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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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I don't think that is actually true...
OK let's make a test. I have 2 accounts on sh.itjust.works, this is my lemmy.fmhy.ml account. I'll attach a pic, see where the link points to.
The link says lemmy.fmhy.ml 🤷.
The potential liability for instance owners due to this is massive. Images should be stored in the instances of the community they're posted to.
It's fundamental to the design of Lemmy's implementation of federation via ActivityPub that all content from an account be hosted on the account's instance.
If it's an ActivityPub feature, this is somewhat of a poor design if you ask me (or at least not being able to change this). He's right, this feature could put instance owners in legal problems, because the data in question is actually stored on their server, not the server that you posted the image on.
Indeed, this is a huge design flaw. You would basically have to police everything that users post on other instances as well. Do you even have moderation tools for this?
Yeah, you're right... but I think the problem is, the login info... but, than again, how could it store copies of my post, but not images.
In any case, I do agree that this is something that should be looked into and discussed in length.
I don't see why the login info is an issue, and storing a copy of a post wirh just a link to an image makes sense.
I really have no idea how other instances actually confirm that you're posting from another instance, not just emulating that you're a user on another instance. That might be a part of ActivityPub, but I haven't looked at code, wouldn't know.
This is part of the ActivityPub protocol, but I haven't looked into it enough to know how it's defined.
Huh. Well that just makes no sense structurally. Thanks for pointing it out though.
How does this thing work at all? You would expect it to all be hosted to the site the community is hosted on. So now when a comment thread is fetched, it has to go to all these other servers for every single comment from another instance. This is actually mind-boggling.
Does anyone have an ELI5 for why it's done this way?
https://lemmy.world/comment/20357
Breaking out old reliable. This comment has taught many Lemmings in its time
Actually, the post content is saved on the instance where the post is posted as well. That post is called a copy, the original resides on the poster's originating instance. But, not the media, no, that resides on the instance where the poster resgistered.
Basically everything goes through your instance. If you make a post, it goes to the copy of the community that's on your instance. Likewise if you comment. If you join a community, your instance starts listening for changes and stores those on the instance.
That way if another instance goes down, you still have a copy of all of the content there that someone on your instance is interested in. So that way pretty much everything is backed up.
I personally think we can do better, but it's an easy enough system that all but guarantees that content doesn't disappear. You could even set up an instance that never deletes anything if you want to make sure you don't lose any data.