I guess if you just link the images from Reddit it’s not that computationally intensive
The images are actually copied to the mirrored server.
Perhaps a system to make these opt-in, like a menu in the settings to select which bridges you want enabled could be added to Lemmy,
It’s not that simple to do that per user. You’d need:
An actual Reddit client per user
A Lemmy client with OAuth support so that the bridges don’t need to hold the user’s password.
An “official” map of reddit-to-lemmy communities, so that we know where to point all those bridges for posts. I’m working on such map, but I really don’t want to call it official unless it gets significant community support.
Is the opt-out solution aggressive? Yes, no doubt. But I thought that this “aggression” was pointed to Reddit and therefore justifiable. The whole reason that this approach forces its hand to be able to get the data is because Reddit API changes was a clear sign that they want to treat the data from the users as their own. The protests were not effective against this, and showed to Reddit that they can win any conflict against dissenting mods. If Reddit tracked back on their policies and showed to be a good steward of one of the most vast amount of user data, I wouldn’t be putting so much effort in this project.
If you can think of any other approach to make this work and is aligned with the clear goal of the project (make it easy for people to migrate away from Reddit, in a way that those that come here can already find their niche communities) I’m all for trying it.