⚠️ Important headsup if you are on the server mastodon.cloud:
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p.s. Just to add to why there is this situation, servers are run by volunteers who have to pay for all the server's running costs, they don't run ads or sell any data or have any investors.
If accounts move to a server and suddenly upload thousands of posts with perhaps hundreds of images etc, that can be quite a drain on the server's resources.
There was a Fedi platform which experimented with uploading archives, but it slowed down badly when big archives were uploaded.
I understand that many servers are in closets and run on residential energy rates, but identity on social media networks includes posts and images. We are what we wrote and we are what we will write.
It's good to design for the cheapest hardware and internet speeds but to be perfectly honest, some servers can afford it but choose not to because the low hanging fruit is to offer only the bare minimum as long as they can
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@elduvelle
@FediTips
It's not a thing in base masto or glitch, as far as I'm aware, but not for any good reason - one could upload the archive and backdate all the posts even if they wouldn't be treated as the same as the originals by other instances/wouldn't have replies/interactions -
I understand that many servers are in closets and run on residential energy rates, but identity on social media networks includes posts and images. We are what we wrote and we are what we will write.
It's good to design for the cheapest hardware and internet speeds but to be perfectly honest, some servers can afford it but choose not to because the low hanging fruit is to offer only the bare minimum as long as they can
The posts and images don't disappear, they remain on the server where they were posted and their username directs people to your new account.
If someone suddenly uploads thousands posts and a similar amount of images, that will cause a strain. If many people do that, it will be even more strain.
The Fedi platform Firefish did actually try this, and it did cause problems. It's mainly to do with the amount of computing resources required to deal with many tasks at once.
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I understand that many servers are in closets and run on residential energy rates, but identity on social media networks includes posts and images. We are what we wrote and we are what we will write.
It's good to design for the cheapest hardware and internet speeds but to be perfectly honest, some servers can afford it but choose not to because the low hanging fruit is to offer only the bare minimum as long as they can
p.s. Anything that you host online on other services will disappear at some point (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016).
If you need to make sure all your posts stay online, you can set up your own server. It doesn't require tech skills and it doesn't require much money either.
Managed hosting costs $5 per month for a single person with the hosting company doing all the techy stuff for you. I encourage people to do this with help and links to providers at https://growyourown.services/grow-your-own-social-network/
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@elduvelle
@FediTips
It's not a thing in base masto or glitch, as far as I'm aware, but not for any good reason - one could upload the archive and backdate all the posts even if they wouldn't be treated as the same as the originals by other instances/wouldn't have replies/interactionsThis is possible and it has been done by Fedi platforms such as Firefish which accepted Mastodon archive uploads, but AFAIK they had problems with instance resources?
(For what it's worth, the uploads created new posts with no connection to the old threads but the content was the same.)
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p.s. Anything that you host online on other services will disappear at some point (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016).
If you need to make sure all your posts stay online, you can set up your own server. It doesn't require tech skills and it doesn't require much money either.
Managed hosting costs $5 per month for a single person with the hosting company doing all the techy stuff for you. I encourage people to do this with help and links to providers at https://growyourown.services/grow-your-own-social-network/
I love the tips, but making the case that it's cheap enough for an individual to do it only strengthens my case that institutions can and should offer this service for free
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@quattrocchi @FediTips @Sujiyan @TheAdmin
I understand that moderation is necessary to maintain a safe place for healthy accounts. I also realize that much of the appeal of Mastodon lies in its decentralization. Blocking instances versus accounts seems like using a broad brush instead of a finer touch. Don't unhealthy accounts come and go? Might blocking the instance harm the instance's healthier accounts? Harm accounts on other instances that want to come and see the unhealthy accounts? -
I love the tips, but making the case that it's cheap enough for an individual to do it only strengthens my case that institutions can and should offer this service for free
It would be great if they did that, yes. It would be a bit like in the early days of the web when people were often given free web pages by ISPs, universities, community groups etc
The price per instance also becomes a lot cheaper if a provider hosts lots of instances.
I guess question is which institutions would offer this?
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This is possible and it has been done by Fedi platforms such as Firefish which accepted Mastodon archive uploads, but AFAIK they had problems with instance resources?
(For what it's worth, the uploads created new posts with no connection to the old threads but the content was the same.)
This is a solved problem with GoToSocial.
First, they allowed backdating statuses.
Which allowed importing old statuses.
One of the devs created a tool, Slurp, for this purpose. It uses your existing Mastodon archive.
At this time, GoToSocial is the only platform I'm aware of that can handle not just account migration, but post migration as well.
This page talks about migrating to GoToSocial and using Slurp to migrate posts.
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@quattrocchi @FediTips @Sujiyan @TheAdmin
I understand that moderation is necessary to maintain a safe place for healthy accounts. I also realize that much of the appeal of Mastodon lies in its decentralization. Blocking instances versus accounts seems like using a broad brush instead of a finer touch. Don't unhealthy accounts come and go? Might blocking the instance harm the instance's healthier accounts? Harm accounts on other instances that want to come and see the unhealthy accounts?If a server's moderation team is not responding to requests to moderate, and it hasn't posted in over 2 years, and its server software is running on a very out of date version, that implies the server isn't being actively maintained.
If the material to be moderated is extremely serious, and the server admin doesn't respond to multiple reports over several months, then the next step is typically defederation.
There is no other option if the server itself won't respond.
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This is a solved problem with GoToSocial.
First, they allowed backdating statuses.
Which allowed importing old statuses.
One of the devs created a tool, Slurp, for this purpose. It uses your existing Mastodon archive.
At this time, GoToSocial is the only platform I'm aware of that can handle not just account migration, but post migration as well.
This page talks about migrating to GoToSocial and using Slurp to migrate posts.
