this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2025
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Asklemmy
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This has really made me lose faith in a defederated system like this.
@Anyone: please let me know if I'm wrong about these and if there's a solution, but as far as I can see:
If you want stability sdf.org (lemmy.sdf.org is their Lemmy service) has been around for decades
This thread tells how to export and import your favourites, posts, comments
Your saved posts and comments are included in your exported settings along with your subscriptions. I was happy to discover that when I did it yesterday.
Most instances say where they are based in their instance description. If not, you can do a whois lookup to see the general area they are in. Another option is asking in the meta community of the instance.
Similar to the second point above, most instance owners are transparent with their infrastructure and the ones who are running small servers as hobby projects usually put it as a disclaimer.
For me, decentralization is a kind that exists on a spectrum.
In the Fediverse, there has been decentralization in many ways, and I understand that it's the way it isβno single Fediverse instance or server holds greater power or authority over the others.
However, some servers may be more popular than others because they have been actively promoted or because many friends are using them.
For me, I subscribed to managed hosting services and they are paid to host a Lemmy server. Yes, I also paid for a DNS domain name, which costs around $2 for the first year and $20 for the following year.
This way, I can define my server rules, decide which servers to federate with, and choose whether to close the server or not. It's up to us, unless we are committed to maintaining a large server with a huge user base and are willing to deal with the challenges of moderation.
What I like about the Fediverse is that there are so many free and open-source software options like Lemmy, Mastodon, Mitra, and GotoSocial. I believe that these source codes are free to audit. Therefore, for me, this software feels more like my own than some other software that belongs to someone popular or wealthy.
And regarding your data that you want to recover, maybe you can try to email the server support team to retrieve your data and see if they can provide instructions on how to do so.
The lack of account mobility is really a huge problem with the fediverse, you lose all your stuff if you move to another instance.
You're being down voted, but I feel you. It's why I picked one of the largest instances when I joined, despite what other Lemmings tend to tell people to do. Picking a small instance is a bad idea because they die out like that. I've seen several fairly significant smaller instances die out at this point. I don't want to wake up and my account suddenly vanished one day because the host forgot about it.