Hello everyone,
More and more pods are shutting down and even if the code to allow an account to migrate from one pod to another is not officially merged yet (see the merge request), I didn’t want to stay without doing anything. So, I enabled it on my pod, https://diaspora-fr.org, which means that you can now move there, keeping with you your previous messages, photos and contacts.
I provide this feature with no guarantee, if your content is not properly migrated or anything else is not working, I won’t fix it. But it seemed to me that because pods are closing, we had almost nothing to lose anyway. Except that the import can’t be undone and can’t be retried later in the future. If you want to wait for it to be more tested, export your archive and try it later, not now.
If you still want to try this, follow those steps:
- From the settings, export your data and your photos in two backups from your actual
- Log in to https://diaspora-fr.org (if you don’t have an account on that pod yet, create a new one)
- From the settings, click on the import button and upload the two archives in the dialog.
- Be patient while the account is being migrated. Do not resubmit the import even if the import button is still available. It is running, just be patient.
If your pod is already offline (framasphere, joindiaspora, poddery…) but you downloaded your archives before it switched off, you can skip step 1 and migrate
I hope this is useful to some people.
Remember, diaspora* is what we are making out of it, it can stay alive if we want to. We just have to get involved.
Thanks.
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Brad Koehn ☑️
in reply to Fla • • •Adam Hunt likes this.
Fla
in reply to Fla • • •Brad Koehn ☑️
in reply to Fla • • •Régis BURIN
in reply to Fla • • •like this
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Régis BURIN
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Fifi Brindacier
in reply to Fla • • •Steven Berson
in reply to Fla • • •What pods are closing now? Thank you so much for maintaining your pod, and for offering the migration tools.
I am someone that is going against trend and actually am a new user of Diaspora, and intend to self host a pod, at least for my own use and possibly any family and friends I can convince to use the platform, once I figure out port forwarding for my Yunhost server I just got running.
I came to Diaspora as part of my attempt to migrate fully off of corporate controlled social media, being a former heavy user of Facebook, that is now trying to stay logged off of Meta. And while the likes of Mastodon and Lemmy satisfy my use of social media as a form of rss feed, reposting articles of interest and writing short opinions for interests like politics and tech, they definitely do not fulfill my desires to be able to do long form posts, or to share personal news and photos targeted towards a select group of family and friends. And those latter things are something Diaspora most certainly has the ability to do, with its "Aspects" making it easy towards those ends.
The issue I've found is that I simply was not able to get more than a couple of friends to migrate with me, and then the two that did try out Diaspora, finding a situation where they were essentially posting only to themselves, ended up not sticking around. I have maintained posting myself though, if only to create an online diary that I can look back on myself, as well as to hopefully be able to eventually get some to join me at a future date where there is renewed momentum for migration off of the corporate platforms.
For this platform to stop its slide towards a smaller and smaller tiny niche of users, I think there is a need for renewed development of a fork though. I am not a developer, so I can only encourage others (and send a little coffee money to those that are active in posting merge requests) but seems to me Diaspora could really use:
* Migration tools - once again, very much appreciated that you are implementing this in your pod before an official release.
* ActivityPub integration - ability to have only the posts marked as "public" federate to the various "Fediverse" apps, as well as be able to see feeds from the Fediverse instances (e.g. Mastodon, Pixelfed, Friendica, Misskey, etc.) that one chooses to federate in ones pods - would allow for both a wider audience for posts made here, as well as enable ones feed to be much more populated too. The presence of Diaspora posts in more Fediverse feeds, and the ability to have a more diverse and active feed, would encourage others to start using the platform.
* Post editing - my best proof reading is always done after I press the "send" button, and most long form social media platforms have enabled post editing for a long while now, so it is often an expected (and very much desired by myself) feature. I know there was some backend code merged a few years ago to enable the possibility of post editing, it would be excellent to have a fork where the rest of the work to actually have this was merged.
* Mobile app improvements - one nice advantage of Diaspora over Friendica is there is a dedicated mobile app available in both iOS and Android for it. But I've noted that insporation* could use some work, in enabling it to have all features on web view available on it as well (e.g. ability to "like" comments, ability to create a custom Aspect), in making it available on Google Play Store and F-droid, and in streamlining its gui (e.g. the "Stream" control on top is overly large imho).
Given that from what I can assess on the Diaspora development discussion forum that the head of the foundation is opposed or super slow to merging the the first 3 points I've noted here, is why I think a fork is the only way forward at this point. I wish I could contribute towards this more than just ideas - but just wanted to put my two cents in here on this.
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pavi
in reply to Fla • • •Fla
in reply to Fla • • •like this
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♻ Citoyen Candide ☮
in reply to Fla • • •Salinger 3
in reply to Fla • • •Tu risques rien
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Antoine Desrosiers
in reply to Fla • • •@Steven Berson
Is the mobile app the only advantage of Diaspora* over Friendica? Because if so, it might be less work to improve the Friendica Raccoon app, to make it available on Apple App Store and to switch to Friendica.
I agree with you: without ActivityPub integration, I don't see much interest in Diaspora*.
Steven Berson
in reply to Fla • • •Antoine - one major advantage Diaspora has over Friendica, and other Fediverse services that use ActivityPub, is a more secure protocol when sharing posts to a select targeted audience.
e.g. see this bug report on Pixelfed from late last month https://fokus.cool/2025/03/25/pixelfed-vulnerability.html
The ActivityPub protocol works best for public sharing across a variety of apps, but posts that are supposed to be kept private can not be specifically targeted as securely and as easily as what Diaspora does with its "aspects".
The other advantage I've found with Diaspora over Friendica is a more straightforward, less cluttered interface, that is easier to learn and navigate, as well as to onboard with.
Pixelfed leaks private posts from other Fediverse instances - fiona fokus
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Antoine Desrosiers
in reply to Fla • • •@Steven Berson
Thank you for your answer.
My understanding is that the protocol used within Friendica is the DFRN. And Friendica has private conversation groups. From https://friendi.ca/about/features/
So I'm not sure there will be a big difference between Friendica and a Diaspora* with ActivityPub integration.
For the interfaces, I have my pros and cons on both. Is integrating ActivityPub in Diaspora* an easier task than simplifying Friendica's interface?
Features – friendica
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Steven Berson
in reply to Fla • • •Antoine Desrosiers likes this.
Doc Edward Morbius
in reply to Fla • • •Steven Berson likes this.
harry haller
in reply to Fla • • •I want to try it.
Kurt Lupin
in reply to Fla • • •other question to all is: did anyone of you try this docker image someone did: https://hub.docker.com/r/koehn/diaspora ? would be interesting to hear experiences how easy it was to set it up.
Fla
in reply to Fla • • •Upload migration files from profile settings and start processing by tclaus · Pull Request #8461 · diaspora/diaspora
GitHubFla
in reply to Fla • • •