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Having a third party host Reddit's images gave away a bunch of control to the point that imgur has its own community based upon the site . At the time Reddit di
by zitterbewegung 10y ago
Having a third party host Reddit's images gave away a bunch of control to the point that imgur has its own community based upon the site . At the time Reddit didn't have the resources to make a competitor but this seems to be a good move now that imgur is doing dark patterns.
- EpicEng 10y ago>imgur is doing dark patterns Would you mind explaining that to me? I've never heard the term. Edit: Nvm, sorry; easy to google.
- funkyy 10y agoFor everyone else wanting to save Google's bandwidth bill: "Dark Patterns are User Interfaces that are designed to trick people."
- Others 10y agoWhat dark patterns are they implementing?
- ChrisGranger 10y agoI'd guess they're referring to the way Imgur puts sponsored content in among the images now, looking almost like any other user-uploaded post. Edit: evidently, direct image links are serving ads on mobile. I haven't tried it to confirm this myself.
- finnn 10y ago"direct" links to an image uploaded sometimes/usually redirect to imgur page, with lots of ads and shitty content, obnoxious, animated overlays that block out part of the image on mobile, etc
- dopamean 10y agoWeird. I've never experienced this or heard of it.
- yxlx 10y agoI've seen it. It depends on the referrer. When coming from Reddit, visitors will not be redirected.
- GhotiFish 10y agotest link: http://i.imgur.com/PhY2HUP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PhY2HUP.jpg is this happening for anyone in thread? maybe try holding down CTRL and hammering the link to see if it's a probability thing? I have never seen the behavior being described.
- mobilerastafari 10y agoFollowing that link on mobile safari leads to a page that contains ads and comments in addition to the image.
- sillysaurus3 10y agoResult: http://i.imgur.com/86BlJiS.png http://i.imgur.com/86BlJiS.png There does appear to be some kind of heuristic at work here. For example, following the above link results in the traditional behavior for me, but following your link leads to the full imgur page. EDIT: Ah-ha, figured it out. 1. Click on an i.imgur.com link 2. If it takes you to the full page, right click on the image and click "Open in new tab" 3. The original i.imgur.com link will now take you to the direct image. Amusing heuristic. After following these steps, I'm unable to reproduce my own screenshot. http://i.imgur.com/PhY2HUP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PhY2HUP.jpg always takes me to the direct image.
- ThisIs_MyName 10y agoI got redirected only on the first click. Thank god for uBlock Origin.
- yoodenvranx 10y agoThe biggest problem with imgur is that their mobile site is slow and sluggish as hell. On my Moto G2 loading and rendering even a single image takes way longer than it should be so I guess there is a lot of "beautiful" Javascript hackery going on in the background doing who-knows-what.
- tehbeard 10y agoMy money is on the JavaScript for the stupid ass swipe left/right functionality and cat paw. The same functionality that loves to go off when I'm scrolling down on an album and lose my position.
- unlinker 10y agoThe cat paw is absolutely obnoxious. It's funny that a service that started to get rid of all the crappy image hosts would do that. I can understand the redirect to a page with ads, and even showing unrelated images. But the cat paw... what in hell.
- ascagnel_ 10y agoEspecially since it only shows up when you're directly linked to a single image or album. Even worse, it seems to link only to unrelated content.
- cloudwalking 10y agoTo be fair, bandwidth isn't free. Imgur can't serve hotlinked content for free, forever.
- beedogs 10y agoThen they should never have started. Why does every 'free' service on the Internet inevitably devolve into an ad-laden, tracker-enabled shitfest?
- beambot 10y agoBecause they probably aren't charities, and can't afford to donat e Free resources for your perpetual enjoyment?
- beedogs 10y agoThen we're back to my initial point: they never should have started as one.
- Dr_tldr 10y agoI imagine you in a grocery store somewhere, railing against free samples. "You never should've given me a piece of sausage if you were going to start charging for them."
- beedogs 10y agoThat is possibly the worst analogy I've ever read on HN.
- tripzilch 10y agoOnly if you speak Dutch.
- briandon 10y agoNot comparable since supermarket in-store free samples are tiny servings of a product you can purchase in the same establishment. Supermarkets wouldn't allow, much less encourage, anyone to consume large numbers of free samples instead of buying the actual for-sale product.
- sotojuan 10y agoProbably not the right answer, but I only upload to imgur with a CLI client. You get a direct link back that has never shown that behavior. Also if the client only outputs the direct link you can pipe it to `pbcopy` on Mac to put the link in your clipboard.
