May 02, 2024 12:42:00

Report that every time a link is shared on Mastodon, a massive load hits the linked server

When you post text that contains a URL to Mastodon, a link preview is generated along with the URL. It's FOSS, a news site that handles open source related information, is experiencing downtime several times a day due to an increase in requests caused by Mastodon's link preview generation.

Please Don't Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here's Why!

https://news.itsfoss.com/mastodon-link-problem/

On Mastodon DDoS'ing Sites • Michael Nordmeyer
https://michaelnordmeyer.com/on-mastodon-ddosing-sites

It's FOSS's servers time out multiple times a day. This timeout occurs when a link to It's FOSS is shared on Mastodon or when a post containing a link to It's FOSS is boosted.

It's FOSS uses Cloudflare as a CDN service, but still experiences issues every time a post is shared on Mastodon. Mastodon is the only SNS that affects It's FOSS's servers, and requests from other SNS are not a big problem.

Mastodon manages link preview data separately for each instance. Therefore, when a URL is posted to one instance, a request to generate a link preview is sent not only from that instance but also from linked instances. This is thought to be the reason why a large number of requests are generated every time a link is shared on Mastodon.

The Mastodon development team is

aware of the link preview issue, and at the time of writing, the resolution of the link preview issue is set as a milestone for version 4.4.0. However, since the release version of Mastodon at the time of writing is 4.2.8, the problem may not be resolved until the next major version upgrade. For this reason, It's FOSS is asking Mastodon to increase the priority of the issue.