<story><title>Social networks are getting stingy with their data</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/09/social-network-api-apps-twitter-reddit-threads-mastodon-bluesky/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>j1elo</author><text>I was about to open a Mastodon account, but because I don&amp;#x27;t really use to publish anything too often anyway, instead left it for later.&lt;p&gt;A couple month passed and the instance I had in mind, closed for good.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been told before in HN that Mastodon&amp;#x27;s solution is non-existent for these situations. Has the landscape changed or you&amp;#x27;re still f*d if you choose the wrong one? (aka. an incentive for centralization or always chosing only among the most popular instances)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ldjb</author><text>The solution is to run your own Mastodon instance. Unfortunately, I find doing so can be quite a hassle. Obviously it&amp;#x27;s not free, and not only do you need to configure it properly, but you need to handle backups, updates and so on. Even for me, with a fair bit of technical experience, it can be challenging. I think there are significant barriers to doing so for people with no or little technical knowledge.</text></comment>
<story><title>Social networks are getting stingy with their data</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/09/social-network-api-apps-twitter-reddit-threads-mastodon-bluesky/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>j1elo</author><text>I was about to open a Mastodon account, but because I don&amp;#x27;t really use to publish anything too often anyway, instead left it for later.&lt;p&gt;A couple month passed and the instance I had in mind, closed for good.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been told before in HN that Mastodon&amp;#x27;s solution is non-existent for these situations. Has the landscape changed or you&amp;#x27;re still f*d if you choose the wrong one? (aka. an incentive for centralization or always chosing only among the most popular instances)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>huimang</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re incentivized to either choose a stable, robust instance, or self-host. A lot of instances are pet projects that people kill off once they get bored of mastodon and don&amp;#x27;t want to pay for the upkeep anymore.&lt;p&gt;Self-hosting is the only way to really guarantee that it&amp;#x27;ll still be up years later. But you might get randomly banned from certain instances that blanket-ban single-user instances.</text></comment>