How can I migrate my current Lemmy profile to another lemmy instance?

Twoafros@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 39 points –

How can I migrate all my likes, community subscriptions, posts, comments etc to another instance?

Is this even currently possible?

Thanks for reading

23

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Migrating or moving an account is not part of ActivityPub. Mastodon extended the protocol to have a move activity.

Unless Lemmy devs come up with something similar and extend the protocol, there is no way to properly move/migrate the account to another instance. The current solution is to create a new account on your desired instance and then export the data on your old instance and import it on your new instance and leave a note in your bio for old instance/account[^1]

Start here for details on this. According to the devs this would be nice to have but is of very low priority.

[^1]: ignoring the fact that you need to re-subscruibe to communities with manual approval and losing all your comments and posts history as well as all private messaging history and contacts.

re-subscruibe to communities with manual approval

Are they that common? I usually find the feature used to lock inactive communities

losing all your comments and posts history

They are not lost, they are still there, and people know they are yours if you post your new account on your old account bio.

private messaging history and contacts.

Lemmy shouldn't be used for messaging, that's why you can show your Matrix account in your profile

losing all your comments and posts history

They are not lost, they are still there

Yes, theyโ€™re there, in the old account on the old instance, and not here, where the new account on the new instance is.

Lemmy shouldnโ€™t be used for messaging

That is entirely not the point. (Also: messaging on Lemy and instant messaging have nothing in common and should not be confused.)

Yes, theyโ€™re there, in the old account on the old instance, and not here, where the new account on the new instance is.

Why does it matter? Lemmy has no karma. You can keep your "reputation" bye' using the same name and picture. You can search them using the usual search feature focused on that account.

Genuinely asking, I changed accounts a lot in the past and never encountered any issue

Thanks. I wonder why this is a low priority. If the people attracted t the fediverse want decentralization and interoperability, it would make sense that many people would want to migrate from one instance to another as easily and smoothly as possible.

Thanks again for the detailed answer

To be honest, it takes two clicks in the settings to export and import the subscription list, you can then start using your new account as if it was the old one.

I did it many times in the past, it works quite well.