Toot.community is shutting down

> 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

> 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.

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.

>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.

> 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?

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.

>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.

> 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.

don't forget to `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.