5 ms·

Toot.community is shutting down

48 points by speckx 3mo ago

rvz 3mo ago
> There’s also the financial side. I’m very grateful to everyone who donated, but donations haven’t covered costs for a long time. I’ve had to shoulder most of the expenses, time, and responsibility myself. One of the main issues of running a federated Mastodon instance with little to no money and donations will not cut it.
- MrDrone 3mo ago
  This is why I host a personal instance. The overheard for moderation and costs is much lower. It also means if I tire of this, migrating my content is easier.
  - baron3dl 3mo ago
    this is why nostr beats mastodon. when the operator pitches a fit and shuts down, your community survives.
    - dewey 3mo ago
      The tech is nice but sadly there's still not that many interesting accounts or content there unless you really want to read about Nostr and zaps all day. I've tried many times, there's decent apps too these days (Primal) but unless you are heavily into that topic or crypto it's not very interesting.
    - cokefan 3mo ago
      The author doesn't sound like they are pitching a fit to me.
      - baron3dl 3mo ago
        maybe i read more into it. i got put off by his refusal to hand it off. he can quit, no qualms there. but not handing it over? that seems petty, imo.
        tredre3 3mo ago
        I personally would never give a mastodon community to a random individual if I had to step away. This is problematic on a privacy and operation level, not to mention the time it would take to interview people. Which means that if I didn't already have a second-in-command, the community would be shut down. If it were a forum, then asking long-term contributors and moderators if they're interested in taking over is certainly an option. But it's not, there's likely no natural "hierarchy" that develops on a mastodon instance. They could conceivably ask another established instance if they'd like to take over the old domain, though.
        cuu508 3mo ago
        When mastodon.technology shut down, the operator commented on this, see "Why Not Transfer to a New Admin?" here -- https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/ https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/
    - numpad0 3mo ago
      Nostr is just Mastodon or IRC with automatic multiposting. Users must selfhost data for decentralized socials to work. One big problem with running a Twitter-like social media, Twitter itself included, is that hosting UGC is just risk without rewards. Users don't pay for the bandwidth, advertisers don't like competing quality UGC(they're possibly even angry about social media that it keeps undermining their "creatives" investment), just no one pays for it. So, a Mastodon alternative has to be selfhosted by default, and infinitely easy to set up for selfhost. "First, connect to your spare Pi with a global IPv4 address" is out of question. Multihop P2P likely won't work either.
      - severine 3mo ago
        "So, a Mastodon alternative has to be selfhosted by default, and infinitely easy to set up for selfhost." You might be interested in Holos: "Holos turns your phone or computer into a full ActivityPub server. No big-tech hosting, no middleman reading your posts. A relay keeps your identity online 24/7 while your device stays in your pocket." https://holos.social/ https://holos.social/
        numpad0 3mo ago
        That's close to what I had in mind, but relay architecture is not enough; people will "abuse" the relays, and relay server operators will find it uncomfortable. Relays shouldn't be hosting content at all.
- baron3dl 3mo ago
  he's taking his ball and going home, the financial aspect isn't load bearing (god damn claude ruined this) in his decision, it's a rationalization. if it were significant, he wouldn't refuse to hand it over to someone who still wants to do it.
  - wizzwizz4 3mo ago
    A social media site isn't like a free software project. People are trusting you in a way that you cannot just hand over to another entity. (It's more like a SaaS business, in that way.) Some instances have managed it, but only to trusted community members, and never (to my knowledge) without some degree of strife.
    - account42 3mo ago
      > People are trusting you in a way that you cannot just hand over to another entity. Same goes for a free software project actually.
- writtenone 3mo ago
  I feel like if you can ignore the bitcoin-bros, Nostr is a better, more lightweight design that doesn't suffer from centralized (localized) shutdowns.
- input_sh 3mo ago
  I picked the only instance I know that actually charges its users an insignificant amount ($20/year), thinking it'd give me some sense of security that it won't just go away one day. I've been paying for it for 3 years in a row without a second thought about it. Anyways, on Aug 1st their pricing is increasing to $50/year (150% increase!) and now I'm far less convinced that the value it offers is worth the money.
