@thomasfuchs@JoshKagan Portable (export/import) history would be nice but it would be such a huge deal for instances having to deal with that.
I see some folks who simply treat their Mastodon posts as a more volatile and ephemeral media, and use their blogs for anything that should be more perennial. Not a bad strategy. But it’s a whole different philosophy.
@thomasfuchs fascinating! And I take your point and you’re probably right!
There are most likely a few of these “centralising forces” lying around pulling people into mastodon.social, and not without good reason right? Without post mobility, why not optimise for longevity!
Another force I imagine is maximising reach and minimising defed drama.
Whether you dislike a centralised fediverse, it’s important I think to recognise they emerge from its structure and dynamics.
@jaymcor This is a huge issue with Mastodon tbqh. My data should be mine. I like what Bluesky is doing here, data is more like hit repos and when they start doing federation you will be able to move servers even when your current one disappears; either with a backup of your data or gathered from caches in the network.
@thomasfuchs Migration, like much of the current Mastodon landscape, is imperfect, but still better than existing alternatives... it does at least work (sans some things like post history). I migrated from mas.to to mastodon.acm.org just to see for myself and also try to encourage more visibility by different groups, though it's a bit quiet here, unfortunately. But my post history isn't all that valuable. I remain hopeful that issue will be better solved at some point in the future.
@thomasfuchs my favorite instance would be one that charges a mandatory and reasonable monthly fee for access resulting in a sustainable (and non-creepy) business model.