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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Teknevra@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml

Given that Lemmy currently has no native support for migrating communities if an instance shuts down or becomes unstable, I’ve been wondering:


Has anyone thought about creating a bot that helps with this process?

The basic idea: when a migration is needed, one or more mods could create a new community on the target instance (setting up rules, banner, header, etc.), and then the bot would clone the old community’s content — posts, comments, etc. — and repost them to the new community (all with the community's support, ideally preserving authorship, or noting who posted what).

To be respectful of users, there could even be an option to exclude posts/comments from users who don’t want to be included in the migration.

This kind of tool could dramatically reduce the time and effort needed to manually recreate communities and save valuable content from being lost.

I’d love to attempt this myself, but unfortunately I lack the time, technical know-how, and energy.

Has anything like this already been attempted, or is anyone working on a tool like this?

Curious to hear your thoughts — feasibility, technical hurdles, privacy concerns, etc.

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[-] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago
[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 15 points 2 days ago

This would be better implemented as a function in Lemmy itself. A bot shouldn't have the level of access necessary to do this.

[-] nutomic@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 days ago

We don't have the capacity to implement all the features users ask for, at least not without additional contributors or waiting a long time. So it's better to implement it as a bot.

The cleanest solution seems to be the one described in my previous comment, so you get an archived community with all the original content, correct usernames etc. And make a new community for new posts. Or have the bot create new posts and comments with the same content, and credit the author in markdown body. But that seems like a worse solution in many ways.

[-] Microw@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago

Numatic shared the code you'd need to do most of this in another thread. So it should not be that hard to implement it in lemmy proper.

[-] iso@lemy.lol 7 points 2 days ago
[-] Teknevra@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

@iso@lemy.lol

It says that the link is invalid

[-] iso@lemy.lol 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)
[-] narF@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Maybe that could be a next step for the new project Bounce? https://lemmy.ca/post/45530189

[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

If there’s a new party willing to take over administration of the entire instance as-is, why not just transfer ownership of the original server?

[-] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 5 points 2 days ago

I've thought about how to implement it in Lemmy, but as @iso@lemy.lol said, DIDs simplify the whole process.

this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
30 points (96.9% liked)

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