Looking at our Personal Data Backups from Mastodon Instances

Continuing my learning about the user data backups offered by mastodon instances, I started asking questions, and found some answers.

The very first tip was that JSON.awk could be used to view the backup files. A number of browser tabs were added to the already large number in use here.

Linux or Unix systems would handle it easier. I am a Windows user, comfortable on machines I keep tuned and running well, smooth and productively, so that was not ideal.

But just now, a friend gave me a good pointer -- and I managed to look inside my personal archive from my other account for the very first time. 🙂

My archive for a 7.5 months old mastodon (quite active) account contains :

• 2,343 files.
• 478 Million Bytes
• just over 7,000 individual Toots, along with their images if any.

My friend suggested I could be able to view the JSON file here (JSON Editor Online)

And -- it worked,

Two snapshots :

• my very first post, as shown in my data backup view, in the editor.
• and the same post, my Hello World in full color, screenshot from my Waterfox browser.

Thanks B for this! 🙂

#FediReporter on the case...