@freemo @hansw@mastodon.social

I imagine a tool that allows a user to explore their backup archive like a small database would be good.

Similar display to how Pinafore displays toots, for example. That I could open my profile and see the Toots, just like if I visited the profile in the live instance.

Searching for keywords, displaying results and allowing viewing the toot.

At that point, maybe the tool could copy or save the toot to a text file (just plain text, or maybe markdown if included; plus any attached media, exported in the same format as store in the archive.) The mastodon headers, etc not necessary.

With that exported text, a new post could be made in a live new account, somewhere -- in a manual mode. I would love to be able to access that large backup archive this way as I have lots of content rich posts.

**This would be a Life Saver for everyone**, as we do know **instances do implode and disappear all the time**.

To do a full import of original contents from the archive into a new live instance involves a myriad complications; which is why we don't have that so far, and maybe won't ever.

There's info all over the fediverse, pointers, links, timestamps, etc - I wouldn't imagine a backup export could be imported into a new account and post in it with the original content and original timestamps -- that would not be real, and really weird, I feel.

Thank you all for reading this and considering the request.

@cy @Gargron @olamundo