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?
You must log in or register to comment.
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.
Look for an instance that has adopted the Mastodon Server Covenant, points 3 and 4 deal with this situation. It’s just a promise, not a guarantee, but most people running such instances are doing it because they care deeply about their community.
They were down for maintenance.
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.
On Mastodon you can export and import your data. So it’s just a matter of doing frequent backups. Not sure if there’s an automated tool or option for that, as I don’t use Mastodon much.
The instance you’re talking about seems to be working just fine. Maybe they had trouble or were doing maintenance. In their About page, they offer to follow an account for notices about such events.
