I've been an occasional Mastodon user for (apparently) four years. I experimented with running my own instance for a while before giving that up, then I shopped around for an interesting little instance and settled on one, which was lovely until the maintainer decided (quite reasonably) it wasn't worth the trouble any more and turned it off.

So I'm in need of a new instance! The first account I had was @Jmtd@mastodon.cloud , but that instance was too busy for my liking. I'd like to find something with small but vibrant local traffic, ideally matching to my interests. In fact one of the problems with my last instance ¹ was it was too quiet, and the local timeline was mostly empty. So something between "empty" and "overwhelmingly busy" as mastodon.cloud is, or was. Recommendations welcome!

I'd set @jmtd@mastodon.cloud to forward to my instance for most of the last four years. I've turned that off now, so I am (at least temporarily) back to that instance. That's got me thinking: perhaps it's less onerous to run a local instance that only forwards, and to use that as a sort-of "permalink", allowing me to migrate from real instance-to-instance when required, but giving me a Mastodon "perma-link". Something to look at.

(It's also worth considering that you should back up the list of accounts you are following off whichever instance you are on. I'm starting again with almost a clean slate.)

Značky: #Debian