MelonLand Forum
World Wild Web => ☞ ∙ Life on the Web => Topic started by: creaturefeature on April 21, 2023 @969.73
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So some of you probably haven´t read this:
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/c36ec28e694b20e4eac885eb72b007bb/d39479c3e7ce70a6-cc/s640x960/36fe447c03527915bbffd55baf39fe12f1865c69.pnj)
Considering how popular imgur is for image hosting specially with forums, this might mean a lot of old threads might become uncomprehensible and very prone to link rot.
Also I don't even trust their explicit content policy, since it can be possible for images to be false flagged, I mean just look what happened to Tumblr.
So what are the alternatives here? I´m thinking about finding a new hosting service myself. but I dunno It´s kinda sad watching it going the way of Photobucket or tinyjpg.
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I've used imgbox.com when I've needed a hosting site
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imgbb is an option. I used it myself before for quite a long time (and sometimes still do)
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Yes! I was gonna announce a PSA about this; ignoring the issue of punishing adult content, which is unacceptable although not relevant to this forum - removing old images used on forums is a huge issue! This could break tutorials, posts, and message contexts across so many sites :notgood:
It's a very good time to recommend people to host their images on a personal or neocities site! I'll also be removing the recommendation of Imgur from the forum guide.
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imgur as image hosting makes sense but i thought the sort of social media esque look you got when you actually went to look at an image was weird. are they removing explicit content because of coppa or something? whatever the reason is its unfortunate :(
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yikes! :ozwomp: RIP to those old forum photos. I wish there was a good way to archive all those old photos and links. :notgood:
are they removing explicit content because of coppa or something?
My guess is it's because of advertisers like what happened to tumblr, but we may never know. They stopped allowing nsfw reddit galleries back in 2019 (https://blog.imgur.com/2019/10/14/discontinuing-support-for-nsfw-reddit-subsections/) for the same reasons. They've had all explicit stuff under an 18+ verification since, so it wouldn't be because of coppa.
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Imgur is so sad to me honestly. It was born on Reddit as a "no bullshit" image hoster because all image hosters of the time had weird size limits, deleted them after a while, watermarked them or required lengthy approval processes; Imgur on the other hand was literally a one-click ad-free uploader with source hotlinking and all kinds of quality of life.
Nowadays it is trying to be a social network, has ads and a premium subscription plan, often does not allow viewing the original image especially not without an account... and now this. Imgur degraded into the exact thing it was designed to combat.
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[removed by author]
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Imgur is so sad to me honestly. It was born on Reddit as a "no bullshit" image hoster because all image hosters of the time had weird size limits, deleted them after a while, watermarked them or required lengthy approval processes; Imgur on the other hand was literally a one-click ad-free uploader with source hotlinking and all kinds of quality of life.
Nowadays it is trying to be a social network, has ads and a premium subscription plan, often does not allow viewing the original image especially not without an account... and now this. Imgur degraded into the exact thing it was designed to combat.
that´s the problem with a lot of modern sites these days they always feel like they gotta copy each other and the worst aspects to boot, to the point they become completely unrecognizable from their original purpose.
you have like Instagram trying to be tiktok instead of a site for photos, musk wants to turn twitter into an all purpose app like wechat instead of just letting it exist as a microblog platform, youtube trying compete with tv and streaming services instead of just being a place to upload videos...
And now this.
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Reminds me of all these websites, forum threads etc. you find and then the images were all hosted on tinypics and photobucket and are now gone. Annoying and sad.
Personally, I thought about using my Neocities to do so since I have the 50GB for the supporters, but considering how Neocities seems to be unavailable for hours every few weeks, I don't know. Currently I put my pics onto a Discord server channel titled website-static-images and copy the link. I trust that this is constantly available. It's still Discord, but my compromise for now.
