45 ms·

What exactly do you mean? I migrated from one instance to another without problem, and all my followers/followings came over without an issue.

by tedivm 2y ago

Tomte 2y ago
Only if your old instance still exists and cooperates. I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after banning you (because if they banned you they probably would like to punish you further).
- maelito 2y ago
  Worse : my old instance had its backup down for months. Also, no GIF support. I asked the admin if he was wanting to get my help, or some funds to help for the servers. Said no. Imagine : to get GIF support by switching instance, I would lose my posts. After I did the migration, we talked, the backup worked again. Couldn't even see his answers nor thank him, since once the migration is acted you lose access to your past discussions. Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance.
  - echelon 2y ago
    > Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance. In the early 2000s, hackers were staunch defenders of free speech. The internet was a safe space from an often conservative and religiously Puritanical "meat space". Now that the pendulum has swung, a majority seemingly wants to shut down the things and the people that they disagree with. Moreover, the accepted social behavior encourages this kind of hate and range and spite. It's even been gamified. In many ways, the future turned out a lot worse than I'd hoped for. This is certainly one of the things I loathe.
    - simonask 2y ago
      Here is another perspective: In the 2000s, many of us were children and teens. Now we’re not, and definitely don’t want our own kids to be exposed to the same Internet as we were back then… People romanticize that time way more than it deserves. I’m not a fan of censorship, but there’s a case to be made for reasonable adults deciding the ground rules. Case in point: Twitter.
      - sbarre 2y ago
        > Now we’re not, and definitely don’t want our own kids to be exposed to the same Internet as we were back then… Eehhh speak for yourself. I wish the young generation could experience the free and open and wild Internet that I did in the 90s and 00s... Now they're stuck with ~10 websites run by giant megacorporations and "adults deciding the ground rules"... Give the kids some credit, they're smarter than you think..
        hollerith 2y ago
        >I wish the young generation could experience the free and open and wild Internet that I did in the 90s and 00s... Those were exhilarating and heady times for many teenagers and children, to be sure, but you don't have any children of your own, do you?
        themaninthedark 2y ago
        I have kids and I wish they could have the old web, warts and all it was a much better place for learning and connecting than what we have now.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      I run a Mastodon server and I'm quick to moderate things that I'd probably want a monolithic service like Twitter or Facebook to allow. We're a smallish community of like-minded people, and the people on my server repeatedly tell me they like my moderation policies. If they didn't, I'd change them to match the community's mores. But here's the deal: while I can and do moderate what passes through my server, there's absolutely nothing I can do about how you run yours. I'm not telling anyone they can't say certain things. I'm telling them they need to say it somewhere else. By analogy, it's probably closer to a message board. If I were running a board for physicists, I feel absolutely zero obligation to allow crackpots to post anti-science nonsense and yell at the scientists there. They can go make their own message board, or Mastodon instance, if they want to say those things.
      - echelon 2y ago
        It would be strictly better without middlemen. There is always going to be some percentage of interest overlap between users that gets destroyed by federated moderation. It's too coarse grained and ruins the decentralized possibilities of the internet. That isn't to say that users shouldn't be able to filter out whatever they dislike. Rather, it would be best if that was a user's choice [1]. I participate in LGBT spaces, but I'm not going to block people for playing Harry Potter. I don't appreciate people stepping in my way to censor things they think I shouldn't see or hear. To make an analogy with Reddit, if I make a comment in r/conservative (without necessarily even subscribing to their ideology), I get banned from dozens of other subreddits via automated moderation tools. That's a lot like how Mastodon thinks the world should work. But that's not how people are or should be. Mastodon (and subreddit mods) think everyone should wear a membership pin or be emblazoned with a Scarlet Letter. That's incredibly harmful to people and is leading to increasing polarization in society. [1] I'm sure that could even be done at scale by subscribing to community block lists. It shouldn't be a hassle, it just shouldn't be centrally planned and executed with no recourse from the end users.
    - praisewhitey 2y ago
      In the early 2000s people were regularly banned from various phpBB forums because a moderator was a bit of a dick.
- echelon 2y ago
  > I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after banning you (because if they banned you they probably would like to punish you further). This is the fucked up problem with federation and it's why we need true peer-to-peer social media. Instead of corporate ideological kowtowing, now it's a thousand little fiefdoms of tiny tyrants deciding if you pattern fit to the ascribed dogma.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I could see things swinging back to an IndieWeb-style setup where we have blogs that can ping each other. I have my own blog hosted on micro.blog for exactly that reason. I can follow other peoples posts as if they were posting to Twitter or something, reply to them, see their replies, etc., and ultimately I own 100% of my content and can move it to any other blog software at any time. Maybe this is the way.
  - sbarre 2y ago
    That's sort of the idea with Bluesky isn't it? Your profile includes your posts and all your data, and you are free to move it around, back it up, host it wherever you want, etc... But all the posts are federated together. I haven't looked at it closely in a while but I know they're still growing slowly but steadily..
    - maelito 2y ago
      Yes, I've switched to Bluesky. After investigating their protocols, Bluesky fits my needs way better. I'm quite convinced now Mastodon will never leave the tech sphere.
maelito 2y ago
You've lost your posts. Of course keeping your followers is important. But having a new empty wall was a real problem for me. I didn't know it. Nobody told me, from the people to the interface that I would lose my 3500 messages. It's like having your blog content on another domain in the hands of another host, that can shut your old page down when he wants. It's the perfect walled garden in terms of content. Also, the instance where I was had its backup feature down for months. Finally, the followers migration failed at 80 %.
- dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]
- walterbell 2y ago
  Is this doc page incorrect, https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-one-server-to-another/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-on... > On this page you can also download a copy of your archive that can be read by any ActivityPub software. This archive includes all of your posts and media. So even if the instance that you are moving from shuts down, as is the case with KNZK, you will still have a copy of all of your posts!
  - kazinator 2y ago
    The problem is you want all those old posts to be associated with the new (migrated) account on the new instance and be hosted there. Sure, being able to get an archive is nice.
    - walterbell 2y ago
      Presumably it's not a technical limitation, since an importer could be written and added by some instances, even if not accepted upstream. If the lack of import is caused by policy conflict or cost for administrators to review bulk-imported content, does this encourage individuals to have a paid instance to aggregate historical content, e.g. https://masto.host https://masto.host.
  - 2y ago
fencepost 2y ago
It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your past content - understandable because that past content likely has references from other instances and pushing those changes across would be a heavy operation, unreliable, and probably fraught with potential security problems. I believe for retaining content it's pretty much retaining it for yourself by downloading an archive, though some instances may allow uploading that. There's also at least one browser-based web app that lets you open and view the content of that archive - otherwise it's kind of useless. Edit: https://github.com/zero-mstd/mav-z https://github.com/zero-mstd/mav-z
- maelito 2y ago
  > It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your past content - understandable because that past content likely has references from other instances and pushing those changes across would be a heavy operation, unreliable, and probably fraught with potential security problems. Yes of course I'm getting the technical and conceptual difficulties as a developer, but it's awful UX. It's a real deal breaker once you discover it. You cannot use Mastodon as your primary content database anymore.
  - jeromegv 2y ago
    It’s a social network. Do you expect Facebook or Twitter to be your primary content database? But I do agree UX could and should be better
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      I think most people expect their Facebook and Twitter posts to be around in 5 years.
      - jzb 2y ago
        I don’t. It’s naive to believe any social network is in it for the long haul. Too many have failed to believe they won’t as well. Particularly, exitter. It’s best to assume anything you don’t host yourself is ephemeral.

