11 ms·

Tumblr 2.0 incoming? It's a not-so-unspoken fact that a lot of social media platforms are popular because they have tons of pornography. Reddit, Twitter, OnlyF

by mjr00 4y ago

Tumblr 2.0 incoming? It's a not-so-unspoken fact that a lot of social media platforms are popular because they have tons of pornography. Reddit, Twitter, OnlyFans (more openly) and (until now) Imgur all have massive communities around explicit content. Even Twitch and YouTube are hugely successful as ways for OnlyFans creators to drive users to their explicit content. Going to be very interesting to see if imgur drops off the face of the earth as tinypic, imageshack, photobucket and many others before it did. Certainly this was the longest-lasting image host I can think of.

LinuxBender 4y ago
Hopefully also more people just hosting their own tiny static image servers, RasPi's, VM's, etc... maybe.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  P2P? No shitty middlemen that need $$$ for server lettuce? Nah; not retarded enough.
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    Probably not P2P as people could not embed images to it. I think it would need to be a simple web server that can do HTTP and SSL. Maybe NGinx or Apache and certbot to get HTTPS working.
PaulHoule 4y ago
The economics of image hosting are absolutely brutal.
waboremo 4y ago
Reddit has also recently announced moves in regards to NSFW content[1] by limiting data access to mature content more aggressively than they currently do. It seems like an area a lot of platforms are struggling with and seem to opt for a complete ban. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_r...
- taneq 4y ago
  Reddit has been increasingly awful like this. Limiting scroll on mobile before forcing you to log in. Constant nags to install the app. Forced login or redirect to the app on mobile or on 'new' reddit for any nsfw content. For now old.reddit.com works to get rid of all this guff but when that goes, so do I.
  - unaindz 4y ago
    I recently discovered libreddit and nitter and couldn't be happier. Good UI and loads super fast without restrictions. I recommend to self host though as the public servers can get overwhelmed.
    - jabroni_salad 4y ago
      It is hardly a panacea considering it uses reddit's API, which is about to become a paid feature.
- version_five 4y ago
  All the efforts by reddit that I've seen along these lines are just to use NSFW content as a lever to try and get people to use their stupid app.
- theanti9 4y ago
  FWIW, Reddit's new limits are about 3rd party use of their data/APIs. As a regular user, it doesn't really change anything (unless you consume Reddit NSFW content exclusively through a 3rd party app, I guess), so a pretty different case than Imgur's change here, which fundamentally shifts their user-base.
  - deminature 4y ago
    3rd party reddit apps rival reddit's own app in terms of popularity, and will be significantly hamstrung by these changes if NSFW content can only be accessed in the official app. Lots of non-porn content is marked NSFW. It may end up having a much larger impact than reddit corporate anticipates.
kevinmchugh 4y ago
My uninformed impression is that Tumblr users were relatively unique in how freely they mixed pornography consumption and non porno. There are some Twitter users who do this, but Twitter is public enough that most people are wary of doing that or get caught by follows, likes being public. My anecdotal experience is that I don't see porno comments or submissions from most reddit users either, but that's obviously skewed by the reddits I'm in. I also know that Tumblr has norms against "horny on main", so maybe Tumblr users were very diligent about using alts and the other sites make that too frictional
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  People on Reddit will often have an alt account for porn. I have seen people say things like "oops, posted from my nsfw account" plenty of times before. I assume Twitter is the same. Both platforms freely give out plenty of accounts.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    You sure? Twitter is notoriously known for asking for users phone number in every account, its practically impossible to have an active account without adding your phone number.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      I don't know about you, but I personally have 5 Twitter accounts and 20+ Reddit accounts (sometimes you want to have different perspectives on an issue, have different front pages, or maybe manufacture a consensus). Only the main Twitter account has been asked for a phone number - I think they actually know about alt accounts and don't mind you having them as long as you don't do anything crazy with them. Don't worry dang, this is my only HN account.
