{"id":38498,"date":"2023-02-16T16:30:22","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T21:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=38498"},"modified":"2023-04-05T14:24:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T18:24:23","slug":"choosing-and-switching-mastodon-instances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/16\/choosing-and-switching-mastodon-instances\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosing and Switching Mastodon Instances"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Does it matter which Mastodon instance you choose? I’ve seen many people claim that it doesn’t matter, and moreover that you can easily switch instances. I learned the hard way that this claim is unwarranted, a disservice to new Mastodon users. Your choice of instance is important, indeed crucial. Until yesterday I was on mstdn.plus<\/a>, a Mastodon instance with well over 4000 active users according to its server stats. Yesterday morning I woke to a “frozen” timeline. […] It turned out that my own experience was far from unique: looking at the federated timeline of mstdn.plus<\/a>, at a certain point all posts from other Mastodon instances stopped, leaving only posts from local users.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

When you move from one Mastodon instance to another, you can export your follows, lists, account mutes, account blocks, domain blocks, and bookmarks from your old instance and import them on the new instance. But you can’t bring your posts with you! Your posts remain with your account on the old instance, which becomes inactive after you move, so you can no longer edit or delete those posts, though you can delete the account entirely. You also lose access to your direct messages: when your account becomes inactive, you can’t even read your old DMs anymore. You can request an archive of your data from your server<\/a>, which I did before moving instances. However, this process has not yet completed.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Other parts of your account cannot be migrated via export and import. You need to manually recreate your profile, including avatar, header, bio, and metadata. You need to reset your preferences. You need to recreate your filters!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Johnson<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

After 6 days of breakage, and 6 days of no word from the instance administrator, an automated email arrived yesterday from mstdn.plus<\/code> stating that my archive was ready for download. […] Moreover, later that day my followers finally transferred automatically to my new instance, a process that, again, was initiated 6 days prior.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

According to the Mastodon Server Covenant<\/a>, “All Mastodon servers we link to from our server picker commit to the following… At least one other person with emergency access to the server infrastructure”. Nonetheless, Join Mastodon<\/a> is actually where I found mstdn.plus<\/code> back in December, when the covenant had the exact same language, and there’s no sign that mstdn.plus<\/code> or mstdn.party<\/code> has an emergency backup admin, otherwise the outage wouldn’t have lasted for 6 days. Thus, it appears Mastodon doesn’t follow its own server covenant. Caveat emptor!<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

I remain on Mastodon now, despite the dismaying experience of the past week, not because I’m committed, not because Mastodon is great, but because the people I know happen to be on Mastodon. The same reason I was on Twitter. It’s too bad that both services turned out to be disasters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Dr. Drang<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I switched Mastodon instances<\/a> recently. I started on mastodon.cloud<\/a> back in 2018 and moved to fosstodon.org<\/a> for a couple of reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I’d been hearing negative things (mainly from Anil Dash<\/a>, who left mastodon.cloud a month or so ago) about the people who took over the mastodon.cloud instance. […]<\/li>\n
  2. Mastodon.cloud is using an older version of the server software which didn’t allow editing of posts. […]<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    […]<\/p>\n

    Mastodon has a set of instructions for migrating servers, but I found this guide at Nerds Chalk<\/a> to be more useful.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

    Previously:<\/p>\n