  - account42 3mo ago
    $20/year being considered an insignificant cost for a social media account just shows how inefficient Mastodon is. That's already mode than half the cost of a cheap VPS that should be enough to host a couple of users.
riffic 3mo ago
don't forget to `tootctl self-destruct` https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#self-destruct https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#self-destruct EDIT: Once the server disappears, users who did nothing will lose the ability to delete their accounts later. Without self-destruct, remote servers may retain cached profiles and posts indefinitely, but the original users will no longer control those objects. Mastodon created the command specifically to broadcast account deletions before a permanent shutdown and leave little cached material behind.
- wizzwizz4 3mo ago
  Is this desirable? This wipes other people's copies of their boosts, favourites, and bookmarked posts. If users want this behaviour, they can delete their own accounts.
  - stvltvs 3mo ago
    They can't delete their accounts after the server hosting the account shuts down.
    - wizzwizz4 3mo ago
      It's possible to contact the instances who retain the copies of the data, and have them delete it. It's not like the Fediverse is some kind of blockchain, where data is replicated forever unless authorised parties delete it. (And deletion requests can still be sent out by whoever controls the domain, after the instance is gone.)
      - nagaiaida 3mo ago
        (to be clear, i have been on mastodon/fedi for coming up on a decade now and have no qualms about the way leaving or sunsetting an instance works. part of the magic imo is that old posts from long-dead instances regularly go around again) how exactly do you propose someone looking to delete all of their old posts from a dead instance might obtain the exhaustive list of instances that have historically received their posts via a long indirect cascade of boosts to send these formal or informal deletion requests? an allowlist-federated instance obviously makes that far more tractable, and otherwise I could potentially see annoying paths to doing it anyway if i had been the admin and had every log ever sitting somewhere to trawl through, but in the case of a normal user whose instance is already gone and who doesn't have an ongoing relationship with the prior admin, this is hardly a realistic way to address that concern.
TheChaplain 3mo ago
Question: Is there some kind of official protocol for Mastodon? Reason I ask, is if whoever is in charge have considered to support moving posts and interactions from one server to another.
- throwawayk7h 3mo ago
  Yes, it's called ActivityPub. I'm surprised it doesn't support migrating posts.
- NoraCodes 3mo ago
  The protocol is ActivityPub and the feature you suggest is being considered as FEP 1580. https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1580/fep-1580.md https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1580/...
  - marvinborner 3mo ago
    The relevant issue for mastodon itself is https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423
- culi 3mo ago
  ActivityPub is the protocol and its the basis of the "fediverse". It's what underlies Meta's Threads, PeerTube (youtube alternative), Pixelfed (instagram alt), Lemmy (reddit alt), Nextcloud, and probably even Trump's TruthSocial! There's even a Wordpress and Ghost plugin to integrate into ActivityPub. Even Bluesky has previously discussed integrating with it
orangedog 3mo ago
> I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I can't figure out if this is me or if things really have changed. I was on early Reddit (before there were comments) and HN. There were always jerks and flamewars and pedants but it just feels like any thread I read on HN or Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insights are often banal. I've watched long-time members of HN die and I can only think: do I really want to spend most of my life (or a good portion) doing this? It seems so empty. What do people even get out of this? Is life this boring that people find it entertaining? I just don't get it anymore and I can't figure out if the novelty is gone (connecting people is overrated if it leads to...this), it's my age, or if the vibe really has shifted. I don't get any enjoyment out of it anymore and I feel like something is wrong with me because others do (only barely, this is insanity that we've adapted to). 2005 me thought things were going to be a lot more interesting, but things haven't really evolved towards anything positive in the forum/soc media space. (HN is social media - just trolling, the arguments of this are funny). There's gotta be something better. Do people even want better communities, would they recognize them, or is this the new normal? Is the optimism of 2005 dead, impossible to resurrect?