      - riffraff 4y ago
        I had a dozen Twitter accounts, but they were made in a different era, nowadays they make it harder to sign up without a phone number tho you can still add bot secondary accounts to the main one.
Sakos 4y ago
This obsession with banning sexual content is bizarre to me. "It's because payment processors yada yada", I don't care. It's fucking weird and unnecessary and tiring. We all want porn. Why does a single culture get to push its insane puritanical values on all of us?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  There's a reason why MindGeek (the owner of all the major porn sites) is based in Montreal.
- tido99 4y ago
  Which "single culture" is that? I disagree with censorship and morality policing as much as you seem to but opposition to porn is the norm worldwide across nearly every culture. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 61% of American respondents believed pornography was "morally unacceptable." That's nearly twice the share that thought smoking marijuana was immoral, and higher than abortion. Somewhere around half of American women support banning it altogether, as well as a not insignificant share of men: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/lehmanfigure2-w640.png https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/lehmanfigure2-w640... (IFS is a biased source here, but the surveys they cite are not)
  - Sakos 4y ago
    And probably 99% of those 61% watch porn. Polls aren't worth anything in regards to some topics.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    > Which "single culture" is that? Obviously, USA-ian. The poll you quoted and linked deals with what Americans think, which is kind of reinforcing GP's point: the current treatment of pornography around the world, especially on the Internet, is in large part a US protestant/puritan cultural export.
atleastoptimal 4y ago
The sexual instinct has been the hidden drive for almost every major adoption of any new service/social media platform. Whether its porn or hookups, young people be horny, and young people are always the necessary early adopters of any new platform.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  As we all know, Microsoft Windows got popular because of sexy Bill Gates: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-beat/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-beat/
  - sizzle 4y ago
    Wow how am I seeing this for the first time. This is great hah
- asdfman123 4y ago
  I feel like this is the secret reason why Mark Zuckerberg thought VR would be such a hit, which makes me think more about Mark Zuckerberg the person than I’d like.
  - YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    If this is true, it's certainly not manifested in the development direction the Zuckerverse took. It has that corporate nothing-artstyle that I wish I hated because then it would at least evoke some kind of emotional response. ASCII art seems like a more viable medium for porn than that.
  - DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
    this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics ?
  - sizzle 4y ago
    I’m sure Snapchat is foaming at the mouth to get this Metaverse SnapVR sexting chat app ready to go to dominate the market fueled by raging hormones.
navane 4y ago
I assume the nsfw users are less interesting to the advertisers, but more demanding to their file servers. From that perspective it could be a money saving measure, at the cost of growth.
segasaturn 4y ago
Imgur has been lousy for a while, redirecting direct image links to their awful js-heavy reddit clone site. They've been due to be replaced for a while but this will definitely accelerate that. Also, the irony of the Tumblr comparison is that Tumblr has become my default social image hosting provider now that they allow soft porn and have a paid ad-free subscription. The tables have turned!
- chrisan 4y ago
  > redirecting direct image links to their awful js-heavy reddit clone site Are you perhaps copying the wrong thing when trying to share? I've never had this happen. Even copying an image link from their homepage at the time of this post works as expected https://i.imgur.com/v052wgb.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/v052wgb.jpeg (some starwars cartoon) or https://i.imgur.com/VT1B7fn.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/VT1B7fn.mp4 (some cat with a pineapple)
  - Jenk 4y ago
    You first link redirected me to https://imgur.com/v052wgb https://imgur.com/v052wgb
  - Workaccount2 4y ago
