Instances with

more than one admin
clear policies and active moderation
engaged user base
regular backups
no porn

...will stand a better chance than most.

Not to sound too pessimistic, but we live in a time where we see Twitter collapsing, despite being one of those "too big to fail" websites. My bet is that none will stand the test of time, the web is ephemeral (and archive.org is an underappreciated wonder of the world). I would rather say that what you really need is a backup routine.

I guess instances run by SDF. They've been around since 1987 when they started with BBS. And since 1991 they are running the public access UNIX system. They also have Mastodon servers, Minecraft server and other stuff. These are their Lemmy instances:

lemmy.sdf.org - somewhere in US
lemmy.sdfeu.org - Falkenstein, Vogtland, Germany
lemmy.sdfjp.org - Tokyo, Japan
lemmy.sdfcn.org - Hong Kong
lemmy.sdfin.org - Mumbai, India

Don't think this is a strange phenomenon or that it's permanent. I've seen Mastodon (and Pleroma and Misskey etc) instances get born and die regularly. This is because it's easy to set up an instance but it's also easy to fall in an economic problem or just give up.

Not everyone is ready to set up their own instance; it requires dedication and resources.

Out of the loop, what happened to Lemmy.one?

The ones with the most porn

I plan to keep running this instance for a long time. As long as there are weebs here on Lemmy, I will give them a home lol

Btw, I also had a lemmy.one account. It was my first Lemmy account too. Hope they get back up and running.

I ain't got nothin better to do so might as well run a server forever

how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here?

Unfortunately there is no way to do that yet, but I remembered that there is an unofficial tool that let you transfer your subscriptions like you said

Edit: There isand open issue that might talking about it: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985

ALSO, does anyone know how to get my subscriptions from lemmy.one and import it here? TIA!

The other instance has to be up. If it's permanently down, there's nothing I can do.

1. Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/login
2. Export your user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.one/settings
3. Login to https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/login
4. Import your old user in https://natoboram.github.io/Leanish/lemmy.ca/settings
5. Click on the big button

It will search for the subscribed communities, attempt to retrieve them and attempt to subscribe. Refresh the page between tries. Do not share your exported user; it contains your email.

Leanish is very much alpha and doesn't have all features. There's tons of missing features, many of them listed in the GitHub issues.

I have hosted a lot of my own services for a couple of years and plan to continue hosting my instance(endlesstalk.org) indefinitely, unless something very major happens.

As others have mentioned I think multiple admins and backups(hard to verify though) are a good sign, but its only indications and you can't really be sure, if a instance will be there forever. I think there needs to be an easy way to migrate accounts and then the instances going down hopefully gives a notice, so you can move your account.

Gonna be difficult to recover accounts from instance going down without a notice I think. You could regularly take a backup of your account, but that is tedious and you will still lose some data.

Lemmy.world

I think instances like lemmy.ca or lemmy.nz will be around for years

I'm running my own instance, JUST so I can be in control of my own Lemmy experience (and in control of my own archive of my Lemmy activity). I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.

Yes, my instance was down for three days last week. I had trouble with an update and didn't have time to troubleshoot it. But I wanted my Lemmy so I DID get around to it and got it working again. And yeah... I never did get email working properly so when my ONE friend who's not me joined my instance I had to command line into the database and approve him manually. But so what?

And yeah, eventually the internet ecosystem may shift again, or I might get hit by a bus or who knows?

But if you WANT to join a tiny instance that's 99.999% (bus factor) not going anywhere for a while, I'd probably let you join mine.

I’d like to say lemmy.world, but a lot of communities you’d think would be quite active are actually not so.

As long as lemmy remains popular there will be new servers/instances popping up. I found my start on lemmy quite rocky with servers vanishing sometimes with notice and then others just vanishing without notice, Anyway I quickly adapted and began to keep a list of communities I like to frequent while this list is still small I'm sure by the time it starts to become an issue there will be tools that make it a non issue.

I've started becoming more nomad in my use of lemmy compared to somewhere like reddit where I had just one account for eight years I just open a new account with the knowledge that it's not permanent it doesn't belong to me and there will be a time when I need to move on.

I'm pretty happy with kbin.social. It's a nice place, with several devs actively looking at making the experience better, it just takes a while being an open source project and all

Mine will, planning to support for quite some time. So if you're looking for a new one, join lemmings.world!

I feel like most of the "country" oriented instances will last (and grow) as it is a more purposeful reason to exist, and this extends to instances with very clear themes as it also gives users more of a reason for people to join them.

now I feel an obligation to keep my instance alive as long as I physically can