Migrating To GoToSocial From Mastodon

GoToSocial is a fediverse microblogging service that has been growing in popularity as a Mastodon alternative. One of the best things about it is that it's fully compatible with the "Move" activity which means migrating your followers to and from it works just like it is a Mastodon instance.

Limitations

There are a few limitations to migration and things you should know about a migration first.

Things You Can Migrate

• Followers - Automatically
• Bookmarks - CSV Download/Upload
• Follows - CSV Download/Upload
• Lists - CSV Download/Upload
• Mutes - CSV Download/Upload
• Blocks - CSV Download/Upload
• Domain Blocks - CSV Download/Upload
• Hashtags - Manual Data Entry

Things You Can’t Easily Move

At this point your posts and media cannot easily be migrated. If you are on someone else's mastodon server or one of the large public instances like mastodon.social you cannot migrate your posts.

If this is important to you there is a tool and you are comfortable with command line tools there is a tool called slurp which effectively recreates your posts and media on your new instance.

Portability If you like GoToSocial it is better to move onto an instance and domain that you have some control over sooner rather than later. One advantage of this is a fully portable account

If you are a client of FediHost you can contact our support about recreating media and posts. It is a service we offer.

What You'll Need

• The Login Details For Your Old Mastodon Account
• The Login Details For Your New GoToSocial Account
• Both servers to be communicating with (not blocking) each other

Steps

1. Create New Account

Create a new blank account on your new server. Do not interact or start using the account.

2. Old Mastodon Account: Export Data

On your old account go to download each of the CSV files in Preferences > Import and Export > Data Export

Individually save them with the default names in a folder. You can also request an archive of your posts for your own records or if you are planning to use slurp to migrate posts.

3. New GoToSocial Account: Import Data

On your new account go to Export & Import and upload one by one each of the CSV files that you downloaded from the old server.

The CSV files by default have names that closely match the imports. GoToSocial has not fully implemented the user interface for imports at the time of writing for Lists, Mutes and Domain Blocks but they are actively working on implementing these features in the near future.

blocked_accounts.csv -> Blocked Accounts list
following_accounts.csv -> Following list
muted_accounts.csv -> Muting list

4. New GoToSocial: Prepare Alias

On your new account go to Migration

Paste the full URL to the account you are migrating from. You should wait at least 5 minutes before completing the mirrored action of this on your old server. While you wait we can Move Hashtags and Change Display Name as outlined below.

5. Move Hashtags

On your old account go to you profile page and choose the  3 dots beside your profile and select 'followed hashtags' you can also reach this by adding 'followed_tags' to the url of your server.

Then login to your new GoToSocial account using the Mastodon app. This is necessary because GoToSocial does not have a user interface for this. Add each of the hashtags to your new account by searching and choosing "Follow hashtag".

6. New Account: Set Display Name and Bio

On your new account copy and paste your display name, bio and links from your old account. You can also set your profile and banner image too.

7. New Account: Uncheck Manually Approve New Followers

In your profile account uncheck "Manually approve follow requests" so that you do not have to approve every follower that you are migrating across to this account. You can re-enable this setting after the migration.

8. Old Account: Change Display Name and Bio

On your old account make it extra clear that your account is not active by editing the profile and changing the Display Name to "Your Name (Moved)". Change your bio text to add a link to the new account address.

9. Old Account: Move Followers

Five minutes should have now passed since you setup the "Account Alias" on your old account. On your old account go to Preferences > Account > Moving To A Different Account

Put your new handle in the box and click continue, this will both redirect the account and migrate your followers. It can take several days for the followers to migrate.

Issues

Missing Followers

When you move accounts you will usually discover that you appear to have lost some followers. This is usually down to the ghost follower phenomenon. When a server leaves the fediverse it doesn't always broadcast this information and so servers that have a tally of users who are following them assume followers are there who may no-longer be. You often only find this out during a move.

Incomplete Move

Another common issue with large accounts is an incomplete move. Sometimes you need to run the follower migration several times. This can be annoying due to the cooldown time between moves.