- jrflo 3mo ago
  I agree. I think part of the problem is how recommendation algorithms have conditioned people to act online. Recommendation algorithms optimize for overall platform engagement to increase revenue, which tends to reward anti-social behavior like flamewars, conflict, ragebait, etc. It's rewarded simply because it creates more engagement than more positive content. Users in turn are conditioned to these algorithms because their anti-social behavior gets rewarded in the form of favorable algorithmic treatment. Now, I feel like the average social media user is just predisposed to act in those negative ways, which is why it's prevalent even on HN where the recommendation algorithms are not tuned in quite the same way. Those forces weren't present on early social media, and have only gotten worse over time.
- cindyllm 3mo ago
  [dead]
- 3mo ago
dewey 3mo ago
> Please note that Mastodon can move your followers, but it can’t transfer your old posts or uploaded media to your new account. If you want to keep a copy, download an archive. Sadly that's still an open issue that from time to time gets new input, but doesn't have a lot of traction. I feel like that's a big blind spot of Mastodon to this day and also basically forces people to stick to the largest instances that are less likely to go away, defeating the purpose of a distributed social network. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423
- senderista 3mo ago
  It's also a source of power for mods.
- culi 3mo ago
  There's this if you want an automated way to download and repost your content: https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/ https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- bellowsgulch 3mo ago
  I always feel like stuff like this is more or less intentional. Projects make their priorities known based on the priorities of their work.
whywhywhywhy 3mo ago
>Please note that Mastodon can move your followers, but it can’t transfer your old posts or uploaded media to your new account. If you want to keep a copy, download an archive I'm sure there is some technical excuse to why this is the case but just seems entirely broken that it can't just have the owner of the account provably broadcast they control both the original and the destinations and to redirect all posts. I mean the actual thing that has value IS the posts and there would be less burden on people shutting down these servers if you were not destroying that work by doing so.
- ColinWright 3mo ago
  The posts, when posted live on the host. The user can download their posts. When a host goes away, where do you propose the posts previously hosted there now get hosted? One option is for the poster's new host to have all the old posts uploaded ... how then to previous other posts that point at them, or reply to them, get updated? I'd genuinely be interested to hear your suggestions for how these technical issues could be resolved.
  - Drakim 3mo ago
    How about this: Duplicates of the old posts are created on a new host using some import/export mechanic, but they also contain a cryptographic signature proving ownership of the old posts (utilizing some secret only the original poster would have access to). When a reference to a post becomes invalid because it's underlying host is gone, the other host holding those references tries to find new duplicate posts with the correct signature, and if it finds them, updates the broken old references to point to these new duplicates. If it doesn't find any duplicates with a matching signature, it leaves the references broken and has some cooldown before it tries to fix them again.
    - tekne 3mo ago
      Can we please do content addressing one day?
      - 3mo ago
nickdothutton 3mo ago
As someone whose first “social media” was USENET of the early 90s, and I suppose FidoNet before then, I don’t really consider the bulk of mainstream Internet users today to be in any way “my people”. The herd is endlessly mindless, shallow, bought with bread, and hungry for the circus.
- krapp 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Cider9986 3mo ago
    My exact experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067097
- devmor 3mo ago
  Well that's kind of understandable, isn't it? In the USENET era, internet users were a subculture. In 2026, almost everyone is an internet user. It's kind of like saying "As someone whose first car was a Model T, I don't really consider the bulk of mainstream drivers today to be in any way 'my people'".
  - ToucanLoucan 3mo ago
