I find instance growth rate more exciting than the user growth rate--like measuring biodiversity rather than raw population as an indicator of the health of an ecosystem. It means long term resilience.
@krypteia Yes, I think you are right. But I worry about the longevity of small instances, costs and maintenance and especially doing it for the long long term is questionable. No one doubts Facebook/Twitter will be around forever.
I kind of think network resilience is increased, even if instance longevity decreases.
But you're right. It remains to be seen how people deal with instance deaths, whether they get discouraged and leave or the network adapts easier mechanisms for migration and it just becomes an accepted fact of federated life.
@krypteia agreed.
And, re: resilience
There really really needs to be a way to back up all your data, text and media regularly – so,,, when an instance dies a #Mastodon user can start again else easily.
Otherwise, people we get angry and leave.
This is why I think people will gravitate towards (perceived) 'stable' instances, which at this point in Masto history are little more than brand names.
@frankiesaxx @krypteia I mean backing all my data, not only my contacts etc. or is what I want possible already?? I am a newbie, in reality.
"There really really needs to be a way to back up all your data, text and media regularly" -@jd @krypteia
This. I'm also surprised there's not instructions/best practices for how to back up/restore an instance in the #Mastodon docs. That seems implicit in providing a network service to users. I can't help but wonder how many of these instances have no backups.