Zero Signal

Recently, I moved my Mastodon server to a new instance. While the original creation date of the previous one was very special to me, I searched for a way to permanently change the date I joined Mastodon to match this special date. After finding the relevant fields in the PostgreSQL database it turned out to be quite easy!

Assuming you have root access to your self-hosted Mastodon instance, the process is pretty straightforward and the following commands will lead to success:

Log into the „mastodon“ account (following the best-practices install, its name should be exactly this) with

su mastodon

Then enter the specific database with the „psql“-command:

psql -d mastodon_production

Once you’re there, simply follow the example below to change the „joined“ date of your Mastodon-account. Change the date and the corresponding user, then press „Enter“.

UPDATE accounts SET created_at='2025-05-12 19:18:00' WHERE username=‚oliver‘;

and finish the process with

exit

That’s it – the change is immediate so there is no need to restart PostgreSQL or the corresponding Mastodon-services!