FollowCarry
A free, one-click migration assistant for Fediverse users losing their home instance — preserving their network graph and pointing followers to their new home so a community doesn't dissolve when one server shuts down.
Fediverse users displaced when their home instance closes or migrates
- One-click archive of your posts, media, and following/follower graph
- Auto-announce to followers with a personal migration message
- Server recommendation engine based on language, region, and vibe of your old home
- Bulk unfollow/cleanup of inactive accounts after migration
With toot.community announcing a hard Oct 28 shutdown, several thousand users need to relocate, and Mastodon's built-in tool only moves followers — not posts, not media.
Need is real but episodic and niche: toot.community had ~2,500 MAU / 31k accounts before being absorbed by mastodon.world, Mozilla.social had only 270 active users, and the source HN thread was modest at 22 points — Mastodon docs themselves note 'posts will not be moved, due to technical limitations.'Blog post for August 2024 (and July.. and June.. and... so on) ↗Mozilla exits the fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December ↗Moving or leaving accounts - Mastodon documentation ↗
No production competitor exists: Mastodon's built-in tool explicitly moves followers only and is Mastodon-only; fedi-port (the most ambitious comparable) is pre-award with no code committed and is waiting on an NLnet grant; remaining options are manual wiki guides or per-software exports.GitHub - sattva2020/fedi-port ↗Moving or leaving accounts - Mastodon documentation ↗
Stated as free for a niche episodic audience; comparable projects (fedi-port) rely on NLnet/NGI grants, and even established instances like toot.community rely on a 'Support us' Patreon page — direct willingness to pay for a migration utility specifically appears low.GitHub - sattva2020/fedi-port ↗toot.community hub ↗
Instance shutdowns and admin burnout are an ongoing pattern (Mozilla, toot.community, others), so the underlying trigger persists, but demand is bursty and could shrink if Mastodon's built-in migration is extended to cover posts/media.Mozilla exits the fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December ↗Mozilla leaves the Fediverse and closes its own Mastodon instance ↗
Doable but non-trivial: requires handling ActivityPub Move/alsoKnownAs, downloading/re-uploading media, serializing post graphs, and writing per-platform adapters (Mastodon ↔ GoToSocial, etc.) — fedi-port's roadmap estimates ~7 months for a v1.GitHub - sattva2020/fedi-port ↗Moving or leaving accounts - Mastodon documentation ↗