Hi, I’m not self hosting, but I’ve realised I’ve spent a decent amount of time on this social media, and written a few things I may want to revisit in the future.

I was wondering if there was a way to “back up” my account, so if something happened to my host instance, I would still be able to have a copy of the comments and posts I made :).

I’m not expecting to be able to “transfer” my account to a new one, but have a backup of posts and comments for personal storage, having a copy on my harddrive.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Which service? Mastodon has a built-in export functionality in preferences.

I can't find such an option on Lemmy, but you should be able to do a GDPR request for your information as a last resort.

edit: Non-post data / user settings can be exported (and imported!) but posts are a separate issue. See this open issue.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm not a lawyer, but since Lemmy instances aren't "professional or commercial activity", I doubt a GPDR request would be applicable.

Some people who run instances might have the ability to do some sort of database export for a specific user, but the vast majority of us are just barely technical enough to keep Lemmy running and updated.

The last time I touched our database I accidentally wiped out all data older than 1 month and had to restore a backup.

I think we do have the option to remove a user by purging them through the UI, but an export isn't an option at this point.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

IIRC this was already addressed and should be automatic.
There was an issue specifically mentioning GDPR and the devs implemented a way to automatically delete the data of an account within the given time.

It's not a GDPR request in itself, but AFAIK a normal delete account request should be compliant... INAL

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Wondering about Lemmy specifically. I know there’s an export option for settings though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I recently had to move, because my previous instance is shutting down. I got to keep all of my settings and the commubities I follow. It also kept blocked accounts and communities, but not blocked instances.

ETA: Comments were not transferred and I'm assuming posts won't be either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I know that’s not possible as of now. Just wondering if there is a simpler way to get a copy of my comments and posts than using a web scraper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

That definitely sounds like a feature that should be added. I remember when you couldn’t even export your subscriptions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I was editing my comment as you were responding. Check the issue on GitHub I linked in the edit, and maybe thumbs it up for visibility. One of the commenters mentions using a third-party tool but I'm not sure the one they linked to can grab posts. In theory another one might exist to dump your post data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Thanks that’s helpful. I’ll wait it out I guess as I’m not upto tinkering with the API right now.

[–] erlend_sh 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I’m aware of this library for it: https://github.com/kensanata/mastodon-archive

Dunno about any easy button-click service for it though, which is why we’re building it into Weird, which is like a CMS for your digital identity.