There is an interesting article titled "Please Don’t Share Our Links on Mastodon: Here’s Why!" about the startling load that Mastodon's mass-distributed link preview generation has on small independent webservers. But I cannot link it to you, because of a reason
@mcc i wish i could remember what it’s called but a few years ago someone on fedi built a redirecting preview cache you could link to instead? no idea if it’s still up though or who made it 😅
jort.link - a solution to fediverse request floods

A URL redirector and shield to solve fediverse request floods.