Mastodon: Allow gravatar for avatars

[clarfonthey]

It would be nice to allow using gravatar for avatars, so that people can synchronise their mastodon avatars with other websites easily. This would also be useful because the avatars could be higher resolution than the default 120×120.

[AirDur]

Gravatar isn't open and is a centralized service so i'm against this feature.

[clarfonthey]

@AirDur fair, but this doesn't actually remove the ability for people to upload avatars to instances and use those instead

[averageunicorn]

If this is done, please don't make it the default, rather let people click an extra thing to use gravatar. It's so bad to have an embarrassing picture from 5 years ago suddenly appear somewhere because you forgot this address had it associated. It could visibly/publicly connect someone to accounts that should have been forgotten long ago, or out trans people, etc.

[nolanlawson]

Gravatar is a centralized service but it is run by Automattic (WordPress) who have good open-source credentials. My hunch though is that we still wouldn't implement this since it defeats the point of decentralization…

The suggestion for >120x120 is a good one though, but should probably be made in a separate issue. :)

[Gargron]

Gravatar isn't open and is a centralized service so i'm against this feature.

I agree. We could try to download the gravatar image locally once, but:

It's so bad to have an embarrassing picture from 5 years ago suddenly appear somewhere because you forgot this address had it associated. It could visibly/publicly connect someone to accounts that should have been forgotten long ago, or out trans people, etc.

I just don't think gravatar is worth it, uploading an avatar is so simple.