    Exactly. If you were on USENET way back, you were a fucking nerd (lovingly). People romanticize that because it was very likely with any given group of people, they could strike up some kind of conversation, and they likely shared at least a few central values. Now the Internet is just outside with better moderation tools and curation. I will say though the GP's comment: > The herd is endlessly mindless, shallow, bought with bread, and hungry for the circus. That's just everybody, including them even if they refuse to admit it. I have fond memories of many a circus on USENET, on ICQ, on AOL chat rooms, on 4chan, on Digg, everything. They all have circuses with different sorts of clowns putting on different sorts of shows. But they're all equally value-free. Pretending otherwise is just wanking yourself.
apitman 3mo ago
> More importantly, I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I'm really just not convinced social media is very useful. The main use I can see is very fast dispersal of information, but anything truly important will be distributed by mainstream media, and less important things will travel between small communities at a slower rate. So what are we left with exactly? I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.
- cyanydeez 3mo ago
  the problem is obviously, we can sorta filter out the bot spreading, but when people just use the avenue to spam whatever, it's a firehose only good for bullshit.
- thataccount 3mo ago
  What you are highlighting is the thing social media has issues with--trust.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  >I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past. I believe early on in the internet, there was more discussion of reputation systems like you see for eBay sellers. Seems like this area hasn't advanced very much. You've got karma systems like on HN, and follow-count systems like on X or Instagram, but both of those arguably track "usage intensity" x "susceptibility to audience capture" more than "reputation". Low-hanging fruit would be if X showed you the number of Community Notes a user has received. They aren't even bothering to do that.
  - ghusto 3mo ago
    Plus, just how exams only test you on how good you are at exams, those systems only show how good you are at getting likes, votes, followers, etc. You can have a billion followers, doesn't mean anything to me other than you're good at getting followers. Which now that I think about it, says enough.
- 3mo ago
0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
>the server won’t be handed over to anyone else. That's a shame. It seems to me that we are in a frustrating situation where there are probably clever ways to solve the problems created by social media. But because launching new social platforms requires solving a difficult chicken-and-egg problem, we don't get very many chances to try anything new or innovative. Another way of putting it is: Occasionally people will speculate about ways to fix issues with Twitter, reddit, etc. Such speculation feels fairly pointless, because there is little evidence that the moderators of those platforms are listening to suggestions, or even care about anything besides profit maximization. Without much demand for improvement ideas, the supply of such ideas tends to dry up as well. If anyone else is in this situation of desiring to sunset a social platform, I would encourage them to run a contest. People can enter your contest by submitting plans for how to revitalize the platform / a genuinely new direction for social media. You judge the entries, pick a winner, and the winner takes over administration of your platform so they can try out their proposed new direction.
- dewey 3mo ago
  > If anyone else is in this situation of desiring to sunset a social platform I feel like once you arrive at the situation where you want to free up your time and shut down a project (Which is already a hard decision to arrive at) you'll not want to put in extra work to run some contest, pick a winner, hand over domains, infra or figure out a way forward. It already takes me a lot of energy to shut down side projects with little to no users instead of just keep paying for it.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
    Fair enough. Maybe the threshold for doing as I suggest should be if you are just starting to lose enthusiasm.
- account42 3mo ago
  No, not handing over the server to anyone is the only responsible thing to do when you don't have a successor that you can trust 100%.
esbranson 3mo ago
See the W3C Linked Web Storage (LWS) work on what could be apropos data ownership and transfers. https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/lws/publications/ https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/lws/publications/

