make decisions that would otherwise negatively impact my use of the fediverse.