Still though if the limit is blocking a single image from being uploaded it's going to be pretty small. I can WhatsApp a 4K image because it'll do down sampling to 720p, it seems odd that the same tactic wouldn't be implemented here.
Resize without resampling is not resource intensive and appear not as good as resampling.
Still server has to
Accept file (needs bandwidth and storage space)
Resize (needs storage, RAM and CPU)
Clean up (needs CPU)
I don't know lemmy has this feature or not. Even if not, as Lemmy server get mature this feature might get implemented. Server might allow admin toggling this feature.
Recent attack on Lemmy servers with CSAM made server admins to completely turn off the image upload. That could also be the case here.
Even the server app itself does not know it's file size limit most of the time.
The fuck are you talking about? It's likely an ENV variable or config variable that literally HAS to be accessible to any file upload in order to even return this error message. Quit making shit up.
Server (application) does not know the site upload limit because it was set by reverse proxy. Any of them could reply with http 413 status and client will just show you the message like screenshot.