squiblet

It’s difficult to display an image without the client knowing the URL, but it would be possible to use a temporary URL that only works for that signed-in user.

I think that’s the best solution. I can’t see a reason any client couldn’t upload the image when the post is submitted. Currently the uploader is some fancy javascript deal and it’s unnecessary.

S3 is expensive, while if you use a third party like img.bb or imgur, you never know when they will close, accidentally lose your data, or decide to delete it.

Yeah, this is only if what OP was saying was a real legal threat, which I don’t think it is.

That is essentially what I was saying. It does seem like it would take a scripting element in addition to SQL.

Sites like reddit could have about the same problem. You can post to some obscure profile and use reddit as image hosting and it might take quite some time before anyone notices. This is a little worse though because it wouldn’t even be listed on a profile page.

Not familiar with Lemmy specifically, but usually in an app like this, while of course the files are stored on a filesystem, IDs and metadata are stored in the DB and associated with each other through relations. It seems in this case one way to express it would be ‘don’t delete every image that is associated with a valid post or in-use avatar, but delete everything else’.

Take this random image for instance: https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ede63269-7b8a-42a4-a1fa-145beea682cb.jpeg
associated with this post: https://lemmy.world/post/4130981

Highly likely the way it works is there is an entry for post 4130981 that says it uses ede63269-7b8a-42a4-a1fa-145beea682cb, or an image table with a relation to the post table where an image entry (with whatever ID) that is ede63269-7b8a-42a4-a1fa-145beea682cb says it is related to post 4130981. Whatever the specifics, it would be possible.

I haven’t worked with Lemmy, but I certainly could craft a script to do that if I was familiar with the database structure. Perhaps I’ll try installing it and running an instance. In the meantime, surely there’s someone with an instance and SQL skills who could figure that out.

It would not be difficult to use SQL to delete any images that are not associated with a post or active as an avatar etc. So, set that to be run periodically and it would solve this problem.

Seems like more of a lateral shift than a downgrade