Imgur is about to pull a Tumblr

[shevek]

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)

Melon, you spoke it into existence!

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."

[georgemoody]

Reminds me of Tinypic, I’ve seen the sad little dude too many times.

[PurpleHello98]

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. :/

[bingus_baby]

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".

[xero333]

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.