Oh it’s even stupider than that.

In most cases it’s, A. Just a link which happens to be a jpg. Which means it the website wants to change the jpg they can or if the website goes down it points nowhere.

Or B. Just a hash, which might supposed to be a unique representation of a specific image, but really is just a string of characters, so different sites might disagree what that image is.

Exactly. I know in “internet time” it’s been forever. Reddit kicked me out. Lemmy (and similar sites) exploded with users. Twitter closed out strangers. Threads launched. Twitter opened the door a little. Lemmy instances experienced an XSS and were vandalized. Some are still down or in various states.

It’s been a crazy week. One fucking week, and it was a vacation week (for many).

And I know this entire investigation is into accounts before all that. I just hope the folks (admins) take a minute to really let this all play out a little bit and sink in.

That’s me. I’ve been creating multiple accounts and hopping around. It’s only been a week so nothing permanently planted quite yet.