Very few lemmy instances actually proxy images, and this makes it impossible to run image transforms (compression and resizing). this leads to a lot of scenarios where some profile picture that gets rendered at 24x24px is actually downloading a full-size 4K image. additionally, you've connected to hundreds of domains in the process of scrolling your home feed, leaking your IP address to all of them.

i'm working on a centralized image proxy that solves these problems (though it's not locked into photon, it depends on environment variables). it'll roll out on phtn.app for now.

Comparison

Compact mode, loading 1 page on home feed

• Unproxied: 836 KB downloaded, 30 domains
• Proxied: 76 KB downloaded, 1 domain