A Mastodon server probably shouldn't pre-fetch media in the toots it receives.
Instead, make the clients request the media from their local server, if it isn't present then the client does a direct request to the source, then sends the result back to their local server for other people to use.
Opportunity for shenanigans of course, if this first client decides to hand back something incorrect. However, you could defend against this in a number of ways, such as random client cache misses to make sure your user population converges on truth, or for smaller servers with a community-oriented base, just accept it.
This seems much more "distributed" than having a central server responsible for everything.
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@yojimbo what you describe is a hash check
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@saxnot That's certainly one way to do part of the check.
Things get complicated when you consider that any of the clients submitting their media for local cache might be lying; and when the upstream changes the contents available from the URI.
If upstream only published content using a content hash as an identifier ... that would be interesting.
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@yojimbo i'm not saying this
in fact I think it makes no sense what you propose.
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@saxnot /shrug that's OK, I didn't put much longer into thinking about the suggestion than it took me to type. And already I've had a few helpful comments in response, so that's good too. I don't need to be "right" all the time :-)
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