It’s conflicting because it depends™. By default Lemmy is configured to mirror images by remote instances so as to not overwhelm them with traffic. But most instances turn that off because of the storage cost.
Comment on What happens to the content if an Lemmy instance shuts down?
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Will images uploaded to lemm.ee be federated with the other Lemmy servers, or will they be permanently deleted?
I’ve heard conflicting answers to this question, and I’d like to get a definite answer.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 week ago
kobra@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
afaik those get deleted. However there shouldn’t be many images uploaded to that server specifically because the instance admins were really hesitant about ever opening image uploads much. They often advocated for using another 3rd party for image hosting.