    I have use https://libredirect.github.io/ https://libredirect.github.io/ to get around imgurs stupid redirect nonsesne. It acts as a frontend that can directly load the image on a clean page. So now I get https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/v052wgb.jpeg https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/v052wgb.jpeg and https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/VT1B7fn.mp4 https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/VT1B7fn.mp4 when i click so I can actually load them without all the bs.
  - q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
    Oh, that is weird. I just clicked on the direct links you posted, and it did indeed redirect me to their awful JS-riddled UI. It definitely didn't do that back in the day. Thanks for the pineapple cat, though. Big fan of that part.
  - thomond 4y ago
kgbcia 4y ago
I find peace in text based forums such as this one. There is no chance of me encountering any explicit images.
sizzle 4y ago
I mean the site is ad infested and slow as hell to load, such a fall from their former grace when they were seen as an internet darling next to photobucket type sites when options for uploading and hotlinking were limited due to bandwidth constraints. I think Reddit started hosting their own content or whatever the redgif site is seems to have taken over Imgur for a while now and the images/vids load lightning fast in comparison to Imgur with my ad blocker lighting up like a Christmas tree every time I visit an Imgur link. I would be happy to never visit that site again.
- chongli 4y ago
  the site is ad infested and slow as hell to load, such a fall from their former grace when they were seen as an internet darling This is the cycle of a lot of ad-driven businesses. They start out sleek and quick to load because they’re ad-free. They grow insanely fast and burn runway. Then they begin loading the site down with ads to monetize the users. This leads to a gradual exodus and eventual death (or death in the star-like sense of eternal irrelevance). It seems to be an unstable equilibrium. If you want to stay on top in terms of users and actually make money you’ve got to have a lean and highly optimized site with non-intrusive ads. On the other hand, if you give in to the temptation to take any ad who wants you then you doom the site in exchange for a short term profit.
  - biztos 4y ago
    I wonder: if you know this, and expect it will happen, is that kind of company still a good investment? It could be that Imgur has already more than paid back its acquisition price to MediaLab[0] and now they are willing to risk killing it in order to not have the NSFW hassle with their banks. Or not, but it seems like this happens enough that the money people should understand it by now. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674883
  - timmytokyo 4y ago
    Enshittification [0] [0] https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
causi 4y ago
Frankly I'm surprised they haven't dropped off already. I revisited them recently and it's now 90% self-fellating political posts.
- Macha 4y ago
  Reddit has been all over the spectrum politically over the years. It started out with techno-libertarians, then edgy internet atheists, then was arguably the home of donald trump's alt-right campaign (and similar r/european), and then when they got banned some of them spread into other subreddits, so some are surprisingly right wing political, and some of them went off to voat and truth social etc.
- mrjh 4y ago
  Yeah, the content took a HARD turn to the left in the last few years. I don't remember it being anywhere near as political even as recently as 5yrs ago. That suggests either a dramatic change in audience, or some algorithmic change that pushed that content more. I'd love to know what actually happened.
  - NL807 4y ago
    Imgur changed hands, new owners took a more heavy handed approach with moderation policies, which removed NSFW-ish content, partly because they were deemed sexist, partly to appease advertisers and to make Appstore folks happy. This ultimately fostered the emergence of an insular, far-left leaning community.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - causi 4y ago
    It was always rather left but at least it was clever left. Now it may as well be copied from some octogenarian's Facebook profile. "Like THIS if you think Donald Trump should be in JAIL!" Frankly, hearing grade-school versions of my own opinions parroted back at me ad nauseum is more annoying than if the posts were coming from other end of the spectrum. At least you can make a useful comment on something you disagree with. Now Imgur is all echo chamber all the time.

