BeAware
I was there was a workaround for the Mastodon DDoS by link preview issue.
Small publications can't have their links posted here because it can take their entire site down.
The fact that I could kill a small site for a few minutes just by posting a link, really really sucks.
FandaSin
It would be good if Mastodon have some sort of cache for those.
(and I have 0 idea how ANYTHING in Mastodon works, so I might be "talking s**t")
Just an idea.🤔
BeAware
@FandaSin the issue is, every server that the link lands on, requests a link preview. My instance is federated with 15,000+ instances.
There's not really a way, that I know of, to cache something like that cause each link is different and could be new to the instance or just a new link altogether.
Can't cache something that hasn't existed before.
Mike Elston
@FandaSin @BeAware there is, but the issue could be...
I share a link to a site. My instance generates a preview card, then my post gets federated to 5k additional servers, all generating their own preview cards.
Individual viewers are not necessarily creating extra traffic, but each instance is.
FandaSin
Thank you for explanation.👍
As I said before I don't know anything from internal working of Mastodon.
(I might be completely wrong and saying something stupid, as I do most of the time 😆)
Could it be possible to transfer "link preview" inside the toot?
What I mean - server on which toot was created would also create "link preview" and distribute it with toot.
BeAware
@FandaSin that's a good question I didn't think of, when you mentioned caching. I was under the impression you meant caching in a traditional sense. Because normal caching is done on a per server basis.
My cache doesn't interact with anyone else's cache.
BeAware
@Andres random side note: totally love you using the Fediverse logo.
As I'm sure you've seen, I'm *very* against changing it, like a lot are suggesting without thinking of consequences.🤦♂️
Andres Jalinton
@FandaSin @BeAware
And yes, it's a pain because small sites get basically DDoSed if someone on a big instance publish its link.
You can set rules on Nginx/Apache to dismiss :fediverse: software's requests since the name of the software is on the user agent.
FandaSin
Thank you for explanation.
Andres Jalinton
@FandaSin @BeAware
When you post a link in the :fediverse: all* servers (instances) generate its own preview card.
There is no way to cache it because different software scrape the original link for different metadata, that way you get one request for each server that federates with the original poster's instance.
*if the software they are running have the preview function incorporated.
Tom Casavant
@FandaSin @BeAware Yes this is possible and I think it's been discussed as a solution. The concern, last time I was reading about it, is that malevolent servers could poison a link preview and send fake images along with the url (this argument against this is you're already 'trusting' the server if you're federating with them, so that trust should extend to link previews)
Another proposed solution was just having servers wait a random amount of time before fetching the link preview so not every server is requesting the preview at the same time
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