Hi, I’m not self hosting, but I’ve realised I’ve spent a decent amount of time on this social media, and written a few things I may want to revisit in the future.

I was wondering if there was a way to “back up” my account, so if something happened to my host instance, I would still be able to have a copy of the comments and posts I made :).

I’m not expecting to be able to “transfer” my account to a new one, but have a backup of posts and comments for personal storage, having a copy on my harddrive.

  • copygirl@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9·
    7 days ago

    Which service? Mastodon has a built-in export functionality in preferences.

    I can’t find such an option on Lemmy, but you should be able to do a GDPR request for your information as a last resort.

    edit: Non-post data / user settings can be exported (and imported!) but posts are a separate issue. See this open issue.

    • walden@sub.wetshaving.socialEnglish
      13·
      7 days ago

      I’m not a lawyer, but since Lemmy instances aren’t “professional or commercial activity”, I doubt a GPDR request would be applicable.

      Some people who run instances might have the ability to do some sort of database export for a specific user, but the vast majority of us are just barely technical enough to keep Lemmy running and updated.

      The last time I touched our database I accidentally wiped out all data older than 1 month and had to restore a backup.

      I think we do have the option to remove a user by purging them through the UI, but an export isn’t an option at this point.

      • pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.devEnglish
        5·
        7 days ago

        IIRC this was already addressed and should be automatic.
        There was an issue specifically mentioning GDPR and the devs implemented a way to automatically delete the data of an account within the given time.

        It’s not a GDPR request in itself, but AFAIK a normal delete account request should be compliant… INAL

      • copygirl@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        I was editing my comment as you were responding. Check the issue on GitHub I linked in the edit, and maybe thumbs it up for visibility. One of the commenters mentions using a third-party tool but I’m not sure the one they linked to can grab posts. In theory another one might exist to dump your post data.