while it's nice that #mastodon is technically #decentralized, it's important to be aware of the limitations. for example, there is a feature to migrate your account to another instance, but *your posts do not come with you.* while there is a separate feature to export your posts, there is no way to import them.
a request to "Support post migration" has been around and discussed for more than five years, currently stalled on some technic decision-making that leadership doesn't appear to be actively interested in: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423
nor are there are any public plans to move forward on this: https://joinmastodon.org/roadmap
since that issue was created, there have been multiple high-profile instance shutdowns, even of big-name instances. i am concerned that these sorts of problems can and will - over time - discourage folks from taking a chance on anything but the biggest, best-funded instances, and reduce effective user choice. does this sound like a familiar pattern to anybody?
#DataOwnership #DataMigration