- finnn 10y agoNo, you get a link that looks like a direct link (eg https://i.imgur.com/whatever.png https://i.imgur.com/whatever.png) but it's not (always) a direct link. This is what people are complaining about. Sending that link to people sometimes results in them getting redirected to the ad-laden imgur page.
- sotojuan 10y agoLike I said, that hasn't happened to me ever in the couple of years that I've used that method. The people I send links to would complain. I do believe you though—sounds like something they'd do.
- riffraff 10y agoprobably they only do it IFF the image receives a sustained rate of visualizations? That would explain why it didn't happen to you (nor me) for "simple" usage.
- yacn 10y agoThe "direct links" only ever redirect to the non-direct version on mobile for me. Doesn't happen on desktop though.
- finnn 10y agoI get redirected to the shitty ad page even on my desktop now.
- stordoff 10y agoI've seen the direct links get redirected to the non-direct page on desktop. It appears to still happen if, e.g., the link is on Twitter - random example https://twitter.com/SilentRENE/status/735732252877819904 https://twitter.com/SilentRENE/status/735732252877819904 (seems to be inconsistent - first time I was redirected, but now it goes directly to the image. Opening the Twitter page in another browser also resulted in a redirect)
- ljk 10y agoalso on mobile, every time you look at a photo there's a banner encouraging you to get its app
- onli 10y agoNone of that is a dark pattern. A dark pattern is an UI design that motivates users to use the program/site in a way profitable to the site, but contrary to users' interest. To trick people, see http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/. Redirecting to the whole page instead of the link is just a hotlink protection (as debatable as that is for an image hoster). Animated overlays in mobile is just shitty advertising and UX. But no dark pattern here. I saw that multiple times here on HN now that people misuse the term. It's a pity, the original idea is something to be aware of, and diluting what dark pattern means hinders that awareness.
- tomtomtom777 10y ago> A dark pattern is an UI design that motivates users to use the program/site in a way profitable to the site, but contrary to users' interest. Doesn't this definition cover all advertising ?
- mschuster91 10y ago> "direct" links to an image uploaded sometimes/usually redirect to imgur page Actually I like this. It's so stupid that people directly link to the image - I'm always interested in reading the imgur comments, and especially the text comment by the uploader.
- Crespyl 10y agoAnecdotally, you are the first person I've ever seen say this. Most people I've seen vastly prefer direct links, since all they want is the image content. It's likely significant that I mostly encounter imgur links via reddit, which of course has its own comments/community.
- zitterbewegung 10y agoOther comments on this thread say image posts not working on mobile and virus warning ads .
- hsod 10y agoOn iOS, they override the swipe-from-left-to-go-back gesture and instead use it to cycle you through new images.
- geon 10y agoThat's an OS gesture. It can't be overridden. If it cycles you to another image, you did't begin your swipe far enough to the left.
- izym 10y agoPlease do find a source that backs this.
- geon 10y ago1) It appears I was wrong. I just tested in "private" mode, since it never happens to me otherwise. 2) WHAT THE HELL, IMGUR?
- mtmail 10y agoThis suggests that's exactly what they did. Includes a screenshot https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/46cjo5/i_just_want_to_say_fuck_imgur_for_overpowering/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/46cjo5/i_just_want_...
- geon 10y agoEdit: I was wrong. Apple, please fix.
- vincentbarr 10y agoOn mobile, Imgur has the most distracting, obstructive, and bewildering modal window I've seen. I'm not being hyperbolic; it's worse than the dark patterns on Forbes.com. It's in the form of a cat's claw, animated – sliding and extending from the top of your screen almost to the bottom – and slow, making users either click it accidentally or wait in frustration until it can be closed. Despite having seen it countless times, I still don't even know what it's designed to do or what action it's prompting me to take (e.g. login, capture my email address, etc.).
- JamesMcMinn 10y agoI often get "authentic" looking "Your Android device is 63% infected! Install this software to fix it" scams on mobile when opening gifv files on imgur. To top it off, they make my phone vibrate and hitting back just reloads the page and causes another long vibration, which is infuriating. If that isn't a dark pattern, I don't know what is. It only happens when coming from reddit if I open an incognito tab in chrome (chrome opens incognito tabs in the foreground, rather than the background, which saves me a bunch of taps). It never happens if I use normal tabs, which leads me to believe they're only doing it for non-reddit referers or direct links.
