friendica (DFRN) - Collegamento all'originale

Unfortunately, the popular MedMastodon server, dedicated to doctors and medicine, unexpectedly shut down at the end of 2025.


Great update: MedMastodon is back online and its users should be able to access their data.

@Fediverse

The speed with which it happened prevented users from accessing their data, highlighting the risks of decentralized social media without backups. Its administrator ceased operations, causing confusion and data loss for many healthcare professionals who had signed up as an alternative to Twitter.

This event serves as a reminder: Wherever you are on Mastodon, back up your data!

WARNING: To help Med-mastodon users who have returned to the Fediverse, the Poliverso staff has created the Friendica group @MedMastodon

If you follow this group, you can:

1. Follow it and mention it in your messages, and it will reshare all your public posts addressed to it (this only applies to an initial message, not a reply to another message).
2. Follow it only to read all the messages from fellow doctors who send messages through it.

#MedMastodon

Mastodon's baby elephant searches for a home, carrying the head of a desperate Hippocrates in his bundle.
#MedMastodon @Fediverse @MedMastodon
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 mesi fa)
in reply to tomiant

piefed - Collegamento all'originale

OpenStars

[Edit: PieFed did not show the title including the link to Reddit where additional information was provided.]

It reads like an instance by the name of MedMastodon went down with little to no notice.

Although this announcement seems to have been made on a Friendica instance that also isn't cooperating (edit: hashtags) - certainly not to anyone without a login on that specific instance, which I imagine will affect roughly 100.00000% of all people reading this (and high ironically - in the Alanis Morissette sense - roughly also 100.00000% of the people that do not read this:-).

To anyone on Lemmy and wondering, there are additional hashtags that render on PieFed but not Lemmy, though it doesn't help here since this is the only place that hashtag has ever been used (that PieFed here shows).

Oh, and the instance actually does return an error page saying "This instance is under maintenance.", ~~so it's remotely possible that this Friendica message is based on misinformation, and that the instance being "down" may be only temporary? (I have no idea)~~

Some additional info I could scrounge:

Article about Med-Mastodon, basically saying to use both the X and then treat that Mastodon as a way to hedge your bets against Twitter enshittifying.

Hrm, it looks like their GoFundMe may have just run out, having started on Nov. 15, 2022 and lasting for 3 years? (I have no idea if there were any follow-up ones)

~~And at this point I've already put far more work into this than OP, it would seem, trying to guess what they meant, so I'll stop here.🙄~~ (edit: this was due to a PieFed rendering bug)

Med-Mastodon Gains Users Amid Uncertainties at Twitter

One physician likened the process to 'hedging your bets'
Jennifer Henderson (MedpageToday)
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 mesi fa)
in reply to OpenStars

mbin - Collegamento all'originale

Pamasich

Oh, and the instance actually does return an error page saying "This instance is under maintenance.", so it's remotely possible that this Friendica message is based on misinformation, and that the instance being "down" may be only temporary? (I have no idea)


For some reason Piefed is removing the title of the post, which links to a Reddit thread as a source. That thread clarifies: "I emailed the address given on the page and was told the instance service was cancelled by the instance owner and it's unknown whether there was a plan to migrate or just shut down completely".

Looking at the under maintenance page myself, the email seems to be the server host's, so this isn't the instance owner being unsure about their future plans yet, it means the hosting relationship is cancelled and the host doesn't know about things beyond that.

in reply to OpenStars

piefed - Collegamento all'originale

Rimu

Haha friendica puts the post title and link IN the post content as HTML!
<h1><b><a href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/1pxtglg/my_instance_went_dark_is_there_any_possibility_of/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Unfortunately, the popular MedMastodon server, dedicated to doctors and medicine, unexpectedly shut down at the end of 2025.</a></b></h1>

sigh
in reply to tomiant

mbin - Collegamento all'originale

Pamasich

This is the fediverse, where many different software intersect. You should expect the possibility of incompatibilities with users from instances other than your own. When a post looks like something is missing, always open it on its origin instance before complaining. It's likely your own instance is at fault for the issue, not the author.

In this case it looks like Piefed deleted the post's title.

in reply to Jeena

lemmy - Collegamento all'originale

IronKrill

Traditional social media is run for-profit and thus has an incentive to keep their website online as much as possible to keep their company alive by gaining users and revenue. And I would bet they do have backups. Hobby websites like fediverse projects often are can be run by any flaky nobody that can have varying motives and varying data retention practices.
Questa voce è stata modificata (2 mesi fa)
in reply to chicken

mbin - Collegamento all'originale

Pamasich

ActivityPub (the model that the fediverse uses for federation) is publishing-based, as the name implies. Like email, you're sending messages to a list of recipients. Usually that's your followers, people you mention, and the person you're replying to.
If the recipient list is empty, then your message won't leave your instance.

Threadiverse users don't really have to worry about this too much because communities act as relays, sending your posts to all of the community's followers as well. But microblogging instances don't have that luxury. If they don't have any followers, aren't writing a reply, and don't mention anyone... their post isn't federated anywhere.

It's also worth considering that only public data is federated. For example I wouldn't be able to recover my bookmarks from another instance, and it doesn't seem like Lemmy federates your list of subscriptions. Your posts may still exist elsewhere even when your instance goes down, but that's not necessarily the data people want to be able to recover.

in reply to The Pirate Post

piefed - Collegamento all'originale

other_cat

I'm not sure what people would be trying to access, I suppose. Post history? Things that can be exported, like account settings, generally should be stashed somewhere. Things that can't be, well... That's a bit sad but I dunno, I never post anything online that I care so much about I'd be sad if it disappeared. Anything I did care about, I make a backup of it locally.

Not trying to downplay people's upset, but just pointing out ways to protect the things you care about.

in reply to The Pirate Post

lemmy - Collegamento all'originale

Rose

Wherever you are on Mastodon, back up your data!


Dear lazyweb (or lazystodon or lazyverse), are there dead simple scripts for periodic backup? You know, something you just authorise to act as a client and then stick into a crontab to run daily/weekly and it'll keep a local copy of your stuff. Preferably something you can just install via pip or gem or (oh please gods no) npm.

in reply to The Pirate Post

mbin - Collegamento all'originale

Auster

@piratepost@poliverso.org if it's on poliverso, then users from the "threadiverse" should be able to find it with !medmastodon@poliverso.org. And iirc, Friendica groups (or the equivalents from Lemmy, Mbin & PieFed) on Mastodon can be treated as both hashtags, and as users, e.g. on mastodon.social.

Mastodon

mastodon.social

reshared this

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