Mastodon: Feature: upload remote pictures via link

[saggel]

Coming from the forums world to mastodon I can't but miss a feature that also doesn't exist in the competing platforms: that of uploading a picture to your post that you found online.

I can imagine it'll be possible to have an option when you upload a picture to select whether you want to upload it from your computer, or to use an existing on the web, and in this case as to whether you want this to be a link or to transfer the picture to the server.

Here's a screenshot of this from a forum platform I used before mastodon

This is just do discuss whether it could be useful as a feature and maybe how could be done!
Keep up the good work!

---

• [x] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.
• [] This bug happens on a tagged release and not on master (If you're a user, don't worry about this).

[wxcafe]

There's two ways to implement this in the software:

• When you post a toot with a URL ending in .{png,jpg,jpeg,gif,...}, it interprets it as you posting a pic, retrieves it and attaches it to your toot.
• When it sees a URL ending in .{png,jpg,jpeg,gif,...} in a stream, it interprets it as an image, and either hotlinks it or retrieves it to display it.

I believe the second solution is what's implemented in BetterTweetDeck (cc @eramdam) but it could have privacy implications (since the user's machine would be retrieving arbitrary images from servers on the internet).

Just my two cents.

[saggel]

@wxcafe thanks for the idea for implementation :-)
I take it that you like the feature suggestion :-)

I'm about to open a whole new topic with this sentence, but wouldn't your idea for implementation work also for let's say youtube videos?

[wxcafe]

nah. Youtube videos aren't a (publicly-available) file, you can't just <img src=https://youtube.com/whatever> them. Images, on the other hand, can be linked that way.

[saggel]

Thanks :-) just had the thought :-)

[Komic]

I'm pretty sure parsing and serving them just like the current user-uploaded images would be the right call.

[br4nnigan]

the user's machine would be retrieving arbitrary images from servers on the internet

Isn't that what we're doing on the internet all the time? You never know what you're getting.

[fwenzel]

This appears to be a duplicate of #1162.