What exactly do you mean? I migrated from one instance to another without problem, and all my followers/followings came over without an issue.

by tedivm 2y ago

What exactly do you mean? I migrated from one instance to another without problem, and all my followers/followings came over without an issue.

Tomte 2y ago

Only if your old instance still exists and cooperates. I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after banning you (because if they banned you they probably would like to punish you further).

maelito 2y ago
Worse : my old instance had its backup down for months. Also, no GIF support. I asked the admin if he was wanting to get my help, or some funds to help for the servers. Said no. Imagine : to get GIF support by switching instance, I would lose my posts. After I did the migration, we talked, the backup worked again. Couldn't even see his answers nor thank him, since once the migration is acted you lose access to your past discussions. Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance.
- echelon 2y ago
  > Disclosure : my account was censored, I did not respect one of the "laws" specific to the instance. In the early 2000s, hackers were staunch defenders of free speech. The internet was a safe space from an often conservative and religiously Puritanical "meat space". Now that the pendulum has swung, a majority seemingly wants to shut down the things and the people that they disagree with. Moreover, the accepted social behavior encourages this kind of hate and range and spite. It's even been gamified. In many ways, the future turned out a lot worse than I'd hoped for. This is certainly one of the things I loathe.
  - simonask 2y ago
    Here is another perspective: In the 2000s, many of us were children and teens. Now we’re not, and definitely don’t want our own kids to be exposed to the same Internet as we were back then… People romanticize that time way more than it deserves. I’m not a fan of censorship, but there’s a case to be made for reasonable adults deciding the ground rules. Case in point: Twitter.
    - sbarre 2y ago
      > Now we’re not, and definitely don’t want our own kids to be exposed to the same Internet as we were back then… Eehhh speak for yourself. I wish the young generation could experience the free and open and wild Internet that I did in the 90s and 00s... Now they're stuck with ~10 websites run by giant megacorporations and "adults deciding the ground rules"... Give the kids some credit, they're smarter than you think..
      - hollerith 2y ago
        >I wish the young generation could experience the free and open and wild Internet that I did in the 90s and 00s... Those were exhilarating and heady times for many teenagers and children, to be sure, but you don't have any children of your own, do you?
        themaninthedark 2y ago
        I have kids and I wish they could have the old web, warts and all it was a much better place for learning and connecting than what we have now.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I run a Mastodon server and I'm quick to moderate things that I'd probably want a monolithic service like Twitter or Facebook to allow. We're a smallish community of like-minded people, and the people on my server repeatedly tell me they like my moderation policies. If they didn't, I'd change them to match the community's mores. But here's the deal: while I can and do moderate what passes through my server, there's absolutely nothing I can do about how you run yours. I'm not telling anyone they can't say certain things. I'm telling them they need to say it somewhere else. By analogy, it's probably closer to a message board. If I were running a board for physicists, I feel absolutely zero obligation to allow crackpots to post anti-science nonsense and yell at the scientists there. They can go make their own message board, or Mastodon instance, if they want to say those things.
    - echelon 2y ago
      It would be strictly better without middlemen. There is always going to be some percentage of interest overlap between users that gets destroyed by federated moderation. It's too coarse grained and ruins the decentralized possibilities of the internet. That isn't to say that users shouldn't be able to filter out whatever they dislike. Rather, it would be best if that was a user's choice [1]. I participate in LGBT spaces, but I'm not going to block people for playing Harry Potter. I don't appreciate people stepping in my way to censor things they think I shouldn't see or hear. To make an analogy with Reddit, if I make a comment in r/conservative (without necessarily even subscribing to their ideology), I get banned from dozens of other subreddits via automated moderation tools. That's a lot like how Mastodon thinks the world should work. But that's not how people are or should be. Mastodon (and subreddit mods) think everyone should wear a membership pin or be emblazoned with a Scarlet Letter. That's incredibly harmful to people and is leading to increasing polarization in society. [1] I'm sure that could even be done at scale by subscribing to community block lists. It shouldn't be a hassle, it just shouldn't be centrally planned and executed with no recourse from the end users.
