Mastodon Migrations
-------------------

My first foray into Mastodon didn't really take. It was back
in 2018 or so, when I noticed a certain Influential
Personage in my profession (systems librarian) had a
Mastodon handle tacked onto his Twitter bio.  I was curious,
and after a bit of internet research decided I should get
one too.  After all, it was only right and proper that I be
Influenced by the Influential Personage.

However, after I signed up (on octodon.social IIRC) and
lurked around for a bit, I realized that while many of the
hep geeks in my professional circles had Mastodon accounts,
they rarely used them.  They were all still tweeting away
like crazed sparrows.  I tooted one picture of a cat (not
even my then-current cat) following which my octodon.social
account languished like so many others.

Fast forward to the spring of 2022.  I was getting pretty
fed up with Twitter, which, it seemed to me, had grown
entirely too full of crypto ads and People Who Were Wrong on
the Internet.  When news came of an impending change of
ownership that seemed on balance not likely to improve the
quality of discourse, I decided to abandon the site forever
and, because I couldn't quite kick the social media habit
altogether, give Mastodon another try.

I could have gone back to octodon.social but, having
recently joined SDF, it made more sense to sign on to the
SDF Mastodon.  I shuttered my Twitter account, and hung up a
sign telling folks I was over on Mastodon now, if anyone was
looking for me.  I don't think anyone was. My last tweet was
on April 20, 2022. [1]

Mastodon was still pretty quiet then. I had arrived with a
small influx of similarly disaffected ex-Twitter folks, but
nothing like what was to come a few months later.  I hardly
knew anyone and that gave me an opportunity to find new
folks to follow, mostly retro-computerists as it turned out,
but with a very few librarians and a smattering of artists
and photographers in the mix.  It was curiously peaceful,
and maybe even a bit dull, but I was OK with that.  Like (I
imagined) moving from the city to a small town. 

The months went by, summer came and went.  I mostly posted
pictures of old computers, which my miniscule following
seemed to like.  It was pleasant.  The leaves turned colour,
the rains came.  And then came November, and the ensuing
mass influx of ex-Twitterites that put something of a strain
on server infrastructure across the decentralized network.

Over the next few weeks, a goodly part of my old
professional community reconstituted itself in the
Fediverse.  It was nice to once more be tuned in to the
informal dialogue of my librarian peers and colleagues, but
not an unmixed blessing, as rapid growth across the
Fediverse brought with it certain aspects of Fowl Place (as
I had taken to calling it by then) I had rather wished to
leave behind.

For sure, thanks in large measure to the good and tireless
work of the SDF moderators, the crypto stuff and trolls were
scarcely in evidence and easy enough to avoid.  Harder to
avoid however were the well-meaning folks absolutely, though
understandably, fixated on the dire political situation
developing to the south of us.  Not that I wished to remain
ignorant, you understand; rather, I still clung to the naive
hope that I could reserve some cognitive space for things
other than the political doings of a foreign nation.  I
blocked boosts from a few folks and added some keywords to
my filters. That helped a lot.

Had things gone differently I might have stayed on the SDF
Mastodon for years to come.  It's a well-run instance, and I
have nothing but appreciation for the folks responsible.
But times being what they are I recently made the decision
to migrate to a Canadian Masto host, cosocial.ca.  Partly to
support Canadian-hosted social media (yes, I do believe in
contributing financially, if one is able) but even more so
because, as it is now evident that world affairs will crowd
my cognitive space for the foreseeable future, being on a
Canadian server should tilt the balance toward more Canadian
perspectives in my timeline. [2]

This was the first time I ever migrated from one server to
another.  I am pleased to report the operation was
successful, though perhaps a tiny bit more cumbersome than
expected.  I was surprised that, in addition to having to
configure permissions on both old and new accounts,
migrating involved downloading several csv files from the
old server, and uploading them, one by one, to the new
server.  And that bringing over follows and followers was a
separate step that differed from the above. I had no
problems doing any of that, but the multi-step nature of the
process did seem to somewhat corroborate the observation
that "Mastodon is social media for people who like Linux."
Still, how wonderful that such things are even possible.


Reference
---------

[1]. Before leaving the Fowl Place I downloaded an archive
and posted it to my personal site.  The tweets don't make
much sense out of context, but there are some nice pictures
of old computers, if you like that kind of thing

https://jdd.freeshell.org/fowlplace.html

[2]. Tim Bray just posted some thoughts on CoSocial over on
his blog

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2025/04/05/The-CoSocialist-Future

Sun Apr  6 14:26:28 PDT 2025