My Mastodon instance disappeared. Now what?

superflippy@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 1 points –

I joined mastodon.xyz a few years ago and never had any problems. Then today I tried to sign on and couldn’t. The server simply isn’t reachable. I can (and have) created a new instanceuaccount on a new server, but losing all my data has me concerned. What should I do with my new account so I don’t lose everything if this instance also disappears someday?

3

I’m not being a shit and am completely being honest, but this is a risk that comes with servers vanishing. You could always host your own instance, but that’s beyond most non-technical people. So, unfortunately it could happen again. Your best bet might be picking one of the more populated instances and hoping for the best.

Looks like https://mastodon.xyz is up again now.

Extended downtime is common for community-run servers like this. Remember, even if the server is down for a full day every year, it's still have 99.73% uptime! Chasing 99.999% uptime (like the big tech) for a community-run server is not reasonable because the cost (money and manpower) to do so is exponentially higher with every "9" you add in your uptime.