I think for many users, if they lose their posting history when moving to a new server, they have less reason to stay here instead of moving to a new network. If they're losing everything anyway, why not move to bluesky or something else?

@misty indeed. Are there third-party tools that might help with this? Or is this very much can only be done with changes in core?

@joshuatj There aren't. It has to be supported by the server, so there's nothing third party tools can do. GoToSocial can do it, working from a Mastodon data export, but Mastodon itself can’t.

@misty @joshuatj How would that work, would it preserve participation in all threads? That also seem to be very valuable, otherwise many posts lose all the context.

@richlv @joshuatj At the moment, the GTS and Sharkey implementations don’t migrate conversations - just original posts and threads. I would very much like to see that handled too.

@misty @richlv @joshuatj I think that'd get tricky because if I someone replies to me and I reply to them, and then I move servers... If my account kept those posts, it couldn't maintain the thread there unless the other person's posts were also edited 😬 to mention my new account instead of the deleted one
Editing other people's posts feels like something my account, my server, or my old server should not have the authority to do