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To image cache or not to image cache (indie-ver.se)
submitted 1 day ago by ssnoer@indie-ver.se to c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://indie-ver.se/post/39594

I am the admin of the newly created instance https://indie-ver.se/, and it's been going great. But as I was looking to migrate all images to a S3 bucket, I noticed, the images take up more space than I had anticipated, a bit over 1 GB. And I know for a fact, that there has not been many images uploaded to this instance directly.

My best guess is, that it's because lemmy by default creates local thumbnails for external posts, via. the setting "image_mode: StoreLinkPreviews". Lemmy does allow me to disable this behavior, i.e. it would not cache the thumbnails on my instance, and instead have browsers request the image from the other instances.

The question is, what impact would that have on my users, and what impact would it have on the fedi-verse in general? I believe it would save me a lot on future storage costs, but I don't know if it's worth it.

- ssnoer

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[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 4 points 1 day ago

I think this should default to off. Lemmy is heavy enough as it is. Caching images from unknown sources just puts additional unneeded strain on all your resources.

Apart from that when some dipshit decides to post CSAM again to another instance you could be liable if you get them on your server.

Much better to turn caching off instead of dealing with those problems.

[-] ssnoer@indie-ver.se 4 points 1 day ago

Yup, yup and yup. The only CSAM protection I have currently, is Cloudflare warnings, better minimize the amount the potential for such things to be hosted by me.

this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
19 points (100.0% liked)

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