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Currently I put my pics onto a Discord server channel titled website-static-images
Please don't do this! Discord is not an image hosting service; they have no obligation to host images - if they wanted they could flip a switch and block all external image loading tomorrow (and they will do this once their startup money starts to run out) :sad:
I can't speak for all forums - but this forum caches your images - so when you link an image here, the forum downloads the image (resizes and optimises it; particularly useful for older computers) and then stores it temporarily until the next server restart (weeks or months). So when this forum loads an image from whatever host you use, you're actually loading the image from this forums image cache - you can see it in action here here (https://images.melonland.net/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.discordapp.net%2Fattachments%2F1093545666451619931%2F1098657799271092224%2Ftumblr_pum5bx1EsO1vpf6ddo1_400.gif&w=1200&fit=inside&we&q=85&il&n=-1&default=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.discordapp.net%2Fattachments%2F1093545666451619931%2F1098657799271092224%2Ftumblr_pum5bx1EsO1vpf6ddo1_400.gif).
All that is to say that, it's not actually important if your image host is slow or unreliable, the forum will fix that; as long as it has great longevity - Discord is the opposit; it's fast, but it has no longevity! :defrag:
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well at the time of this writing i went to check on my spacehey profile and, what do you know, my profile is in shambles, with broken images.
I´ve been reading the bulletins others have posted there and its the same for everyone there.
Just entire layouts in disarray. Since spacehey doesn't allow to upload images, a lot of users have depended on imgur for their needs.
So this basically a taste for things to come, and its not even May yet. :sad:
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i always got a terrible vibe from imgur, like i just knew this would happen to it eventually :ohdear: glad i started using my own hosting.
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I use https://freeimage.host/ to host images that I use on my site
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archiveteam.org is on it.
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Please don't do this! Discord is not an image hosting service; they have no obligation to host images - if they wanted they could flip a switch and block all external image loading tomorrow (and they will do this once their startup money starts to run out) :sad:
Melon, you spoke it into existence (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/discord-will-switch-to-temporary-file-links-to-block-malware-delivery/)!
Discord will switch to temporary file links for all users by the end of the year to block attackers from using its CDN (content delivery network) for hosting and pushing malware.
"Discord is evolving its approach to attachment CDN URLs in order to create a safer and more secure experience for users. In particular, this will help our safety team restrict access to flagged content, and generally reduce the amount of malware distributed using our CDN," Discord told BleepingComputer.
"There is no impact for Discord users that share content within the Discord client. Any links within the client will be auto refreshed. If users are using Discord to host files, we'd recommend they find a more suitable service.
Discord developers may see minimal impact and we’re working closely with the community on the transition. These changes will roll out later this year and we’ll share more info with developers in the coming weeks."
After the file hosting change (described by Discord as authentication enforcement) rolls out later this year, all links to files uploaded to Discord servers will expire after 24 hours.
CDN URLs will come with three new parameters that will add expiration timestamps and unique signatures that will remain valid until the links expire, preventing the use of Discord's CDN for permanent file hosting.
While these parameters are already being added to Discord links, they still need to be enforced, and links shared outside Discord servers will only expire once the company rolls out its authentication enforcement changes.
"To improve security of Discord's CDN, attachment CDN URLs have 3 new URL parameters: ex, is, and hm. Once authentication enforcement begins later this year, links with a given signature (hm) will remain valid until the expiration timestamp (ex)," the Discord development team explained in a post shared on the Discord Developers server.
"To access the attachment CDN link after the link expires, your app will need to fetch a new CDN URL. The API will automatically return valid, non-expired URLs when you access resources that contain an attachment CDN URL, like when retrieving a message."
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Reminds me of Tinypic, I’ve seen the sad little dude too many times.
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It's not really a social site with a feed or anything, so why is it doing this? It's just an image host site, and it's not like people are likely to accidentally come across something they don't want to see. However, if it's anything like Tumblr, I doubt this ban will be very effective whatsoever. :/
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It's not really a social site with a feed or anything
Bad news for you, I think they want that. If you go to their home page it is quite literally a feed. Tags to explore content and all. If it doesn't have endless scrolling, is it really a website worth visiting ? (Jkjk, I'm just sick and tired of every site homogenizing.) It doesn't seem possible to follow someone, but the layout seems very "Pinterest Wannabe".
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Big mistake from Imgur IMO. I have a few images that were old reddit comments I made with links in, that I wanted to keep. I uploaded them to Imgur and bookmarked the links. Seeing this news though, I saved copies of them locally and also to other image hosting sites just to be safe.