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If your comments have been federated to other instances, they will be there until they are deleted locally. If someone clicks on your user profile, they will get a DNS error if the domain is no longer there. Images in the comments pointing to you instance will be broken too. Nothing terrible actually happens.
Migrating accounts a la Mastodon is not happening soon in Lemmy.
My advice is: Go on and save some money.
Just go ahead and close your instance. Your comments are already federated in other instances and will not go away. Example in lemmy.world: https://lemmy.world/u/nix@merv.news
You might want to keep the database and pictrs backup so you can later resurrect the instance again when you found some cheap hosting deals in e.g. lowendtalk.
Oh I thought closing the instance sent a delete request to all instances to delete all user data.
Do you know a way I can backup the database without any of the pictrs data and still be able to resurrect the instance? We didnt really upload images anyways and id rather keep the backup small making it more likely i can resurrect the instance in the future when i get more money and find cheaper hosting
I'm pretty sure it would still work, but images for media content would have broken links. I'm not sure the refresh policy as far as remote media goes but local stuff could be re-uploaded and it should be able to retain things like the user names and comment data even without pictures.
I'm actually not sure about that. You might want to test it yourself on your own server before shutting it down for good. See if you can bring up lemmy again after renaming the pictrs directory to simulate deletion.
Shouldn't they be kept mirrored to other instances?
Have you considered using Oracle's free VPS tier? Should be more than powerful enough to host a read-only Lemmy instance.
It's not ideal but if you're short on money, it's better than having your online data rot.
Can't you backup your database?
If you don't mind me asking, how much are your current costs? My infra for managed hosting is way over-provisioned. If you are using your instance just for yourself, send me a DM and we can work out a deal.
yep same