According to Instances.social QOTO currently federates with 5,532 other instances in the fediverse. You might ask how it is possible that that number is larger than the total number of instances known (108% of all instances, 5,114 instances total).
Thats because not only do we federate with all instances and have one of the largest views of the entire fediverse, but we have been doing this so long we even have old connections with instances that have since shutdown.
Furthermore #QOTO invests a lot on infrastructure to ensure that we retain a cache of **all** toots from around the fediverse and we enable full-text search. This means our users are able to search more of the fediverse, even servers that have since shutdown still have their toots in our archives.
It costs us a lot in hosting costs but thanks to generous donators and a large fund we can provide these services long into the future. We think it is worth it, and we hope you will too!
@QOTO No. No, I don't. Quite the opposite, actually. Do you accept legal data take-down orders? And how long does it take you to comply?
@aeveltstra Every server in the fediverse has your data, it was posted publicly and as doing so there is implied consent that other servers can federate with you. Most server do not clear their cache (as this tends to cause images and other things to break).
The best way to ensure your data is not shared with other servers is to simply make your posts follow-only. You can also block any domain you don't wish to federate with.
Though sadly due to the nature of federated networks this request is rather hard to comply with.
With that said if you'd like your data removed, and if mastodon provides an easy administrative option to do so, then I would be most happy to remove it. No need for the request to be legal. I'd be happy to investigate if mastodon software provides an option to selectively remove cached data from a single user without effecting other user's data.