48 points by speckx 3mo ago

rvz 3mo ago

> There’s also the financial side. I’m very grateful to everyone who donated, but donations haven’t covered costs for a long time. I’ve had to shoulder most of the expenses, time, and responsibility myself. One of the main issues of running a federated Mastodon instance with little to no money and donations will not cut it.

MrDrone 3mo ago
This is why I host a personal instance. The overheard for moderation and costs is much lower. It also means if I tire of this, migrating my content is easier.
- baron3dl 3mo ago
  this is why nostr beats mastodon. when the operator pitches a fit and shuts down, your community survives.
  - dewey 3mo ago
    The tech is nice but sadly there's still not that many interesting accounts or content there unless you really want to read about Nostr and zaps all day. I've tried many times, there's decent apps too these days (Primal) but unless you are heavily into that topic or crypto it's not very interesting.
  - cokefan 3mo ago
    The author doesn't sound like they are pitching a fit to me.
    - baron3dl 3mo ago
      maybe i read more into it. i got put off by his refusal to hand it off. he can quit, no qualms there. but not handing it over? that seems petty, imo.
      - tredre3 3mo ago
        I personally would never give a mastodon community to a random individual if I had to step away. This is problematic on a privacy and operation level, not to mention the time it would take to interview people. Which means that if I didn't already have a second-in-command, the community would be shut down. If it were a forum, then asking long-term contributors and moderators if they're interested in taking over is certainly an option. But it's not, there's likely no natural "hierarchy" that develops on a mastodon instance. They could conceivably ask another established instance if they'd like to take over the old domain, though.
      - cuu508 3mo ago
        When mastodon.technology shut down, the operator commented on this, see "Why Not Transfer to a New Admin?" here -- https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/ https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/
  - numpad0 3mo ago
    Nostr is just Mastodon or IRC with automatic multiposting. Users must selfhost data for decentralized socials to work. One big problem with running a Twitter-like social media, Twitter itself included, is that hosting UGC is just risk without rewards. Users don't pay for the bandwidth, advertisers don't like competing quality UGC(they're possibly even angry about social media that it keeps undermining their "creatives" investment), just no one pays for it. So, a Mastodon alternative has to be selfhosted by default, and infinitely easy to set up for selfhost. "First, connect to your spare Pi with a global IPv4 address" is out of question. Multihop P2P likely won't work either.
    - severine 3mo ago
      "So, a Mastodon alternative has to be selfhosted by default, and infinitely easy to set up for selfhost." You might be interested in Holos: "Holos turns your phone or computer into a full ActivityPub server. No big-tech hosting, no middleman reading your posts. A relay keeps your identity online 24/7 while your device stays in your pocket." https://holos.social/ https://holos.social/
      - numpad0 3mo ago
        That's close to what I had in mind, but relay architecture is not enough; people will "abuse" the relays, and relay server operators will find it uncomfortable. Relays shouldn't be hosting content at all.
baron3dl 3mo ago
he's taking his ball and going home, the financial aspect isn't load bearing (god damn claude ruined this) in his decision, it's a rationalization. if it were significant, he wouldn't refuse to hand it over to someone who still wants to do it.
- wizzwizz4 3mo ago
  A social media site isn't like a free software project. People are trusting you in a way that you cannot just hand over to another entity. (It's more like a SaaS business, in that way.) Some instances have managed it, but only to trusted community members, and never (to my knowledge) without some degree of strife.
  - account42 3mo ago
    > People are trusting you in a way that you cannot just hand over to another entity. Same goes for a free software project actually.
writtenone 3mo ago
I feel like if you can ignore the bitcoin-bros, Nostr is a better, more lightweight design that doesn't suffer from centralized (localized) shutdowns.
input_sh 3mo ago
I picked the only instance I know that actually charges its users an insignificant amount ($20/year), thinking it'd give me some sense of security that it won't just go away one day. I've been paying for it for 3 years in a row without a second thought about it. Anyways, on Aug 1st their pricing is increasing to $50/year (150% increase!) and now I'm far less convinced that the value it offers is worth the money.
- account42 3mo ago
  $20/year being considered an insignificant cost for a social media account just shows how inefficient Mastodon is. That's already mode than half the cost of a cheap VPS that should be enough to host a couple of users.

riffic 3mo ago

don't forget to `tootctl self-destruct` https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#self-destruct https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#self-destruct EDIT: Once the server disappears, users who did nothing will lose the ability to delete their accounts later. Without self-destruct, remote servers may retain cached profiles and posts indefinitely, but the original users will no longer control those objects. Mastodon created the command specifically to broadcast account deletions before a permanent shutdown and leave little cached material behind.

wizzwizz4 3mo ago
Is this desirable? This wipes other people's copies of their boosts, favourites, and bookmarked posts. If users want this behaviour, they can delete their own accounts.
- stvltvs 3mo ago
  They can't delete their accounts after the server hosting the account shuts down.
  - wizzwizz4 3mo ago
    It's possible to contact the instances who retain the copies of the data, and have them delete it. It's not like the Fediverse is some kind of blockchain, where data is replicated forever unless authorised parties delete it. (And deletion requests can still be sent out by whoever controls the domain, after the instance is gone.)
    - nagaiaida 3mo ago
      (to be clear, i have been on mastodon/fedi for coming up on a decade now and have no qualms about the way leaving or sunsetting an instance works. part of the magic imo is that old posts from long-dead instances regularly go around again) how exactly do you propose someone looking to delete all of their old posts from a dead instance might obtain the exhaustive list of instances that have historically received their posts via a long indirect cascade of boosts to send these formal or informal deletion requests? an allowlist-federated instance obviously makes that far more tractable, and otherwise I could potentially see annoying paths to doing it anyway if i had been the admin and had every log ever sitting somewhere to trawl through, but in the case of a normal user whose instance is already gone and who doesn't have an ongoing relationship with the prior admin, this is hardly a realistic way to address that concern.

