Run your own instance. It’s the only way you’ll be able to set your own policies. Otherwise you’re subject to policies of the instance you’re on and those policies may change at any time.

I take the host my own instance path. It’s safer and more stable than relying on a third party.

Good question.

These are all good questions.

The lose of signal won’t matter. It happens to me all the time as I move from wifi to wifi.

For your third question, it depends on if you a have a key backup with a key security code. That’s something you should set up asap after your initial client login. If you do, then you can recover. You might want to look at https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/16202 for more explanation. The question comes up a lot.

Regardless, I’d make sure you’re always logged in twice if you can. Do you have Element Web running alongside Matrix? If you do, keep logged in on a desktop, or laptop. Just in case you lose the phone.

Hubzilla: https://hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/discover

Streams: https://codeberg.org/streams/streams

Friendica: https://friendi.ca/

Yep. I always use a sub domain for Fediverse applications. It’s just easier to migrate when something better suited to your needs comes along.

For long form content, Hubzilla, Streams, or Friendica all allow long posts. For photos, Pixelfed seems to be the popular option. From a ActivityPub enabled blog standpoint, try WriteFreely.

I think Calckey can also do long form posts, and has a lot of other features.

p.s. If I export my content from Mastodon, shut down the instance, then bring up an instance of Calckey with the same domain/username, am I going to break things?

I think you’d need to use a different domain name. This might help, https://calckey.org/docs/en/account-migration/

Give Hubzilla a try. Make sure to activate the PubCrawl addon for ActivityPub support. https://hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/discover