This is a great read, particularly the points about balance.

My phone’s camera only has the thirds grid, unfortunately, although I had an older app that used to have a few options (but not dynamic symmetry grid).

You’re 100% right, I think we do a lot more to stop content rotting like this. Now it’s half gone, with any contributions from other instances unable to federate, fracturing any more conversation.

Maybe we need to do two things:

• ensure that popular instances aren’t single-admin shows (so there needs to be a team with the skills, finances and motivation to run if one or more disappear, or at least the credentials in escrow so someone can step in)
• have some system to backup/migrate content

The migration one is tricky, because ActivityPub is very tied to urls. I guess that you could make dummy account for the conversation you brought over, so you’d at least have a read-only record.

reddthat is a great instance, and I’m glad to see that it’s not just a single-admin setup. If you vanished (I hope not!), does the team have the access, knowledge, finance and motivation to continue?

I hate that they’ve vanished like this, it just means that we’ll end up with a few massive all-purpose instances instead of the ideal topic-based instances that the Fediverse wants.