If a server were to be shutdown(lack of financing or any other reason) would all the content posted there be lost too?

Is there anything the admins do or can do to prevent this? Any Mastodon instance featured on the main webpage for example offers a guarantee to at least warn users months before the shutdown.

Could the content be perhaps moved to another server like mastodon people can move over their followers?

  • Grouchy@lemmy.grouchysysadmin.com
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    1 year ago

    You can’t guarantee a third party instance is ever going to stick around, or give notice. I would assume anything you don’t have a copy of may disappear at any time.

    Honestly, my advice is to run your own server and do your own backups. Then if an instance disappears, you still have the content.

    • iodOP
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      1 year ago

      i see. although, the content i was referring to werent just my own comments. i meant everything the server holds: the posts and comments on all their communities

      the reason why i brought this up were concerns about preservation. often people on reddit have fantastic posts and comments with useful info which can then be rediscovered via search engines years later. on the fediverse on one hand you have more freedom from rogue admins but on the other hand it does carry more risk of the host just disappearing

        • iodOP
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          1 year ago

          so essentially any time a post is created, as many copies of that post will exist as there are instances federating with it?

          what if i’m not logged in on my own instance? if the original instance goes away would that post still be discoverable through something like google?