We have a bunch of instances hosting basically the same images multiple times. Using IPFS we could increase the availability of images for users with almost no cost to instances. I have heard rumors that pict-rs can’t be easily scaled up due file system based storage and would need a rewrite.
I think Fediverse is major thing where using IPFS on the decentralized network makes sense.
The pict-rs config seems to indicate a default media retention time of “7 days since the file was last accessed” for proxied images.
I do see very old files in my folder, though. I think something is not working right here. I’ve configured PICTRS__MEDIA__RETENTION__VARIANTS and PICTRS__MEDIA__RETENTION__PROXY now, maybe that’ll help.
i don’t actually think lemmy uses pict-rs’s caching functionality. afaik it uploads remote images just like it does local ones. that’s for if you want to use it stand-alone as the imgur clone it was intended to be (and not what lemmy shoehorned it into)
I see. I’m guessing this is only for v0.5.0 alpha because I don’t see these options in the v0.4.2 release.