Perhaps they would let the community solve the problem. However they are now stuck with the same issue any other company is that relies heavily on a 3rd party

Perhaps they would let the community solve the problem. However they are now stuck with the same issue any other company is that relies heavily on a 3rd party for a core component of their business. Namely, degradation in the experience of the 3rd party results in a perceived degradation of their own service as users view the experiences as one in the same. Most people probably realize that Reddit and Imgur are separate companies, but if a core part of their Reddit browsing experience gets messed up by Imgur, that is also Reddit's problem. Now, I'm sure the community could come up with something eventually, as inevitably happens when an image host gets too spammy. The issue is that it is not easy to trust every host, and frankly should be something Reddit owns to have better control over.