box464, 23 days ago

@jenniferplusplus This is still my top blog post by far. There’s obviously a lot of interest in how this works. I really just wanted to know why some music sites showed an embedded player and others didn’t. It got out of hand. 😅

https://box464.com/posts/mastodon-preview-cards/

ernie, 23 days ago

@jenniferplusplus I didn’t even realize this was an issue until I read the It’s Foss post.

I run a way less prominent site than It’s Foss and I run my images in a static setup. I’m extremely surprised that they don’t do this.

ernie, 23 days ago

@jenniferplusplus I don’t want to blame them for this problem, but I do think they really need to reconsider how they handle image hosting.

nyquildotorg, 23 days ago

@ernie @jenniferplusplus I don't think the "include an image so it won't fetch meta" is universal to all of the fediverse.

I believe the issue with sites being hammered is more when every page served incurs a database hit because the CMS is doing stuff on the fly rather than anything specific to image hosting. (If your images incur a database hit I think you have bigger problems...)

The meta info is in the HTML, so every fediverse server (and even some fediverse clients) will fetch the entire page looking for meta to put in the preview. If your html is effectively cached this shouldn't be a problem. Mastodon should definitely mitigate how they can, but ultimately your hosting needs to handle requesting the same html file over and over and over without database overhead for each request.

ernie, 23 days ago

@nyquildotorg @jenniferplusplus Yeah, poor caching is likely the culprit. I should note that I run into issues from the other side of the coin where things cache way too well, and it requires a couple steps to get the front page to refresh.

ernie, 23 days ago

@nyquildotorg @jenniferplusplus I get slammed by Hacker News twice a month and I never have issues like they’re having

nyquildotorg, 23 days ago

@ernie @jenniferplusplus hacker news slamming is from users taking action. Mastodon slamming is from one single user taking one single action: posting a link.

nyquildotorg, 23 days ago

@ernie @jenniferplusplus I worded this badly. Hacker news causes thousands of people interested in seeing the link to click it, each one then causing a request to the remote server. On Mastodon, each server makes a request to the remote server whether anyone ever clicks it or not. All at the same time.

stefan, 23 days ago

@jenniferplusplus I understand that the issue with the last solution is trusting the server providing the information, with a potential for abuse.

One thought I shared elsewhere was adding an option for "trusted instances", see conversation here: https://stefanbohacek.online/@stefan/112367378286270975

I'd love to hear what folks think about that idea.

jenniferplusplus, 23 days ago

@stefan yeah. There would be a lot of benefit to have more sophisticated trust assessments than just block or allow. This is one of them.

stefan, 23 days ago

@jenniferplusplus Great!

I left a note on an ongoing conversation here, if you'd like to share your thoughts.

https://gist.github.com/renchap/3ae0df45b7b4534f98a8055d91d52186?permalink_comment_id=5043741

thisismissem, 22 days ago

@stefan @jenniferplusplus I honestly think solution 5 is the way to go, everything else solves for just mastodon, but every fediverse software that needs link previews has this problem.

Back in the day embed.ly used to be that service for many startups.

jenniferplusplus, 22 days ago

@thisismissem @stefan How would this service get funded? The fediverse is already financially unsustainable, adding in an unfunded centralized service seems like a recipe for disaster.

thisismissem, 22 days ago

@jenniferplusplus @stefan I'd hope that's where some partners like fastly or others may step up? Obviously funding this would be a thing to solve.

jenniferplusplus, 22 days ago

@thisismissem @stefan I'm struggling to imagine a scenario where that doesn't turn into a Trojan horse for ad tech surveillance