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You can migrate your account between instances and take your followers and follows with you. Server shutdowns are rare, since administrators tend to proactivel

by treyd 3y ago

You can migrate your account between instances and take your followers and follows with you. Server shutdowns are rare, since administrators tend to proactively limit registrations when activity starts to be a financial burden. Avoiding the growth-at-all-costs mindset means that instances can stay sustainable.

lapcat 3y ago
> You can migrate your account between instances and take tour followers and follows with you. You can if the server is operational. If the server not operational and cooperative, you can't. And you can't migrate your posts, only your followers. > Server shutdowns are rare Not rare enough though.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > You can if the server is operational. And if Bluesky's servers stop being operational? Where is your data hosted?
  - pierat 3y ago
    Its not even that. Look at Shitter and Reddit: they just turned off API access and introduced heavy rate limits to webpage loads. Good luck scraping your account details with that. Enshittification is a thing with ALL commercial services. And eventually BlueSky will have their "The sky is falling! Crank the money extraction lever." And I'd move that timeframe up a LOT if they took VC money. Feces, err, uhmm VCs want their hockeystick growth to be a hockeystick. They want their 30x , 50x, or 100x.
  - AgentME 3y ago
    If you or someone else has an archive of your data, then you can seamlessly port your account somewhere else. With Mastodon, I'm not sure there's an established flow for downloading your full account data, and you have to have your old server cooperate and redirect your user page to your page on your new server.
    - treyd 3y ago
      Yes there is an established flow for exporting your full account data. It comes as an easy export zip and CSVs.
- treyd 3y ago
  The handful of moderately large instances that have shut down rhat I'm aware of gave long notices, in a couple of cases over a year, before actually going offline. The only notable counterexample I remember was BitcoinHackers.org shutting down suddenly with a note saying "haha look at how easy it is for mastodon instances to shut down go use nostr", making it a self-fulfilling prophecy in that case. If you have other examples I would like to know about them.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    I've personally had to migrate instances twice. The first time because the instance suddenly became nonfunctional, and the administrator went AWOL. The second time, I discovered that the incompetent admin had silently enabled auto-deletion of data including posts and direct messages. Now I'm finally on mastodon.social, which wasn't open for new users the first two times that I needed an instance.

by treyd 3y ago

lapcat 3y ago

> You can migrate your account between instances and take tour followers and follows with you. You can if the server is operational. If the server not operational and cooperative, you can't. And you can't migrate your posts, only your followers. > Server shutdowns are rare Not rare enough though.

kibwen 3y ago
> You can if the server is operational. And if Bluesky's servers stop being operational? Where is your data hosted?
- pierat 3y ago
  Its not even that. Look at Shitter and Reddit: they just turned off API access and introduced heavy rate limits to webpage loads. Good luck scraping your account details with that. Enshittification is a thing with ALL commercial services. And eventually BlueSky will have their "The sky is falling! Crank the money extraction lever." And I'd move that timeframe up a LOT if they took VC money. Feces, err, uhmm VCs want their hockeystick growth to be a hockeystick. They want their 30x , 50x, or 100x.
- AgentME 3y ago
  If you or someone else has an archive of your data, then you can seamlessly port your account somewhere else. With Mastodon, I'm not sure there's an established flow for downloading your full account data, and you have to have your old server cooperate and redirect your user page to your page on your new server.
  - treyd 3y ago
    Yes there is an established flow for exporting your full account data. It comes as an easy export zip and CSVs.
treyd 3y ago
The handful of moderately large instances that have shut down rhat I'm aware of gave long notices, in a couple of cases over a year, before actually going offline. The only notable counterexample I remember was BitcoinHackers.org shutting down suddenly with a note saying "haha look at how easy it is for mastodon instances to shut down go use nostr", making it a self-fulfilling prophecy in that case. If you have other examples I would like to know about them.
- lapcat 3y ago
  I've personally had to migrate instances twice. The first time because the instance suddenly became nonfunctional, and the administrator went AWOL. The second time, I discovered that the incompetent admin had silently enabled auto-deletion of data including posts and direct messages. Now I'm finally on mastodon.social, which wasn't open for new users the first two times that I needed an instance.