TheChaplain 3mo ago

Question: Is there some kind of official protocol for Mastodon? Reason I ask, is if whoever is in charge have considered to support moving posts and interactions from one server to another.

throwawayk7h 3mo ago
Yes, it's called ActivityPub. I'm surprised it doesn't support migrating posts.
NoraCodes 3mo ago
The protocol is ActivityPub and the feature you suggest is being considered as FEP 1580. https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1580/fep-1580.md https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1580/...
- marvinborner 3mo ago
  The relevant issue for mastodon itself is https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423
culi 3mo ago
ActivityPub is the protocol and its the basis of the "fediverse". It's what underlies Meta's Threads, PeerTube (youtube alternative), Pixelfed (instagram alt), Lemmy (reddit alt), Nextcloud, and probably even Trump's TruthSocial! There's even a Wordpress and Ghost plugin to integrate into ActivityPub. Even Bluesky has previously discussed integrating with it

orangedog 3mo ago

> I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I can't figure out if this is me or if things really have changed. I was on early Reddit (before there were comments) and HN. There were always jerks and flamewars and pedants but it just feels like any thread I read on HN or Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insights are often banal. I've watched long-time members of HN die and I can only think: do I really want to spend most of my life (or a good portion) doing this? It seems so empty. What do people even get out of this? Is life this boring that people find it entertaining? I just don't get it anymore and I can't figure out if the novelty is gone (connecting people is overrated if it leads to...this), it's my age, or if the vibe really has shifted. I don't get any enjoyment out of it anymore and I feel like something is wrong with me because others do (only barely, this is insanity that we've adapted to). 2005 me thought things were going to be a lot more interesting, but things haven't really evolved towards anything positive in the forum/soc media space. (HN is social media - just trolling, the arguments of this are funny). There's gotta be something better. Do people even want better communities, would they recognize them, or is this the new normal? Is the optimism of 2005 dead, impossible to resurrect?

jrflo 3mo ago
I agree. I think part of the problem is how recommendation algorithms have conditioned people to act online. Recommendation algorithms optimize for overall platform engagement to increase revenue, which tends to reward anti-social behavior like flamewars, conflict, ragebait, etc. It's rewarded simply because it creates more engagement than more positive content. Users in turn are conditioned to these algorithms because their anti-social behavior gets rewarded in the form of favorable algorithmic treatment. Now, I feel like the average social media user is just predisposed to act in those negative ways, which is why it's prevalent even on HN where the recommendation algorithms are not tuned in quite the same way. Those forces weren't present on early social media, and have only gotten worse over time.
cindyllm 3mo ago
[dead]
3mo ago

dewey 3mo ago

> Please note that Mastodon can move your followers, but it can’t transfer your old posts or uploaded media to your new account. If you want to keep a copy, download an archive. Sadly that's still an open issue that from time to time gets new input, but doesn't have a lot of traction. I feel like that's a big blind spot of Mastodon to this day and also basically forces people to stick to the largest instances that are less likely to go away, defeating the purpose of a distributed social network. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423

senderista 3mo ago
It's also a source of power for mods.
culi 3mo ago
There's this if you want an automated way to download and repost your content: https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/ https://mastodoncontentmover.github.io/
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
bellowsgulch 3mo ago
I always feel like stuff like this is more or less intentional. Projects make their priorities known based on the priorities of their work.

whywhywhywhy 3mo ago

>Please note that Mastodon can move your followers, but it can’t transfer your old posts or uploaded media to your new account. If you want to keep a copy, download an archive I'm sure there is some technical excuse to why this is the case but just seems entirely broken that it can't just have the owner of the account provably broadcast they control both the original and the destinations and to redirect all posts. I mean the actual thing that has value IS the posts and there would be less burden on people shutting down these servers if you were not destroying that work by doing so.

ColinWright 3mo ago
The posts, when posted live on the host. The user can download their posts. When a host goes away, where do you propose the posts previously hosted there now get hosted? One option is for the poster's new host to have all the old posts uploaded ... how then to previous other posts that point at them, or reply to them, get updated? I'd genuinely be interested to hear your suggestions for how these technical issues could be resolved.
- Drakim 3mo ago
  How about this: Duplicates of the old posts are created on a new host using some import/export mechanic, but they also contain a cryptographic signature proving ownership of the old posts (utilizing some secret only the original poster would have access to). When a reference to a post becomes invalid because it's underlying host is gone, the other host holding those references tries to find new duplicate posts with the correct signature, and if it finds them, updates the broken old references to point to these new duplicates. If it doesn't find any duplicates with a matching signature, it leaves the references broken and has some cooldown before it tries to fix them again.
  - tekne 3mo ago
    Can we please do content addressing one day?
    - 3mo ago

nickdothutton 3mo ago

As someone whose first “social media” was USENET of the early 90s, and I suppose FidoNet before then, I don’t really consider the bulk of mainstream Internet users today to be in any way “my people”. The herd is endlessly mindless, shallow, bought with bread, and hungry for the circus.

