Some notes in a small thread for people who might want to shift to another masto instance:-
1. The process is easy, but you will need to use a computer if you want to easily transfer your following list.
2. Your old profile on the older instance will stay, it'll just put up a message saying you've shifted to a new account.
3. None of your older posts will be transferred to your new profile. If you want to link them or check them out you'll have to check your old profile link.
4. This is the most important part so I'll keep this separate as a thread portion
If each masto instance is like an apartment building in itself, the posts you see from other people's profiles from other instances in your timeline are your bldg fetching their messages for you to read and interact with. If you're the first person from your instance to follow someone, your bldg will then, and only then, start fetching info on the followed profile.
This means
i. You can't see posts older than when your bldg started tracking a profile you follow.
ii. You can't see their full follow list because your bldg doesn't care to store the info beyond "oh they follow these people from our place"
iii. You can see all the above if you travel over to the other person's bldg to visit (opening their profile in their instance's URL) but you can't like or boost from within their bldg, only from within your own.
This won't matter if enough people from the two bldgs/instances follow each other, but the fediverse isn't that tightly networked yet. I joined a new instance for example, and I can't see older posts from my mutuals because I'm the first to follow them.
@mehluv understood
@NehaKhazanchi that's a good question, when someone shifts to another instance the followers list gets migrated, so you will still be following them – unless you have follow requests on, in which case you'll receive a new follow request from their new account