So now that Lemmy and the community overall are getting a lot of attention, with /c/memes being one of the biggest communities across instances, I think we should be a bit more strict about certain things.
I’d like your opinion, though. What do you think about a rule about only allowing images, and that such images need to be uploaded to Lemmy instead of linking to something like Imgur. I think that text and videos are a better fit for some other community (at least until we get something where we are able to play videos within Lemmy).
I agree with all of this, as long as video will be allowed once there is a useable player for it.
images need to be uploaded to Lemmy instead of linking to something like Imgur
Not a good idea, sites like Imgur allows lemmy to not store the data, which takes up a huge amount of space, accross all instances. It’s better to have image on the instance, yes, but after a bit of work, the lemmy’s devs can show external images inline, just like on reddit.
Not exactly true, unlike Mastodon I believe only the original instance stores the photo. Even when browsing a remote instance, you’re loading from their server.
I think it’s cached on federating servers - that’s why copies of beehaw communities still exist on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works despite defederating
The posts are cached, like the text and comments. The images aren’t AFAIK. The links to the images are also cached, and BeeHaw can’t tell what instance is accessing them, it just sees a request from each user’s computer for the image.
Agree with this, there’s also instances like mine that have a very low file size limit for uploaded images (100kb) in order to keep hosting costs down.
Imgur sucks but I do agree that the images should probably be uploaded to a different site
Sound good. You remember the time, where “meme” only applied to images? I do. I miss those times ;)
That could just have been an image in the comment.
I’ll count this as your first rule violation.
I remember when “meme” meant something that reflected information or behavior that had self-propogated to a degree that it entered the zeitgeist. Now it’s pretty much any picture that someone thinks is humorous, even if they made it themselves ten minutes ago. Something used to become memetic as a community function; now there’s people who sit around and try to come up with new “memes” by themselves, even as a way to make a living. Kind of like giving yourself a nickname, lol.
Well, to be precise a meme is a piece media that transfers culture, so it can be anything, although in this context it makes sense to only allow images/videos IMO.
Not sure if this is still the case, but I remember reading earlier that processing uploaded images was using some of the most resources on lemmy.ml’s servers at one point. Given the strain and load on the server already, I don’t think it would be a good idea to put even more on it by requiring images be uploaded directly
I’m neutral about only images and no videos part
Out of all image content, memes are hurt the least if they get downscaled to 400x400
Processing an image is a separate thing from serving images
Instead of Imgur, a good and private alternative, I think cceptable for Lemmy, is vgy.me, I use it in ShareX as image sharing. I prefer an extern host, I think it’s better for the one which put the Lemmy server to host the images. https://vgy.me
