FurryMirrorBot FAQ
Excuse the basic HTML, I'm not a web dev :P
What is FurryMirrorBot?
FurryMirrorBot is a Reddit bot (/u/FurryMirrorBot) that automatically mirrors images from other sources, for ease of use and sharing. This is particularly useful for sites like FurAffinity that require you to login to see some user submissions.
Didn't /u/fa_mirror already do this?
You would be correct! However, FurryMirrorBot is not limited to just FA. It mirrors from other sites, too. /u/fa_mirror also had issues with NSFW submissions on FA, presumably because of issues with its login code. FurryMirrorBot bypasses login all together and uses cookies to force login status, meaning it doesn't have to worry about logging in, and as such it can continue to fetch FA CDN links with no trouble. /u/fa_mirrors duties have been imported into FurryMirrorBot, in addition to its previous and additional features on top of that.
What about those "other sites"?
Not only does FurryMirrorBot parse FA, it will parse a variety of other upload sources, which can be found here. It can easily be modified to support other sites as well.
Who's running FurryMirrorBot?
sup, the name is vulpix. I'm the original creator and manage most of the interfacing on reddit (aka replying to comments :p). A friend has taken the liberty of maintaining the hosting and the code.
Why are images now hosted under i.vulpix.us?
FurryMirrorBot previously used Imgur as its image hosting site of choice. Unfortunately, after almost 6 years, Imgur has decided to ban all pornographic content from their service. While not all of the posts FMB mirrors meet this description, a fair amount do. There is no meaningful way for me to filter these and send them somewhere else. As it stands, I'm not aware of any large, good and stable image hosting providers with a good API in the SFW space. There are perhaps a couple in the NSFW space, but given that a lot of the bot's mirrored posts are SFW, I'm not going to use those services because it's not fair to the post authors to have their content uploaded and associated with NSFW sites. So, given this predicament, I enlisted the help of FMB's hosting provider to store mirrored images myself. The upside is that I have full control and can assure that the images will remain online. The only downside is that the host does not have a global CDN network. I've employed the use of CloudFlare though, which should keep i.vulpix.us relatively speedy.
Where is FurryMirrorBot running?
The bot is running on a host somewhere on the East Coast, US. It's running on an Ubuntu cloud server, written in Python 3.
Is the code open source?
The code is not open source at this time, however there is a Trello board where you can see the latest bugs/features being worked on.
Can you mirror posts in my subreddit?
Sure! Provided you are a furry themed subreddit, or a large portion of your posts are furry, and you are a moderator of said subreddit, I'll be glad to mirror your sub! Just get a hold of me.
I don't like your bot! >:(
I'm sorry! I don't take it personally, I will gladly stop monitoring your sub, just contact me. It's best if you don't just ban the bot user though, it causes some errors on my end and it would save me some trouble if you do a formal request.
I have a request!
If you have a feature request, or anything else really, you can contact me here.
I want to be excluded from mirroring.
You can be excluded from mirroring by following the link in the bot text marked "Opt-out".