I have just made my first lemmy account on lemmy.world. What happens to my account in the event that this particular instance goes offline temporarily or permanently? It seems like I will have to either wait for the instance to come back online or create a new account, is this correct?
For that matter, would it be the same for mastadon and other fediverse services?
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For that matter, would it be the same for mastodon and other fediverse services?
Basically, yeah. Each may differ a little in terms of what they enable exporting to move to different sites using the same service backend (Mastodon/Lemmy/etc.), but many of them are decent about letting you export your settings, subscriptions, and blocks/filters.
One detail many of them aren’t good about in terms of data portability is your posts though. Some people are, understandably, very particular about this, as they hate to lose their posts, so it’s something to be aware of.
Ideally all of your data on a service backend would be portable to another on the same backend, but that’s largely not the case right now. So if there’s anything you’re thinking about sharing across these services that you’d like to keep, I’d recommend making it as a local file first (.txt/.md/.odt, .png, or whatever) so it’s not entangled with a web service. To be honest, that’s a good rule of thumb for any digital material regardless as far as I’m concerned.
its like email. if gmail goes down, youd have to switch email providers and make a new email account somewhere else.
ok thanks that makes sense
But you can export and import your settings, subscriptions, blocks, easily. As already mentioned it’s not a bad idea to have a backup account.
a few people have ‘backup’ accounts with the same username on different instances just in case… they subscribe to the same content from those accounts so if an instance goes down, they can jump right back in
You can export your settings every now and then from the settings. That way at least if you have to switch account you don’t start from scratch. Settings include subscriptions, and blocked instances, communities and users.
ok that’s perfect then, do you know if mastadon does the same thing?
Not sure, I think they handle things differently: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#export
Yes, you would need to make a new account. You can export your subscriptions, hold onto them and import them into a new account if you want. I also have a couple backup alts on other instances when my usual one goes offline.
Luckily your posts and comments aren’t purged from other instances, if your instance is taken offline unceremoniously. So you won’t lose any of your contributions.
Each Fediverse service can implement the export/moving differently. However Mastodon has a follower/activity move ability that some services like Pixelfed are trying to make themselves cross-compatible with.
Welcome to Lemmy and the Fediverse!
This is why I have an account on other instances lol. Started with lemmy.world then branched out. Plus it’s nice seeing what other instances are like
