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.
[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)
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.
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>
It's not released yet, this fix will come out with v1.5.
I'm probably going to switch to making smaller releases from now on (one big monster every 4-6 weeks contains too many changes for people to really absorb and understand) so 1.5 might be sooner than you expect.
That makes perfect sense, and I suppose posts such as this are rare, and people in this community are likely to still remember this situation if it happens again in the short interim.😀
@piratepost@poliverso.org that's wonderful! And as Rimu mentioned the PieFed software will be fixed in the next release to help facilitate future cross-platform communications, this has been a very encouraging post!😀
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.
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.
Any city council or minor public service or library could run their own instance, though, alongside the usual website. This doesn't have to be a hobbyist thing or for-profit enterprise.
If Mastodon is federated, why isn't this recoverable somehow? I thought federation involved making copies of content on other servers, does that just not happen often enough for it to work as a backup?
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.
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.
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.
@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.
Apparently med-mastodon.com went offline with no warning sometime around Dec. 28. I'm hoping @bicmay and @gregggonsalves re-establish a presence somewhere else.
@cbarbermd@med-mastodon is apparently now @cbarbermd, going from 1.6K followers to only 2.
Edit: Apparently there is no hope for getting med-mastodon back online even for a short time to aid in migrations. That sucks. zeroes.ca/@ndrwy/1158184205293… As I find other folks who have migrated elsewhere I'll add replies to this post, at least for a bit.
Apparently med-mastodon.com went offline with no warning sometime around Dec. 28. I'm hoping @bicmay and @gregggonsalves re-establish a presence somewhere else.
@cbarbermd@med-mastodon is apparently now @cbarbermd, going from 1.6K followers to only 2.
Edit: Apparently there is no hope for getting med-mastodon back online even for a short time to aid in migrations. That sucks. zeroes.ca/@ndrwy/1158184205293…
Edit #3, January 5: Med-mastodon is now back online, so I'll stop updating this thread. Such good news! Many thanks to Ryan who made this happen. mastodonapp.uk/@wild1145/11584…
Okay #MedMastodon folks - The instance is now back up and running I'm pleased to share. Things might take a moment to catch-up and I have sent out an announcement so hopefully anyone that had accounts that doesn't see this will get the e-mail ping le…
Unfortunately, until now, we haven't received a reply from the previous owner to be able to authorise that. But it's something that we might consider if they reply to the emails that were sent.
@iftas Unfortunately, until now, we haven't received a reply from the previous owner to be able to authorise that. But it's something that we might consider if they reply to the emails that were sent.
Jennifer Hamilton here, formerly of med-mastodon.com. That server shut down suddenly. If you followed me before for my toots about #vaccines, #PublicHealth, #FamilyMedicine, my gripes about #ElectronicMedicalRecords #EMR, or even just a few #caturday pictures and chats about bicycling, I'm on mstdn.science now.
The old #MedMastodon went down suddenly in the last week of December 2025, and I don't have a list of my old followers. Please boost this so they can find me!
Jennifer Hamilton here, formerly of med-mastodon.com. That server shut down suddenly. If you followed me before for my toots about #vaccines, #PublicHealth, #FamilyMedicine, my gripes about #ElectronicMedicalRecords #EMR, or even just a few #caturday pictures and chats about bicycling, I'm on mstdn.science now.
The old #MedMastodon went down suddenly in the last week of December 2025, and I don't have a list of my old followers. Please boost this so they can find me!
med-mastodon.com - I contacted their host and offered to help cover costs for at least a month to allow people to migrate out.
The host replied to me 6 hours ago and said the instance admin: - cancelled service - is the only one who can restore - has not agreed to offers
If you are impacted I highly recommend joining an instance listed on joinmastodon.org/servers as they are all bound to the server covenant ("give users at least 3 months of advance warning in case of shutting down")
med-mastodon.com - I contacted their host and offered to help cover costs for at least a month to allow people to migrate out.
