When an instance goes down, all of the images on it go with it. there’s going to be a lot from lemm.ee, especially given its size.

  • Goretantath@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Images dont get saved locally on other instances if they host the content? Well that seems like a big flaw in “federation”…

    • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      I assume it’s an intentional trade-off by the devs to reduce the storage burden. If each instance is a complete mirror of all federated instances then hosting becomes that much more expensive.

      • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 days ago

        no, I agree with the above user that it would be better to federate images too, for at least the following reasons:

        • redundancy: see the OP
        • privacy reasons: images loaded from other instances inform the other instance that one is viewing those images, do you trust all of them?
        • censorship reasons: some lemmy instances are blocked in my workplace and I can never look at images from them when browsing at work; others may be blocked in entire countries

        If I’m not mistaken, Mastodon already does federate images to other instances, so it isn’t unheard of.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      3 days ago

      Depending on how the admin has pict-rs (the “subsystem” it uses for media) configured, post images can create local copies /thumbnails for image posts. Some instances opt to do that, some don’t.

      Other images like ones posted a comments, user/community avatars/banners aren’t stored anywhere except their home instance.

      But yeah, even the limited caching has proven problematic if questionable/illegal content gets posted.