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Hey folks, I have some bad news and this is an important announcement, so please read. In short, **federated.press will be shutting down, and you'll need to archive your data and transfer your account/followers to a new server before June 30, 2026.**
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In the past three weeks, federated.press experienced an ongoing issue with missing media files: images, videos, and profile photos uploaded in the past were unavailable due to a failure at our managed hosting provider. See my earlier thread here for an incident report and more details:
https://federated.press/@wood/116287833702300296
Our web host has confirmed that they are unable to recover the media storage for federated.press. The service is currently stable, but uploaded media remains lost. This is unacceptable to me, and the decision to close the server was not a quick one—it’s the culmination of several challenges with stability and funding.
We adhere to the Mastodon Server Covenant, so the timeline to wind down operations will be 3 months from today: the server will shut down on June 30, 2026. Please make sure you download your archive and transfer your account and followers to a new server by then.
Mike Fraser, the admin of journa.host, has graciously offered to open registrations for federated.press users. If you want to stay on a journalism-focused server, journa.host is the best option. Contact me for a pre-approved invite link to signup, or see the server announcements. You can also sign up for journa.host directly, and mention you’re coming from federated.press in the reason for joining.
Alternatively, you can choose from any of the available servers in Mastodon's server directory.
You'll find detailed instructions for how to transfer your Mastodon account, followers, lists, etc. to a new server here:
https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/
Mastodon itself also provides some documentation on moving accounts which may be useful.
Here's how to download your post archive:
https://fedi.tips/how-to-download-your-mastodon-post-archive/
Note that because of the media storage failure, past media files may not be included or will be empty—but your posts and other account data will be included. The way Mastodon works, you will be able to transfer your followers and lists to your new account, but you can't transfer your posts. So be sure to download your archive.
This recent incident has clarified a few things that I was already struggling with. Between stability issues and lack of funding, it's not possible to continue operating federated.press sustainably and with an acceptable quality of service.
Personally, I’m out of time and funding on this project, so moving the server to a new host entirely (or self-hosting) is not an option right now. And of course, that would not solve the issue of the current data loss, and I don’t want to risk further instability at the current hosting provider.
Besides myself, we currently have two recurring financial contributors. I'm pausing those monthly donations now and will cover remaining costs. I personally fund a majority of costs already and we've always operated at break-even, so I don't expect a surplus, and will donate any remainder to our non-profit fiscal host. If you're curious, you can find our public ledger here.
I appreciate everyone who has supported federated.press and me personally over the past four years. To those of you who have contributed financially, your support helped make this project possible for so long. Thank you!
-Josh federated.press admin [email protected]