In the past, I have frequently mentioned how easy it is to move from one #Mastodon instance to another. I have done so twice in the past, and I generally recommend that people use that feature to get away from the big instances (such as Mastodon.social) and to one of the smaller ones so that the #Fediverse is more "spread out".
However, there are always some people who object to this, noting that while you can migrate your follows, followers, bookmarks, blocks and so forth, you _cannot_ migrate your old posts.
This has never bothered me since Mastodon is essentially a #microblogging system, and I see microblogging as "fire and forget" in nature - any given post might be shared for a few days, but is soon forgotten unless someone bookmarks it. Besides, it's not as if the posts are actually gone from the old instance unless it closes down.
But many see this as a major obstacle to migrating instances, and thus I want to know: Does it bother you that you cannot migrate your posts when migrating Mastodon instances?
- Yes, it bothers me (44%, 57 votes)
- No, it doesn't bother me (55%, 71 votes)
Rocketman
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •my toots self-destruct after four weeks, so that’s the most I’d lose.
Unless I’m misunderstanding this, the posts on your old account would also remain available, so you could link to them whenever you wanted. Unless your old instance has blown up, of course.
But I can see how some people look at their social media posts as basically eternal. If Fedi software were to support post migration, that would probably help them.
klu9
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Roy -- the dull one
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •1. If your posts are valuable long-term, you should back them up on portable media (not the "cloud").
It will sound crazy to many people, but an instance, or all of Fedi, or even the whole Internet, is NOT long-term dependable. As a crotchety old engineer, I believe that the more complex a system is, the more likely it will sufferer crashes, malicious damage, even destruction. Especially in times of turmoil.
2. You can download an archive of your posts - see Fedi.tips
clay
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Space Catitude 🚀
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Of course, you've reduced this to a binary. I voted "Y", because I would prefer to be able to migrate posts, but I also use the ephemeral posts option to delete most old posts after a few months. I like having more nuanced options.
It also seems odd that Mastodon provides an option to export posts, but no option to import them. Although there is a tool available to make a static archive from them.
codeberg.org/oliphant/posty
posty
Codeberg.orgRay McCarthy
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •You can export all the posts and copy / re-pin any special pinned posts.
So anything important you didn't have a copy of can be easily saved.
It's not perfect, but better than any other SM platform has.
Wordpress has complete export / import if changing database or hosting or domain etc, but you still need SFTP to backup all your media, themes, plugins etc.
DopeGhoti
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •Daniel
in reply to Jürgen Hubert • • •In the replies to your post, I’ve seen “you couldn’t do that on another social network so why would I need that here” more than once.
Well. I’ve only needed to migrate off another social network once. And that was a) after WELL over a decade of using it, and b) a personal choice.
Meanwhile, I’ve only been on the fedi since Musk took over Twitter …