- garrettgrimsley 10y ago>If that isn't a dark pattern, I don't know what is. It isn't. What you are describing is better describe as malicious advertising, or malvertising.
- JamesMcMinn 10y ago"A Dark Pattern is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills." [1] Presenting an authentic looking UI dialogue which appears to come from the operating system, and using vibration to further impose the authenticity of a dialogue as having come from the operating system seems very much to be covered under any definition of dark pattern I can find. The aim is to make you click the ad, and they use dark patterns to do that. Simply because the ad content is "malvertising" doesn't mean it's not utilizing dark patterns. [1] http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/
- garrettgrimsley 10y agoI checked out that site before commenting. All of the examples they use are of sites that employ the so-called dark patterns as part of a larger, otherwise legitimate site. So while your ad fits the definition that they offer I believe that, given the examples listed, the label is applied more narrowly. This might just boil down to descriptivism vs prescriptivism.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- flashman 10y agoI want to know whether Imgur's dark patterns are because the site isn't profitable, or because it isn't profitable enough. Because they've sort of cut their own throat here, and it would be interesting to know whether it was from necessity or greed.
- wingerlang 10y agoLots of image upload sites does this, start out good and eventually add a lot of crap to monetise. Does it mean they cut their throat or does it mean the creator just set himself up for a life of money? Genuine question, maybe this is just a way to become rich, maybe these shitty upload sites make enough money that they simply pick this way instead of keeping it pure.
- Melk 10y agoMy guess is that imgur started out profitable but that ended when gifs became popular. /r/all is about 50% gifs nowadays. The low bandwidth of an image host makes it possible to allow hotlinking but that doesn't work with videos.
- derefr 10y agoGood point! I distinctly recall Imgur being started because it was one of those "this used to be something hard, but now Moore's law has made it easy" services. Imgur could afford to allow hotlinking because actually serving images had become a trivial cost. Because no other image-host had capitalized on this, Imgur cleaned up—for a while. Once people started shifting to sharing content mostly as really-inefficiently-compressed ten-second videos (which are still pretty large when efficiently recompressed), Imgur's original business model was dead in the water. Maybe one day gifs will be as cheap to serve as images are now—but it won't be any time in the next few years.
- kbrosnan 10y agoAny modern browser visiting imgur gets H.264/WebM instead of the uncompressed gif. They introduced this 2.5 years ago. After a couple smaller gif only sites made the practice popular. https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/ https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/
- ljk 10y agoit's funny that imgur is turning into the sites it was replacing in the first place
- beefsack 10y agoI get the feeling that Imgur set unrealistic expectations when it launched, and they can become very difficult to back away from when they become untenable.
- madeofpalk 10y agoImgur launched as a side project, a 'gift' to the reddit community. While I certainly can't speak to the intentions of the founder, I would assume that he didn't have many exceptions at all.
- raverbashing 10y ago"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" (or until you get an investment from less ethical companies) But to be honest monetizing things like imgurl is hard. Most of the users cost more than they earn I think with adblockers becomming more common we'll have to think of better ways of coming out with feasible arrangements. Sharing bandwidth between users? JS bitcoin mining (or some other kind of processing)? Mechanical Turk style work for users?
- conceit 10y ago> Most of the users cost more than they earn I call bullshit. Can you spell datamining? also: native advertising.
- raverbashing 10y agoSure, good luck datamining a hotlinked image (or showing ads there)
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- 27182818284 10y agoI know several people that don't know that imgur was born from Reddit, so I am also happy to see this.
- Aoyagi 10y agoWell, their "gifv" "innovation" was enough for me to stop using them completely.
- Dylan16807 10y agoThe ability to host a silent webm and then link to either gif version or webm version is something you find negative? My only annoyance there is that sometimes the embed bugs out a bit, but that's mostly firefox's fault.
- Houshalter 10y agoOn the other hand it let reddit offload most of their bandwidth to Imgur, and I don't think they lost much ad revenue over it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bluedino 10y ago>> At the time Reddit didn't have the resources to make a competitor But a self-funded (and then donations) college student working in his spare time did.
- pionar 10y agoIt's called priorities. Reddit didn't need an image uploading service, it had other shit to worry about.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago>>> to the point that imgur has its own community based upon the site The interesting thing is there are a ton of people who are on Imgur that have no idea Reddit exists and vice versa. A lot of people on Reddit have no idea Imgur has its own thriving community.
- ghostbrainalpha 10y agoWhat is the dark pattern that Imgur is doing?