this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023

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Is there a way to migrate your lemmy account to another instance? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Today I was made aware that beehaw.org blocked my entire instance. I would be ok if I simply could not write a post/comment in beehaw, that would be reasonable.

Unfortunately the beehaw users can no longer see my posts, which is a problem when I'm trying to be active and promote other communities on other non-blocked instances. What a mess.

I'd like to know if it's possible to migrate my account to another instance without losing my post history or at the very least the communities I'm subscribed to. My account is only 6 days old so it's not much a problem today, but this can be a recurring problem and if no migration path is available I might have to consider self-hosting or leaving lemmy altogether.

Thanks in advance.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The devs have spoken about this. Quoting Nutomic:

Or you could just put a link to your old account into your bio. So this might be a useful feature, but very very low priority. // More useful could be import/export of settings and subscriptions (also much easier to implement).

So there are plans to address this in the future, so you don't lose your data from server migration, but migrating the account itself is low priority. (Even then if someone found a way to do this, and submitted a pull request, they'd probably accept it.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

It's a shame, really. Putting the old account in the bio doesn't really address the issue.

An option to migrate your account should be more than very very low priority, lemmy.ml is struggling hard. How many people are stuck in that server because they don't want to abandon their data?

Don't really want to turn this into a discussion tho, you have answered my question and I thank you very much for it!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

None of that is currently possible - the best option would be to create your new user, then resubscribe to your communities. Bonus: if you use the same username on federated instances, this shows up on your profile.

Given that this is possible on Mastodon, I'd expect to see it on Lemmy at some point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Why do you want them to see your posts and comments so much? The rest of the federation should be plenty of audience, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@pathief

@asklemmy

Defederation should be a very last resort and rare situation. We should discourage this practice.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it should at least have different levels of severity, in my opinion. Maybe putting beehaw on read-only from the problematic instances would have enough, while preserving the freedom one should have to access whatever content outside their servers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As far as I’m aware, it’s not possible to migrate to a new server. Not your user account. Or your communities.

I note on GitHub, Some see it as a bug. Others as a feature.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That would be a good feature. I think at this point we sort of need to write off beehaw though, they seem to want to be their own totally separate thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Not so sure about that ... I think it's more that they prioritise keeping things good and "safe" over growing. What I think they probably want is better and quicker moderation tooling, which will hopefully come to Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'd be curious about this too. Pretty sure you can migrate on Mastodon

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nah unfortunately that is not possible

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No, it's not (currently) possible. On the other hand, it's maybe a few days worth of posts, so...

Be warned though that beehaw are quick to unfederate. It's been >300 blocked instances yesterday...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In all honesty, its better to a have a few accounts anyway. Imagine your main instance goes down for a period of time or permanently. Your account will go down with that ship. Having a few affiliated accounts across the fediverse will help mitigate user downtime. I've got accounts at Beehaw, lemmy.world, and here at Kbin.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The real federation is the password manager in our browsers.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You have fewer than 50 comments. Resubbing is trivial and there is no karma points to accrue. Just make a new account if you desire.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

My account is only 6 days old so it’s not much a problem today, but this can be a recurring problem and if no migration path is available I might have to consider self-hosting or leaving lemmy altogether.

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