Embedding videos doesn’t require local storage of videos. When you embed a YouTube video, you’re just linking a container which loads and displays the video from YouTube’s servers.

Yeah, my instance has a 100kb file size limit on images and recommends posting links as well. Not sure how that’s gonna play out long term. With sites like gfycat shutting down and nuking their content, I wonder if we’re exiting the era of free hosting and sharing as well.

I’m not sure if Lemmy already does it or not but I wouldn’t mind if it also compressed attached pictures to save on storage and bandwidth like some other forums does (eg compress picture to <1mb).

Huh. Good point. I kinda assumed differently. I have no doubt it’s heavily requested tho. Guess things just wont be as convenient.

You can use a userscript manager like greasymonkey to inject a javascript snippet that will hide images in comments which have obvious urls to gifs and replace them with actual links or hide them

here an example snippet:

(() => {
  let timerID;
  function onChange() {
    Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.comment-node img[src$=".gif"]')).forEach((e) => {
      const src = e.getAttribute('src');
      if (typeof src === 'string' && src.startsWith('http')) {
        e.setAttribute('src', '');
        const a = document.createElement('a');
        a.innerText = 'link to gif';
        a.href = src;
        e.parentNode.appendChild(a);
      }
    });
  }
  // if we have many mution events, wait until the site has settled
  function delayed_onChange() {
	  clearTimeout(timerID);
	  timerID = setTimeout(onChange, 500);
  }
  function init() {
	  // start observer
	  new MutationObserver(delayed_onChange).observe(document.body, {
	    attributes: false,
	    childList: true,
	    subtree: true,
	  });
	  delayed_onChange();
  }
  setTimeout(init, 500);
})();

I’m a bitter old man who dislikes inline gifs in the comments

I’ve waffled on this issue over the last 25 years, but agree that the option to show/block should still exist.

First I was against it.

• Mostly because it was change - cluttering my once pristine BBSs

Then I enjoyed it.

• Because it added some liveliness to the threads I read, and because I was in a smaller collective of folks that knew how to do it without being annoying.

Then I was against it again.

• Because the forums/boards because overstuffed with people shitposting ONLY animated gifs.

Using wefwef at the moment (Apollo inspired) you can use it on android desktop and iPhone as it is a webapp and they show up as a link for me that I can then click and doesn’t embed it or inline it.

I’m not aware of an option like that but that sounds like a good feature.

What client are you using? It plays as a GIF on the browser but it might be a still image in a mobile app.

It’s a gif for me.

Are you using an app or something that maybe doesn’t support it? Or on kbin or something maybe?

They block some countries. I’m in Indonesia and I can’t open catbox too without using VPN.

Catbox has a FAQ and lists connectivity issues in certain countries like Australia, Ireland/UK, Iran, Afghanistan or users of Comcast and Quad9.

What Lemmy client did you make these double posts from?

I think actual .GIF files are still used but oftentimes they’re just converted to .WEBM’s without sound.

Cat videos?

Hosting videos requires a lot of storage, before reddit hosting images/videos most used services where imgur, streamable, gifycat…

On small instances hosting videos could be an issue with storage and bandwidth, hosting externally is always a best option

But if Lemmy is going to be a serious Reddit replacement, it’s going to need to be able to host videos as well.

I’m speaking from the perspective as a reader on /r/combatfootage, but the reason why you want native hosting is because you want to avoid dead links. Videos go missing all the time, and it’s frustrating to go back to old posts and find that someone has removed the video. With native hosting you avoid that issue entirely.

One downside of using a 3rd party to host media is when it shuts down like gyfcat will in September, it will result in a lot of broken links with media forever lost.

Self hosting has less chance of losing the media at the cost of having to pay for media storage.

As a new website, I’d definitely prefer kbin or Lemmy to just focus on the core product and not self host media yet.

100% agree, I think adding native video was the first step in what felt like a progressive “TikTokification” of Reddit

Lemmy can already follow PeerTube channels. I’m sure proper support for this will hit kbin soon, too. People can utilize existing PeerTube instances, or set up their own if they’d like to publish videos to the fedi.

I think the community overrates how much it costs to store video. With proper compression (again, 1080p quality isn’t necessary) you can store a ton of video files. You just need to figure out the balance between quality and storage space.

This. I wish I could upvote more than once. Oh wait, I can. Boosts count double.

That’s gonna suck when all those gifs disappear

Sorry, I made a typo in the link. It should work now.

Because they left out the instance.

It’s because the Top is judged by the amount of boosts, not the favorites or upvotes.

Unfortunately it looks like Lemmy is going to get all the mobile apps, though.

Is there a setting to disable gifs and other images in comments? Or at least minimize them so I have to click before they appear?