As you may have noticed, user avatars from other servers are still broken. We had hoped that the upgrade to 4.2.0 would have solved this issue: the new version regularly checks avatars and refetches them. However, it seems this does not work in our situation where the links to the avatars are faulty (we're getting 404 and 403 errors, for the techies).

The solution we tested with one domain was to manually enter the database and remove all avatar links. In this case, the avatar and header images reappeared between one and seven days later.

The downside - there's always a downside - was that even the avatar images that were working, were gone for some time.

So how to proceed from here?
On yesterday's test run we've had 1151 domains with errors. This may not map 100% on the number of servers, but there's easily hundreds of legitimate ones. Some of these have thousands of users (mastodon.social being the biggest), some of them only one or two. But at least we have a list of affected domains now.

And so, to solve this problem, starting tomorrow, Wednesday, 11th October, and starting with the biggest instances, I will apply the solution we tested. This means things will seem to get worse before they get better! You will see working avatars disappear, but also the 'broken' image. Both will be replaced by a standard Mastodon image. Within some days the original images will start to reappear.

If you have a domain (server) that isn't being dealt with quickly enough, feel free to send me a toot!

I'm very sorry there isn't a better option at the moment; to create one would take much more time and I know this issue bugs us, so better bite the bullet now.