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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