I’m just going to include a section from the patch notes for Lemmy version 0.19.4.

There is a new config option called image_mode which provides a way to proxy external image links through the local instance. This prevents deanonymization attacks where an attacker uploads an image to his own server, embeds it in a Lemmy post and watches the IPs which load the image. Instead if image_mode is set to ProxyAllImages, image urls are rewritten to be proxied through /api/v3/image_proxy. This can also improve performance and avoid overloading other websites…

For the issue at hand, it appears to be related to Cloudflare based on the 403 error message when tying to view an image.

I still don’t understand crypto, but Throne appears to have worked fine. I look forward to an option with reoccurring automatic payments.