The weird thing about your catbox posts is that at one point in time I was clearly able to see them. I remember those Pokémon posts you made in [email protected] and even commenting on them. But now I cannot see them.
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Fedigrow
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To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks
Resources:
- https://lemmy-federate.com/ to federated your community to a lot of instances
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AFAIK, pictures aren't duplicated among instances. When you upload a picture, it generates a link on your instance like https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/93df1acb-a898-46c9-bc07-d2b7467c345e.jpeg and that link is shared (copied) from instance to instance.
Edit: Thank you for jumping in!
What about LW, was it already the case in 0.19.3?
I think it has to do with the technical way comments are handled.
When comments are sent from one instance to another, only their "markdown code" is transmitted. If you include an image in your comment, that becomes a line in markdown (which is text) that looks like this:
So yes, this is not dependent on version; it's similar to how you have a <img src="..."> tag in HTML that only links to the image, instead of copying it.
But then wait, proxying doesn't happen?
Interesting, thanks
Whatever solution you use, just make sure it allows "hotlinking" without having to leave the app/Lemmy web interface to see them. If an image doesn't embed, I won't click outside to see it; I'll just scroll past.
I've not had any problems with Catbox, though (I use it to share gifs larger than my instance allows for uploads). It was down a bit yesterday (was going to share a screen recording demonstrating a new feature), but works fine for the most part.
I have read Yarn (gif archive) is sometimes problematic/unreliable, but I usually wrap those in Tesseract's image proxy which addresses it.
For 95% of cases, I just upload directly to my instance. It's got a 250kb max limit, but we use Tesseract as the default UI which can pre-process uploads to webp prior to uploading which will typically get them under that limit.
And allows VPN users too please
Fuck Imgur.
I have had nothing but problems with catbox, they ban every IP I've had. I emailed them about it and they said "no we don't". Just keep in mind that random people won't be able to see your post if you use catbox.
Catbox links are usually fucked on my end.
Image hosting for Lemmy is a significant issue. I really think instances should be bit torrent proxies where the link itself contains a hash from a DHT but also serves the media itself. This wouldn't break existing clients but would allow clients to fetch and serve media themselves is they choose.
Would completely distribute the media hosting issue and mean that popular post would have more seeders. Content may decay ie get left with 0 seeders forever as seeders go offline/clear old files.
Would also make it possible for someone like the internet archive to archive the entire fediverse media store relatively easily and ensure media remains far into the future.
The problem with media files is more general, it's not just pictures.
This is also why we've never had a (functioning) video platform on the fediverse: Hosting (storage + bandwidth) costs real money. Actually a lot of money. Who pays for it?
Community hosting of large media files would solve the problem (the instance server would only store a hash value). But, there's a lot of questions/problems, such as:
- what if all seeders go offline simultaneously?
- privacy issues (seeders can see who requests their data)
- legal issues (what if somebody uploads illegal material and you seed it?)
The first issue would happen eventually yes but that would theoretically be after 99% of the interactions the post would see have already happened. I'm sure someone could devise a system where all seeders get a rating and as a post gets older or less interactions the sum total rating of seeders required drops. Basically u could have heigh rated seeders seed the only copy.
Issue 2 is a harder one but having ur IP known isn't too much of an issue. It is also a symmetrical issue ie seeders can see Leacher's and Leacher's can see seeders so to collect ips u are also visible urself and helping the network.
Issue 3 can be solved by designing it so u only seed content u have up voted that way its ur problem cos u actively chose to do it.
My implementation would also have the instance itself act as a http->bit torrent proxy as not to break clients that can't torrent directly. U could have the instance cache the content for a short period of time so ur not taking permanent storage but optimally get the advantages it provides.
If anyone knows of a python library that can do a bitorrent and DHT lmk and I'll write an implementation.
so to collect ips u are also visible urself and helping the network.
Yeah well that's exactly my problem.
I don't like that anyone can now figure out my IP address and therefore know where I live. I value my privacy.
It would be difficult to host. Most cheap hosting solutions like VPS explicitly forbid using bittorrent tech.
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Could be a good idea, but that seems like a long term improvement. Here we are looking for a solution that wouldn't require changes to the codebase.
Pinging @[email protected] and @[email protected] as I guess they are probably the more knowledgeable.
Also @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] for admins of instances with large communities
IIRC @[email protected] has a 500 KB limit per picture.
And maybe also @[email protected], @[email protected] @[email protected] and @[email protected]
For my family pixelfed instance I've discovered ffshare - it's job is to act something like a pipe in a unix shell and strip exif data as well as downsize the source before sending it off to the target app.
It's not exactly what you've asked for, but it could be used here. Android, at least.
I was about to say thank you because I have just been finding some random image downsizer online, then I toss it through an EXIF stripper app on my phone and post. But then I checked and found ffshare appears to be just an Android app :( I guess that is what you meant by "Android, at least". I Lemmy from an iPhone and I'm not about to get an Android emulator on my computer just to use ffshare.
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Lemmy is still saving thumbnails and (previously) sometimes the whole image! The majority of image issues have been cleared up in my opinion and it works very well. Nearly all of our hosts allow hotlinking as it's basically required for our use cases.
Lemmy also knows when the image is another Lemmy instance (through "magic", or just cross posting). So if you upload once and then use that same link on all other posts then that would still be the same.
The problem I think you have is your usecase also includes posting externally to Lemmy. & to some extent, you don't want those images tied to your Lemmy account. If my users post via my instance then they are welcome to also hotlink the images externally. This is only possible because Reddthat uses a CDN and caches the images as much as possible.
Even if we didn't use a cdn there are plenty of VPS' and proxy software that we could use which would transparently function in the same way. You could even setup your own VPS, some image hosting software like https://chibisafe.moe/ or https://github.com/nokonoko/Uguu or https://github.com/hauxir/imgpush
To sum up:
- post once to Lemmy instance and then use that image everywhere
- use a random image host that allows hotlinking to do the same
- get your own VPS, setup an image upload and use that (and maybe get a domain too!)
The 3rd option you can do completely anonymously via crypto.
Thank you for the detailed answer!
I never considered the question, sharing the (rare) pictures I post using the Upload Image button.
A few years ago I used this: https://postimages.org/
It worked well but I have no idea how trustworthy it is?
Hello,
Thank you for posting this, another person mentioned them as well: https://jlai.lu/post/14514460/12047196
They don't have a browser extension, but I guess that could be a good solution still
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On a personal level I'm not fussed if people use local storage or offsite - i too can't ever see catbox images so that's the only host I have a problem with.
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Upload pictures locally
Too small for me, personally. I love catbox, but it's frustrating that many users can't see its content. I even had to put a disclaimer in latins description as a warning on how to fix it.
I'll look for image hosters then recommend them here.
Testing out postimages, a host specifically for forums
This is a test image, if anyone has problems with it comment please.
I don't see an image, using Voyager.
I don't see any links either.
I also use Voyager but I see the test image.
The plot thickens
~~Strange... [email protected] may i know what country/DNS you are using?~~
Nevermind, i saw your other comment
Do you see this? https://i.postimg.cc/05H92qJj/me-in-real-life.jpg
Only if I follow the link. It took a long time to load. Might have been my 4G.
Edit: after visiting the link then returning, the preview image appeared ok.
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Image seems to embed properly in Thunder on Android.
Image visible.
Just the Lemmy website, iOS
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Thanks! If there would be an image hoster with an extension that would be great, I just tried using imgbb for a few posts, and it's just much more cumbersome unfortunately
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