This may be a redundant question. I have tried finding a resource but haven’t had luck.
I am planning on setting up a mastodon server, just for me and close family, mostly because I want to see my domain name after the @ , but also because I’m really getting into self hosting again.
The big thing for Mastodon I fear is storage. I have a setup where I use Blackblaze to store content. And retrieve it publicly.
But is there a way to simply replace uploads to directly post to imgur or similar and display the image via a direct link from there ?
I know imgur can just shut down your account anytime, and your images would be lost.
But I have a feeling my family and friends won’t be posting anything, let alone anything of importance
Thank you kindly for any assistance
Mastodon doesn’t just use storage for local image uploads. It pulls, thumbnails and saves images from any incoming posts, including the thumbnails you might see on website links (pulled from the opengraph data most websites implement)
It’s possible to set a pretty short timeout for that data though.
Just to validate my thoughts. Could the server, fetch the remote image, duplicate it onto a hosting service, grab the link, and replace the “pulled” image’s post with the hosted link ?
I guess it could if you knew how to program that. But I’m wondering what is wrong with the idea that I’m not thinking about.