Imgur is about to pull a Tumblr

[creaturefeature]

So some of you probably haven´t read this:



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.

[Cele]

I've used imgbox.com when I've needed a hosting site

[Skykristal]

imgbb is an option. I used it myself before for quite a long time (and sometimes still do)

[Melooon]

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

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.

[teatime]

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 :(

[kurohaato]

yikes! RIP to those old forum photos. I wish there was a good way to archive all those old photos and links.

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 for the same reasons. They've had all explicit stuff under an 18+ verification since, so it wouldn't be because of coppa.

[/home/user/]

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.

[Dodge2667]

i've never signed up for imgur thankfully, though namely because it's a centralised service

with that in mind, i definitely suggest self-hosting services where possible, and a neat tool i use is basedbin, which acts as a pastebin for all manner of file types, including images

that being said, when it comes to the point Melon made with regards to tutorials: i definitely recommend doing stuff in text where possible. it's convenient for a wide range of users, and you never know who's going to have interest in what you type - or who has access. for instance, i work in the terminal 90% of the time (including for surfing the web!), so i had to pull up a graphical browser just to see what's up with Imgur :P
either way, sucks that they're removing old posts - i can understand when it comes to pornography because AFAIK imgur posts can be seen outside of direct links, but to not be considerate about older posts is something that's sad. inevitable thanks to storage space, i bet (i'm sure they've got other motives behind what they're doing), but sad nonetheless

[creaturefeature]

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.

[shevek]

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.

[Melooon]

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)

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.

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! 

[creaturefeature]

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. 

[doubleincision]

i always got a terrible vibe from imgur, like i just knew this would happen to it eventually glad i started using my own hosting.

[MARI]

I use https://freeimage.host/ to host images that I use on my site

[zerofive]

archiveteam.org is on it.