Oooh interesting, thanks for that!
How does it handle the resource issue? Is this part of GTS's design for smaller instances, or can it handle large amounts of members migrating posts?
(EDIT: From that link it sounds like it's currently for small/single user instances?)
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Oooh interesting, thanks for that!
How does it handle the resource issue? Is this part of GTS's design for smaller instances, or can it handle large amounts of members migrating posts?
(EDIT: From that link it sounds like it's currently for small/single user instances?)
@FediTips @jonny @elduvelle Yeah, it doesn't have to worry about the problems of running thousands on the same instance because it's not really designed for that. Although, if there was a large instance like that, they could just prevent it entirely by turning off backdated post imports at the server level in the config yaml.
It's not so much that it can't handle large volume or large amounts of members migrating posts.... it probably can?
It's just that no one has ever tested it. I'm not aware of anything I'd consider a "large" GTS instance, for one. I'm not aware of anyone with, say, 20k followers migrating to a GTS instance, or importing a massive archive to it.
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@FediTips @jonny @elduvelle Yeah, it doesn't have to worry about the problems of running thousands on the same instance because it's not really designed for that. Although, if there was a large instance like that, they could just prevent it entirely by turning off backdated post imports at the server level in the config yaml.
It's not so much that it can't handle large volume or large amounts of members migrating posts.... it probably can?
It's just that no one has ever tested it. I'm not aware of anything I'd consider a "large" GTS instance, for one. I'm not aware of anyone with, say, 20k followers migrating to a GTS instance, or importing a massive archive to it.
On a slight tangent, I've been trying to find some public GTS instances to list on @FediGarden but there don't seem to be many?
I'm wondering if this is a result of a deliberate design to keep GTS for very small instances? Or maybe the larger GTS instances will appear in time?
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On a slight tangent, I've been trying to find some public GTS instances to list on @FediGarden but there don't seem to be many?
I'm wondering if this is a result of a deliberate design to keep GTS for very small instances? Or maybe the larger GTS instances will appear in time?
@FediTips @FediGarden Things like Fediverse Observer and FediDB started dropping many GoToSocial instances, after GTS started messing with scrapers ignoring the robots.txt by permitting admins to create ridiculous stats. This messed with the overall stats of the fediverse, so essentially a lot of GTS instances got wholly blacklisted from public directories, regardless of whether they enabled the 'spoof' setting or not.
Which....I guess stopped those places from scraping GTS server endpoints.
Some people are really mad at the authors over it, but all it's really done is take GTS off the official statistics board entirely.
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If a server's moderation team is not responding to requests to moderate, and it hasn't posted in over 2 years, and its server software is running on a very out of date version, that implies the server isn't being actively maintained.
If the material to be moderated is extremely serious, and the server admin doesn't respond to multiple reports over several months, then the next step is typically defederation.
There is no other option if the server itself won't respond.
@FediTips
I hear you, but wasn't it less than a year ago that the fediverse was in uproar over mastodon.social variants that seemed unhealthy?
Why can't individual accounts just block each other as they have on other services? Are other instances really this militant about unhealthy instances?
Over the years I've watched accounts transfer not once but many times, then also watched accounts just disappear.
I'm pretty dubious about encouraging blocks of large instances except as a last resort. -
@FediTips
I hear you, but wasn't it less than a year ago that the fediverse was in uproar over mastodon.social variants that seemed unhealthy?
Why can't individual accounts just block each other as they have on other services? Are other instances really this militant about unhealthy instances?
Over the years I've watched accounts transfer not once but many times, then also watched accounts just disappear.
I'm pretty dubious about encouraging blocks of large instances except as a last resort."Why can't individual accounts just block each other as they have on other services?"
Here is why, explained in one short post: https://social.chinwag.org/@FediThing/112581263140051643
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@FediTips @FediGarden Things like Fediverse Observer and FediDB started dropping many GoToSocial instances, after GTS started messing with scrapers ignoring the robots.txt by permitting admins to create ridiculous stats. This messed with the overall stats of the fediverse, so essentially a lot of GTS instances got wholly blacklisted from public directories, regardless of whether they enabled the 'spoof' setting or not.
Which....I guess stopped those places from scraping GTS server endpoints.
Some people are really mad at the authors over it, but all it's really done is take GTS off the official statistics board entirely.
Ah, yeah, I'm not doing any kind of FediDB-style automated list. Fedi.Garden is just a small manually curated list of good instances that people can join. I don't have any stats, it's just public instances where I've contacted the admin and discussed their safeguards for reliability and moderation, then got their consent to be listed.
GTS doesn't seem to have any public instances at all though?
I'm partly worried about what happens if Mastodon software goes south. Hard fork?
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Ah, yeah, I'm not doing any kind of FediDB-style automated list. Fedi.Garden is just a small manually curated list of good instances that people can join. I don't have any stats, it's just public instances where I've contacted the admin and discussed their safeguards for reliability and moderation, then got their consent to be listed.
GTS doesn't seem to have any public instances at all though?
I'm partly worried about what happens if Mastodon software goes south. Hard fork?
@FediTips @oli @FediGarden Mine can be considered public in the sense that you can sign up and your registration will be approved or rejected
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@FediTips @oli @FediGarden Mine can be considered public in the sense that you can sign up and your registration will be approved or rejected
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️ Important headsup if you are on the server mastodon.cloud:Mastodon.cloud no longer seems to be moderated. Its admin account hasn't posted since Feb 2023, its code of conduct is blank and there are vile racists posting from there. The racists have been reported many times but their accounts are still active.
Because of this, other server admins are starting to block mastodon.cloud completely.
If you're on mastodon.cloud you might want to move to another server ASAP: https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server
@FediTips oh no! I'm on cloud!