The host replied to me 6 hours ago and said the instance admin: - cancelled service - is the only one who can restore - has not agreed to offers
If you are impacted I highly recommend joining an instance listed on joinmastodon.org/servers as they are all bound to the server covenant ("give users at least 3 months of advance warning in case of shutting down")
NB: due ore fa grazie a un'eccezionale intervento med-mastodon è tornata on line: quando aveva cessato di esistere e l'avevamo bloccata per evitare impersonificazioni. Ora è di nuovo sbloccata
Purtroppo il popolare server #MedMastodon dedicato ai medici e alla medicina, ha chiuso inaspettatamente alla fine del 2025, impedendo agli utenti di accedere ai propri dati ed evidenziando i rischi dei social media decentralizzati senza backup, poiché il suo amministratore ha cessato le operazioni, causando confusione e perdita di dati per molti professionisti sanitari che si erano iscritti come alternativa a Twitter.
Questo evento serva come monito:
su qualsiasi istanza di Mastodon vi troviate, salvate i vostri dati!
ATTENZIONE!
Per aiutare gli utenti di Med-mastodon che sono tornati nel Fediverso, abbiamo reato il gruppo Friendica @medmastodon
Se seguirete questo gruppo potrete:
Seguirlo e menzionarlo nei vostri messaggi ed esso ricondividerà tutti i vostri post pubblici indirizzati a lui (vale solo per un messaggio iniziale e non per una risposta a un altro messaggio)
Seguirlo soltanto per leggere tutti i messaggi dei colleghi medici che manderanno messaggi tramite esso
we need to encourage people to do at signup time. "Does your employer have a server? Does your university have a server? Are you a member of the ACM, or SDF? Can you pay $6/month for a hosting service? Want to join a cooperative like social.coop? OK, if *none of those things* is true, here is a list of servers that provide open registration to the public for free, on a best-effort basis."
I don't know either. It might be something we need to encourage people to do at signup time. "Does your employer have a server? Does your university have a server? Are you a member of the ACM, or SDF? Can you pay $6/month for a hosting service? Want to join a cooperative like social.coop? OK, if *none of those things* is true, here is a list of servers that provide open registration to the public for free, on a best-effort basis."
tomiant
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •mesa
in reply to tomiant • • •OpenStars
in reply to tomiant • • •[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
Jennifer Henderson (MedpageToday)unexposedhazard
in reply to OpenStars • • •Pamasich
in reply to OpenStars • • •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.
OpenStars
in reply to Pamasich • • •Thank you for the correction and additional information.
@rimu@piefed.social a bug report: Piefed is removing the title of the post, which profoundly affects its understandability.
like this
Pamasich likes this.
Rimu
in reply to OpenStars • • •sigh
Rimu
in reply to Rimu • • •like this
Pamasich likes this.
OpenStars
in reply to Rimu • • •Rimu
in reply to OpenStars • • •It's not released yet, this fix will come out with v1.5.
I'm probably going to switch to making smaller releases from now on (one big monster every 4-6 weeks contains too many changes for people to really absorb and understand) so 1.5 might be sooner than you expect.
like this
Pamasich likes this.
OpenStars
in reply to Rimu • • •The Pirate Post
in reply to OpenStars • •reshared this
MedMastodon e Fediverse reshared this.
OpenStars
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •reshared this
MedMastodon reshared this.
Pamasich
in reply to tomiant • • •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.
Jeena
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •IronKrill
in reply to Jeena • • •Jeena
in reply to IronKrill • • •OpenStars
in reply to Jeena • • •Gsus4
in reply to IronKrill • • •IronKrill
in reply to Gsus4 • • •vatlark
in reply to Gsus4 • • •nasi_goreng
in reply to Jeena • • •They did.
There's almost hundreds of dead social media that inaccessible, some even have zero backups.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…
Wikimedia list article
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Jeena
in reply to nasi_goreng • • •site-deaths
IndieWeb0_o7
in reply to Jeena • • •zaphod
in reply to 0_o7 • • •chicken
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •nasi_goreng
in reply to chicken • • •Pamasich
in reply to chicken • • •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.
like this
The Pirate Post likes this.
chicken
in reply to Pamasich • • •other_cat
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •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.
Ascendor
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •Rose
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •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.
Auster
in reply to The Pirate Post • • •Mastodon
mastodon.sociallike this
The Pirate Post likes this.
reshared this
The Pirate Post e MedMastodon reshared this.