krapp 3mo ago
[flagged]
- Cider9986 3mo ago
  My exact experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49067097
devmor 3mo ago
Well that's kind of understandable, isn't it? In the USENET era, internet users were a subculture. In 2026, almost everyone is an internet user. It's kind of like saying "As someone whose first car was a Model T, I don't really consider the bulk of mainstream drivers today to be in any way 'my people'".
- ToucanLoucan 3mo ago
  Exactly. If you were on USENET way back, you were a fucking nerd (lovingly). People romanticize that because it was very likely with any given group of people, they could strike up some kind of conversation, and they likely shared at least a few central values. Now the Internet is just outside with better moderation tools and curation. I will say though the GP's comment: > The herd is endlessly mindless, shallow, bought with bread, and hungry for the circus. That's just everybody, including them even if they refuse to admit it. I have fond memories of many a circus on USENET, on ICQ, on AOL chat rooms, on 4chan, on Digg, everything. They all have circuses with different sorts of clowns putting on different sorts of shows. But they're all equally value-free. Pretending otherwise is just wanking yourself.

apitman 3mo ago

> More importantly, I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I'm really just not convinced social media is very useful. The main use I can see is very fast dispersal of information, but anything truly important will be distributed by mainstream media, and less important things will travel between small communities at a slower rate. So what are we left with exactly? I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

cyanydeez 3mo ago
the problem is obviously, we can sorta filter out the bot spreading, but when people just use the avenue to spam whatever, it's a firehose only good for bullshit.
thataccount 3mo ago
What you are highlighting is the thing social media has issues with--trust.
0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
>I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past. I believe early on in the internet, there was more discussion of reputation systems like you see for eBay sellers. Seems like this area hasn't advanced very much. You've got karma systems like on HN, and follow-count systems like on X or Instagram, but both of those arguably track "usage intensity" x "susceptibility to audience capture" more than "reputation". Low-hanging fruit would be if X showed you the number of Community Notes a user has received. They aren't even bothering to do that.
- ghusto 3mo ago
  Plus, just how exams only test you on how good you are at exams, those systems only show how good you are at getting likes, votes, followers, etc. You can have a billion followers, doesn't mean anything to me other than you're good at getting followers. Which now that I think about it, says enough.
3mo ago

0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago

>the server won’t be handed over to anyone else. That's a shame. It seems to me that we are in a frustrating situation where there are probably clever ways to solve the problems created by social media. But because launching new social platforms requires solving a difficult chicken-and-egg problem, we don't get very many chances to try anything new or innovative. Another way of putting it is: Occasionally people will speculate about ways to fix issues with Twitter, reddit, etc. Such speculation feels fairly pointless, because there is little evidence that the moderators of those platforms are listening to suggestions, or even care about anything besides profit maximization. Without much demand for improvement ideas, the supply of such ideas tends to dry up as well. If anyone else is in this situation of desiring to sunset a social platform, I would encourage them to run a contest. People can enter your contest by submitting plans for how to revitalize the platform / a genuinely new direction for social media. You judge the entries, pick a winner, and the winner takes over administration of your platform so they can try out their proposed new direction.

dewey 3mo ago
> If anyone else is in this situation of desiring to sunset a social platform I feel like once you arrive at the situation where you want to free up your time and shut down a project (Which is already a hard decision to arrive at) you'll not want to put in extra work to run some contest, pick a winner, hand over domains, infra or figure out a way forward. It already takes me a lot of energy to shut down side projects with little to no users instead of just keep paying for it.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3mo ago
  Fair enough. Maybe the threshold for doing as I suggest should be if you are just starting to lose enthusiasm.
account42 3mo ago
No, not handing over the server to anyone is the only responsible thing to do when you don't have a successor that you can trust 100%.

esbranson 3mo ago

See the W3C Linked Web Storage (LWS) work on what could be apropos data ownership and transfers. https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/lws/publications/ https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/lws/publications/