@feditips @feditips
Q: Say I'm using the Mastodon app, looking at photos posted by other people on different instances. And maybe one looks great...so I decide to see what other photos that person has posted.

But in the app, I can only see remote photos back to 2-4 weeks (unless someone on my own instance has boosted the photo). I get it. My instance can't keep a copy of every photo in the fediverse - there has to be a limit.

I've learned that if I want to see someone's portfolio, I need to use my browser and essentially do my viewing as a guest on the remote instance, with limited functionality to like or comment while not logged in.

My question is: why can't the Mastodon app make an external lookup itself and show me an old photo from inside the app, without me having to switch to a browser? Is that a difficult thing for an app to do - to fetch old photos for a quick look-see on my phone or tablet, on demand, without burdening my instance with storing that photo?

Does that question make sense?