Nostr Web Client

I was looking for how to speed up nos.social with loading images and I thought about proxying the images, so they're smaller and served through a CDN... turns out that Iris already does that!

Using https://imgproxy.iris.to/ and the https://github.com/imgproxy/imgproxy tool.

I didn't see a discussion about it, but i think it's interesting. On one level, it's a privacy issue, you take requests which were being logged at what ever url they find in a nostr post, which leaks a bunch of info... and puts it in a proxy. So it protects privacy but also shifts where your ip address is logged to iris's relay. This actually feels like it is a step forward for privacy, but it is a tradeoff. Getting smaller images served faster is the primary benefit. If nostr is going to compete with centralized apps it needs to feel snappy. CDN's help a lot with that.

Scuttlebutt directly shares media from peers, and it's very slow, often the no peer with the media you want is online when you're viewing it. Many apps, including planetary, don't do a good job at downscaling the images for resolutions needed to view in an app, so the files are bigger than they need to be as well.

https://nostr.build/i/nostr.build_95bb7ab1602652b152795511012747fafcbc040bf0adac220cd833cc5a0ff817.jpeg" class="embedded-image" loading="lazy">

s3x_jay 2y ago 💬 1

#[2] does proxying? I know #[3] does it. I’m not sure what I think about it. Snort does crazy compression to the point that my pics look like crap. If Iris is doing it, then it’s great - things are nice and crisp. (Need to look at the URLs when I’m not on a phone).

The screenshot is why I think Iris doesn’t do it.

Would be nice to offer to #[4] users. But I’ll probably have to run a client on my domain to make that happen. Would be nice if the clients let you pick the proxy service.

That said, I do worry about the legal implications of being a proxy. It’s possible things like CSAM are (briefly) on your server. BUT clearly with proxy there’s no intent to break the law.

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Discussion

Iris 2y ago

Image loading on Iris is done via a proxy to resize and avoid IP leaking unless it's from a whitelisted (e.g. imgur.com and nostr.build) service.

https://docs.iris.to/features/privacy-and-security#privacy-on-uploaded-images