Sounds like I will finally be able to move mastodon servers without losing the last year of interactions I’ve had! I moved once before and while my followers moved, my content did not. The old account stayed there with all my content, with no direct link to my new profile unless I added it as a link in my new profile.
My current server has been very slow and I’ve wanted to move. I’ll wait till this is fully deployed and then give it a shot!
Do you happen to know if it's a bandwidth issue, and thus they (would/do) engage in good faith with PRs for such content, or it's a "our toy, our priority" type deal?
I have no idea. They do have multiple developers at the moment as far as I know, but maybe everyone focuses on the user interactivity instead. Regarding third party PRs again I don't know, I think they're open to it, but from previous interactions I had on their tracker, the review process might be quite stringent.
I’m not sure that the implementation is the real issue. Mastodon posts can be exported already. Writing the import code wouldn’t be that hard. But why would a Mastodon server’s admins want to let a brand new login post a big pile of backdated posts all at once? It seems spammy and the moderation workload scales with the number of posts.
Maybe a dedicated archive would be better. It would be a matter of generating a static website from the export. Nobody else would need to moderate it, because it’s not their website.
My current server has been very slow and I’ve wanted to move. I’ll wait till this is fully deployed and then give it a shot!