  - praisewhitey 2y ago
    In the early 2000s people were regularly banned from various phpBB forums because a moderator was a bit of a dick.
echelon 2y ago
> I can totally see instance admins denying a transfer after banning you (because if they banned you they probably would like to punish you further). This is the fucked up problem with federation and it's why we need true peer-to-peer social media. Instead of corporate ideological kowtowing, now it's a thousand little fiefdoms of tiny tyrants deciding if you pattern fit to the ascribed dogma.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I could see things swinging back to an IndieWeb-style setup where we have blogs that can ping each other. I have my own blog hosted on micro.blog for exactly that reason. I can follow other peoples posts as if they were posting to Twitter or something, reply to them, see their replies, etc., and ultimately I own 100% of my content and can move it to any other blog software at any time. Maybe this is the way.
- sbarre 2y ago
  That's sort of the idea with Bluesky isn't it? Your profile includes your posts and all your data, and you are free to move it around, back it up, host it wherever you want, etc... But all the posts are federated together. I haven't looked at it closely in a while but I know they're still growing slowly but steadily..
  - maelito 2y ago
    Yes, I've switched to Bluesky. After investigating their protocols, Bluesky fits my needs way better. I'm quite convinced now Mastodon will never leave the tech sphere.

maelito 2y ago

You've lost your posts. Of course keeping your followers is important. But having a new empty wall was a real problem for me. I didn't know it. Nobody told me, from the people to the interface that I would lose my 3500 messages. It's like having your blog content on another domain in the hands of another host, that can shut your old page down when he wants. It's the perfect walled garden in terms of content. Also, the instance where I was had its backup feature down for months. Finally, the followers migration failed at 80 %.

dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
walterbell 2y ago
Is this doc page incorrect, https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-one-server-to-another/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/how-to-migrate-from-on... > On this page you can also download a copy of your archive that can be read by any ActivityPub software. This archive includes all of your posts and media. So even if the instance that you are moving from shuts down, as is the case with KNZK, you will still have a copy of all of your posts!
- kazinator 2y ago
  The problem is you want all those old posts to be associated with the new (migrated) account on the new instance and be hosted there. Sure, being able to get an archive is nice.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    Presumably it's not a technical limitation, since an importer could be written and added by some instances, even if not accepted upstream. If the lack of import is caused by policy conflict or cost for administrators to review bulk-imported content, does this encourage individuals to have a paid instance to aggregate historical content, e.g. https://masto.host https://masto.host.
- 2y ago

fencepost 2y ago

It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your past content - understandable because that past content likely has references from other instances and pushing those changes across would be a heavy operation, unreliable, and probably fraught with potential security problems. I believe for retaining content it's pretty much retaining it for yourself by downloading an archive, though some instances may allow uploading that. There's also at least one browser-based web app that lets you open and view the content of that archive - otherwise it's kind of useless. Edit: https://github.com/zero-mstd/mav-z https://github.com/zero-mstd/mav-z

maelito 2y ago
> It's a migration for the future, not a migration of your past content - understandable because that past content likely has references from other instances and pushing those changes across would be a heavy operation, unreliable, and probably fraught with potential security problems. Yes of course I'm getting the technical and conceptual difficulties as a developer, but it's awful UX. It's a real deal breaker once you discover it. You cannot use Mastodon as your primary content database anymore.
- jeromegv 2y ago
  It’s a social network. Do you expect Facebook or Twitter to be your primary content database? But I do agree UX could and should be better
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I think most people expect their Facebook and Twitter posts to be around in 5 years.
    - jzb 2y ago
      I don’t. It’s naive to believe any social network is in it for the long haul. Too many have failed to believe they won’t as well. Particularly, exitter. It’s best to assume anything you don’t host yourself is ephemeral.