@Hypolite Petovan since you are to my knowledge one of the most insider people of the Friendica system, I thought posting this to you wouldn't be a bother.
I don't know if this is already on the Friendica to-do list, but at about 9:21 or so in @Anubis2814 's video below, he said something about automated account migration.
It sounds really cool to me but its just a stub idea. Imagine something like rank-choice-voting where a user picks a next of kin server to go to if the operator of the one they are on wants to shutter the operation. Admin clicks a migration button and users with a predefined next-of-kin server choice get moved. It's a fun idea.
Hi Michael, it’s an attractive idea on its face, but a single user account can weigh several hundreds of megabytes between posts and pictures, so an automated migration could quickly overwhelm both the source server and destination server(s). The accounts may also include unused ones or reshare bots that shouldn’t be moved automatically either.
In my opinion the best solution still is to trust each individual users with moving their account and admins to give their active users enough time to do so.
Or even better everyone acts as a backup server to their own data and one or two other persons, and the instance runner can will a successor in case something happens, and barring that, if the successors don't pick it up, all members are offered the ability run the instance and maybe people are allowed vote for the new instance admin. They would just have to install the software, gain access to the admin rights and the instance could immediately reassemble for the most part like the T1000 from data backed up. maybe a pipe dream and overly complex, but might help keep these things just as immortal with redundancies as any other social media site.
Yeah its too bad the instances can't be set up to be backed up on redundant instances, similar to how big tech companies do it. Perhaps people who can't run an instance themselves could be a slower repository just for storage backup. If someone's drive craps out like mine did once, all our data is kaput, which is why I'm not going to even think about running an instance til I am sure there is nothing stopping me from keeping it up for good,, and I have enough storage for a backup drive in case one dies.. Also I've had like my peertube account just collapse on me which is really frustrating as the user just decided without telling anyone they lost interest or something and converted their instance to a personal one. a redundant backup in case of say health crisis of the person running the instance would allow people to migrate their data, even if it was slowly, from the backup system(s).
Wow, thats a pretty awesome feature. Is it even possible to integrate the feature here or is that incompatable with our setup? Also I know peertube is working on releasing 3.0 and is going to include way better indexing supposedly, will that kind of code be useful in helping sort and port our data if we copied it, or do we know how, it just comes down to developer work hours and thats limited due to volunteer status?
I believe a piece of software needs to be built around that feature because of its extensiveness. Friendica unfortunately wasn't. Interestingly, Friendica and Hubzilla were started by the same person, Mike McGirvin, and he decided to start Hubzilla from almost scratch instead of integrating nomadic identities into Friendica, which should demonstrate how difficult it should be.
A 2U HP ProLiant gen 6 with drives factory refurbished without OS was about $500 delivered to my house. It was years ago so probably the gen 7's are the oldest you can get now.
In my opinion the best solution still is to trust each individual users with moving their account and admins to give their active users enough time to do so.
Michael Rupp and WhiteGuy77 like this.