this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Fedigrow

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Alright, so what is the current recommended way to share pictures on Lemmy? (feddit.org)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Blaze@feddit.org to c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
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Hello everyone,

Following this post, it seems that quite a few users can't see catbox.moe pictures.

Catbox was my preferred option as they have a handy Firefox extension that allows to upload pictures with just a click, and get the link directly in the clipboard.

My understanding was also that by having the pictures on catbox, we avoided storing copies of pictures on every Lemmy instance. Is this still the case? I read a bit about proxying pictures (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/4035) and it seems like this is more related to keep all media required by an instance locally, to avoid broken links.

So long story short: what should be the recommended way to share pictures on Lemmy?

  1. Use a hoster like https://imgbb.com/
  2. Upload pictures locally
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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And allows VPN users too please

[–] CidVicious@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Fuck Imgur.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Catbox links are usually fucked on my end.

[–] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 3 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It would be difficult to host. Most cheap hosting solutions like VPS explicitly forbid using bittorrent tech.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's fucked.

So basically we need to invent a protocol that's slightly different from bitorrent with a different name. Preferably we give it a name like "'; DROP TABLE information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = DATABASE();"

Or maybe "'; SET @sql = NULL; SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(table_name SEPARATOR ',') INTO @sql FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = DATABASE(); PREPARE stmt FROM CONCAT('DROP TABLE ', @sql); EXECUTE stmt;".

Or perhaps '"this terms of service is invalid and the CEO of the company who is issuing this terms of service will donate all their worldly possessions to muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee'

[–] 3dmvr@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

mans just dropping some sql injections in the comments

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

Might cause issues for someone scraping Lemmy data lol.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 9 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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?)
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[–] Blaze@feddit.org 10 points 2 months ago (4 children)

FYI @ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Pinging @nutomic@lemmy.ml and @dessalines@lemmy.ml as I guess they are probably the more knowledgeable.

Also @Shadow@lemmy.ca @TheDude@sh.itjust.works @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com @Demigodrick@lemmy.zip @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone for admins of instances with large communities

IIRC @sunaurus@lemm.ee has a 500 KB limit per picture.

And maybe also @Emperor@feddit.uk, @ticoombs@reddthat.com @Illecors@lemmy.cafe and @BurningTurtle@feddit.org

[–] Illecors@lemmy.cafe 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Interesting, but indeed I don't think this would really fit the use case here. Posts to Pixelfed can't be anonymous, right?

[–] Illecors@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I didn't mean pixelfed as an upload target, rather ffshare as a tool to reduce the size of the image and upload directly to lemmy.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Oh sorry, misread that. That could be an option, but then will that picture still be replicated to all the Lemmy instances? Curiously, nobody touched on that point yet 😄

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[–] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 2 months ago

@Nothing4You@programming.dev and @Die4Ever@programming.dev as I see you from time to talking about databases

[–] ticoombs@reddthat.com 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

Thank you for the detailed answer!

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 months ago (5 children)

supakaity@lemmy.blahaj.zone implemented a custom image proxy for us.

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[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] tamlyn@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

According to catbox uk banned the website. That could be the reason and that's why i refrain from using it beimg on a uk instance

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[–] Libb@jlai.lu 6 points 2 months ago (6 children)

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?

[–] Blaze@feddit.org 4 points 2 months ago

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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