When a link to Pixeldrain is posted in Lemmy, it looks like all instances will grab a copy of the picture. This can be 30-50 servers going for it in the space of a minute or two. This is triggering Pixeldrain’s hotlink protection. So is Lemmy and Pixeldrain currently suited for each other?
Hmm, that’s tough. I may have to loosen the rules somewhat. Currently hotlink protection kicks in when the file has 5 times more downloads than views. Maybe I can remove the constraint for files below 10 MB.
The protection was originally put in place to prevent the spread of viruses though, not just to get people to pay. Viruses often spread by uploading themselves to file hosts and downloading themselves on other vulnerable hosts. I added the hotlink protection after a faulty virus downloaded itself 10 million times, causing pixeldrain to get overloaded.