YSK alternatives to imgur for uploading your images
Imgur now blocks several VPNs and have issues loading embedded previews in several fediverse platforms. So instead of using imgur, you could use one of the following alternatives for uploading your images.
I just created a Catbox account since everyone in this thread has been mentioning it. It allows me to create an album after uploading images to my account and I can add a description. But I can’t customize the order the album lists the pictures or place a description on specific pictures.
Edit: for some reason it’s acting like the link a a lemmy instance? It works if I paste it in my browser… Edit 2: okay thunder app and connect app consider the /c/a Lemmy page, while Voyager has no issue
Postimages support that. They will give a gallery link if you upload multiple files together. If you have a free account, then you can add or remove images from the galleries later as well.
Before anyone mentions 0x0.st or ttm.sh as alternatives, both of them will delete your files within a year of being uploaded so do not use them for anything permanent.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. The individual hosts of the Fediverse are limited on space, and jamming that limited space full of images, rather than using an external image hosting service, is worse for the sustainability of these spaces
Because pretty much all instances are being run by volunteers and hobbyists, and not a for-profit who is profiting from your content. This is just something nice to do for reducing the resources they require to run the service.
I understand that. You and I are decent human beings, but a lot of people are dicks. So the instance owners should be the ones active at protecting their resources.
Someone somewhere has to host the image. Realistically it should be the same people hosting the instance so you don’t run into cases where historical posts have all their images dropped. In an absolute ideal world everyone selfhosts their own images, but that’s an absolute fantasy.
@aleph As an instance admin myself, we are looking into fine-tuning those settings to limit uploads of an x amount in file size. But are we are looking into some thumbnail library to reduce the image sizes indeed.
Uploading directly uses server resources which are voluntarily provided, that's why using external providers and just posting links instead is usually better.
They look good. Large size limit of 200 mb and NSFW-friendly. But unfortunately, according to their FAQ, they are blocked in Australia, UK, Ireland, Iran and Afghanistan (the latter two are not surprising though).
they are blocked in Australia, UK, Ireland, Iran and Afghanistan
Seems to be blocked for a friend from the philippines too iirc. Combined with other replies saying they can access it from some of these, I assume that list is outdated.
Also in Aus here, using ISP DNS, not blocked. I think what you generally find is that most ISP’s just don’t do the DNS blocks, even if they’re required to. Like you said, it’s very easily circumvented and also it just doesn’t lead to any measurable outcome other than the ISP customer’s dissatisfaction in some cases. It’s probably more profitable to retain the customers and deal with whatever regulatory blowback.
They are a lot smaller than something like Imgur some they probably don’t have worldwide CDN to distribute images, so it will probably depend on the location where you are, but their offering of public API defintely outweights any possible slowdowns for me.
Lemmy instances have quite small size limits compared to other services. And all of them are vulnerable to DMCA takedowns as they have to comply with the laws of the host country, but unless you plan on hosting CSAM you are good with either choice.
But all have a good track record for keeping images online without deleting.
One downside is that images uploaded to lemmy.world are hosted on lemmy.world. If the instance ever goes down those images are gone since federation does not propagate the files. This is less of an issue for that specific instance, but I could see smaller instances disappearing and causing issues with broken image links.
Images could eat up the server resources of your instance. Using a third-party service reduces the burden on them.
Anything that you don't host yourself are vulnerable to takedowns. But as someone who has been using postimages.org for many years now, I have never had any such issue with them, and haven't heard of anyone else facing them as well. The other three services I linked also have a good reputation as reliable services.
A downside to hosting images externally is that these image hosts can go down before the Lemmy instance does, leaving many posts without context. One should keep this in mind when choosing where to upload their images.
From what I understand reading this thread, if instanceA goes down, any images hosted there are lost, while the comments will still exist because they’re federated. You’re only shifting the responsibility of hosting the image from a site like imgur to the home instance of the poster.
I guess it comes down to if you’re concerned about how long your home instance is going to be around for, use an external host, or see if/when account migrations are added if images move too (although they would also have to fix the src for wherever the image is now being hosted)
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