Now that smaller instances are disappearing, which instances do you think will stand the test of time?

Instances with

more than one admin
clear policies and active moderation
engaged user base
regular backups
no porn

...will stand a better chance than most.

Not to sound too pessimistic, but we live in a time where we see Twitter collapsing, despite being one of those "too big to fail" websites. My bet is that none will stand the test of time, the web is ephemeral (and archive.org is an underappreciated wonder of the world). I would rather say that what you really need is a backup routine.

I guess instances run by SDF. They've been around since 1987 when they started with BBS. And since 1991 they are running the public access UNIX system. They also have Mastodon servers, Minecraft server and other stuff. These are their Lemmy instances:

lemmy.sdf.org - somewhere in US
lemmy.sdfeu.org - Falkenstein, Vogtland, Germany
lemmy.sdfjp.org - Tokyo, Japan
lemmy.sdfcn.org - Hong Kong
lemmy.sdfin.org - Mumbai, India

Don't think this is a strange phenomenon or that it's permanent. I've seen Mastodon (and Pleroma and Misskey etc) instances get born and die regularly. This is because it's easy to set up an instance but it's also easy to fall in an economic problem or just give up.

Not everyone is ready to set up their own instance; it requires dedication and resources.

Out of the loop, what happened to Lemmy.one?

The ones with the most porn

I ain't got nothin better to do so might as well run a server forever

I plan to keep running this instance for a long time. As long as there are weebs here on Lemmy, I will give them a home lol

Btw, I also had a lemmy.one account. It was my first Lemmy account too. Hope they get back up and running.

how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here?

Unfortunately there is no way to do that yet, but I remembered that there is an unofficial tool that let you transfer your subscriptions like you said

Edit: There isand open issue that might talking about it: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985

ALSO, does anyone know how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here? TIA!

The other instance has to be up. If it's permanently down, there's nothing I can do.

Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/login
Export your user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/settings
Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/login
Import your old user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/settings
Click on the big button

It will search for the subscribed communities, attempt to retrieve them and attempt to subscribe. Refresh the page between tries. Do not share your exported user; it contains your email.

Leanish is very much alpha and doesn't have all features. There's tons of missing features, many of them listed in the GitHub issues.

Lemmy.world

I have hosted a lot of my own services for a couple of years and plan to continue hosting my instance(endlesstalk.org) indefinitely, unless something very major happens.

As others have mentioned I think multiple admins and backups(hard to verify though) are a good sign, but its only indications and you can't really be sure, if a instance will be there forever. I think there needs to be an easy way to migrate accounts and then the instances going down hopefully gives a notice, so you can move your account.

Gonna be difficult to recover accounts from instance going down without a notice I think. You could regularly take a backup of your account, but that is tedious and you will still lose some data.

I'm running my own instance, JUST so I can be in control of my own Lemmy experience (and in control of my own archive of my Lemmy activity). I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.

Yes, my instance was down for three days last week. I had trouble with an update and didn't have time to troubleshoot it. But I wanted my Lemmy so I DID get around to it and got it working again. And yeah... I never did get email working properly so when my ONE friend who's not me joined my instance I had to command line into the database and approve him manually. But so what?

And yeah, eventually the internet ecosystem may shift again, or I might get hit by a bus or who knows?

But if you WANT to join a tiny instance that's 99.999% (bus factor) not going anywhere for a while, I'd probably let you join mine.

I think instances like lemmy.ca or lemmy.nz will be around for years

I’d like to say lemmy.world, but a lot of communities you’d think would be quite active are actually not so.

mine

As long as lemmy remains popular there will be new servers/instances popping up. I found my start on lemmy quite rocky with servers vanishing sometimes with notice and then others just vanishing without notice, Anyway I quickly adapted and began to keep a list of communities I like to frequent while this list is still small I'm sure by the time it starts to become an issue there will be tools that make it a non issue.

I've started becoming more nomad in my use of lemmy compared to somewhere like reddit where I had just one account for eight years I just open a new account with the knowledge that it's not permanent it doesn't belong to me and there will be a time when I need to move on.

Permanently Deleted

Mine will, planning to support for quite some time. So if you're looking for a new one, join lemmings.world!

I'm pretty happy with kbin.social. It's a nice place, with several devs actively looking at making the experience better, it just takes a while being an open source project and all

I feel like most of the "country" oriented instances will last (and grow) as it is a more purposeful reason to exist, and this extends to instances with very clear themes as it also gives users more of a reason for people to join them.

now I feel an obligation to keep my instance alive as long as I physically can

Well, like many others here I self host a ton of services other than just Lemmy for a few years now, and my Lemmy instance isn't taking a significant portion of resources that would be needed elsewhere so I have no intention on my instance going down.

My instance isn't large enough to require multiple admins at the time, but I do have multiple friends in the IT space who I trust and could bring onboard should that change.

hopefully the one I'm on, lemm.ee

I plan to bounce around anyway. The fediverse is great.

Smaller ones? Lemmy.world did not let me log in today

This is one reason that I think many people should consider running their own single-user instance or tiny instances for close friends/family.

One of the problems with centralization is literally the fact that this can happen. The more small servers the fedi is comprised of, the stronger it is. There are also a huge number of benefits to this configuration on an individual level as well.

EDIT: Re: importing/exporting your old account is, unfortunately, a thing that cannot be done currently. I'm happy to be corrected on that, though.

kbin.social is well funded and will probably be around for many years to come

It’s true that several instances (the ones hosted in Mali?) closed, but I think you’re premature in saying the smaller instances are disappearing, Lemmy.one included.

Sure, they’re bound to crash or go down for maintenance from time to time, but that doesn’t mean they’re finished. So far my experience has been that if you give it a couple days they’ll be back. Keep in mind these are shoestring operations and sometimes seeing major influxes of users.

Hopefully Lemmy.ca (one which we're both using). They're trying to become a not for profit company, plus theyre super transparent on server costs and how much money they have at the moment.

Looks like they’re having database migration errors and possibly didn’t let them complete. They may have gotten scared after the upgrade and then downgraded. If they upgrade to the new version and just wait, they should be fine.

When I first launched mine, I had a couple issues and have learned quite a bit going through it. I say pay attention to who’s running whatever ones you’re looking at and you’ll have a pretty good idea on the longevity.

Mine's gonna stick around for as long as I use fedi

I think mine will last for quite a while. Lemmy hogs so little resources, so long as I have my VPS it'll be up and running. Object storage is a potential in the future, but I am hopeful lemmy optimizes its image databasing as well. I am hopeful as lemmy grows my instance will grow as well as I feel there is a demand for a book/writing focused instance, but we will see. I'm gonna be here regardless.

No one really knows but I'd imagine the bigger ones the you see now like world ml kbin and others would stick around.

I kinda hope transferring data between two accounts on two different instances is easy. I don't really want a fresh start for the 13th time (this happened years ago outside of the fediverse, mostly thanks to forgetting my password).

My interests line up pretty well with my admin. I think that the instance should be pretty reliable as long as I want to keep using Lemmy.

Lenny.ca, hopefully. 🤞

I don’t want to figure everything out again.

LONG LIVE LEMMY.INBUTTS.LOL!