by mjr00 4y ago

LinuxBender 4y ago

Hopefully also more people just hosting their own tiny static image servers, RasPi's, VM's, etc... maybe.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago
P2P? No shitty middlemen that need $$$ for server lettuce? Nah; not retarded enough.
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  Probably not P2P as people could not embed images to it. I think it would need to be a simple web server that can do HTTP and SSL. Maybe NGinx or Apache and certbot to get HTTPS working.

PaulHoule 4y ago

The economics of image hosting are absolutely brutal.

waboremo 4y ago

Reddit has also recently announced moves in regards to NSFW content[1] by limiting data access to mature content more aggressively than they currently do. It seems like an area a lot of platforms are struggling with and seem to opt for a complete ban. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_regarding_reddits_api/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/12qwagm/an_update_r...

taneq 4y ago
Reddit has been increasingly awful like this. Limiting scroll on mobile before forcing you to log in. Constant nags to install the app. Forced login or redirect to the app on mobile or on 'new' reddit for any nsfw content. For now old.reddit.com works to get rid of all this guff but when that goes, so do I.
- unaindz 4y ago
  I recently discovered libreddit and nitter and couldn't be happier. Good UI and loads super fast without restrictions. I recommend to self host though as the public servers can get overwhelmed.
  - jabroni_salad 4y ago
    It is hardly a panacea considering it uses reddit's API, which is about to become a paid feature.
version_five 4y ago
All the efforts by reddit that I've seen along these lines are just to use NSFW content as a lever to try and get people to use their stupid app.
theanti9 4y ago
FWIW, Reddit's new limits are about 3rd party use of their data/APIs. As a regular user, it doesn't really change anything (unless you consume Reddit NSFW content exclusively through a 3rd party app, I guess), so a pretty different case than Imgur's change here, which fundamentally shifts their user-base.
- deminature 4y ago
  3rd party reddit apps rival reddit's own app in terms of popularity, and will be significantly hamstrung by these changes if NSFW content can only be accessed in the official app. Lots of non-porn content is marked NSFW. It may end up having a much larger impact than reddit corporate anticipates.

kevinmchugh 4y ago

My uninformed impression is that Tumblr users were relatively unique in how freely they mixed pornography consumption and non porno. There are some Twitter users who do this, but Twitter is public enough that most people are wary of doing that or get caught by follows, likes being public. My anecdotal experience is that I don't see porno comments or submissions from most reddit users either, but that's obviously skewed by the reddits I'm in. I also know that Tumblr has norms against "horny on main", so maybe Tumblr users were very diligent about using alts and the other sites make that too frictional

pclmulqdq 4y ago
People on Reddit will often have an alt account for porn. I have seen people say things like "oops, posted from my nsfw account" plenty of times before. I assume Twitter is the same. Both platforms freely give out plenty of accounts.
- jacooper 4y ago
  You sure? Twitter is notoriously known for asking for users phone number in every account, its practically impossible to have an active account without adding your phone number.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    I don't know about you, but I personally have 5 Twitter accounts and 20+ Reddit accounts (sometimes you want to have different perspectives on an issue, have different front pages, or maybe manufacture a consensus). Only the main Twitter account has been asked for a phone number - I think they actually know about alt accounts and don't mind you having them as long as you don't do anything crazy with them. Don't worry dang, this is my only HN account.
    - riffraff 4y ago
      I had a dozen Twitter accounts, but they were made in a different era, nowadays they make it harder to sign up without a phone number tho you can still add bot secondary accounts to the main one.

Sakos 4y ago

This obsession with banning sexual content is bizarre to me. "It's because payment processors yada yada", I don't care. It's fucking weird and unnecessary and tiring. We all want porn. Why does a single culture get to push its insane puritanical values on all of us?

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
There's a reason why MindGeek (the owner of all the major porn sites) is based in Montreal.
tido99 4y ago
Which "single culture" is that? I disagree with censorship and morality policing as much as you seem to but opposition to porn is the norm worldwide across nearly every culture. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 61% of American respondents believed pornography was "morally unacceptable." That's nearly twice the share that thought smoking marijuana was immoral, and higher than abortion. Somewhere around half of American women support banning it altogether, as well as a not insignificant share of men: https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/lehmanfigure2-w640.png https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/lehmanfigure2-w640... (IFS is a biased source here, but the surveys they cite are not)
- Sakos 4y ago
  And probably 99% of those 61% watch porn. Polls aren't worth anything in regards to some topics.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Which "single culture" is that? Obviously, USA-ian. The poll you quoted and linked deals with what Americans think, which is kind of reinforcing GP's point: the current treatment of pornography around the world, especially on the Internet, is in large part a US protestant/puritan cultural export.

atleastoptimal 4y ago

The sexual instinct has been the hidden drive for almost every major adoption of any new service/social media platform. Whether its porn or hookups, young people be horny, and young people are always the necessary early adopters of any new platform.

DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
As we all know, Microsoft Windows got popular because of sexy Bill Gates: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-beat/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-beat/
- sizzle 4y ago
  Wow how am I seeing this for the first time. This is great hah
asdfman123 4y ago
I feel like this is the secret reason why Mark Zuckerberg thought VR would be such a hit, which makes me think more about Mark Zuckerberg the person than I’d like.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
  If this is true, it's certainly not manifested in the development direction the Zuckerverse took. It has that corporate nothing-artstyle that I wish I hated because then it would at least evoke some kind of emotional response. ASCII art seems like a more viable medium for porn than that.
- DaiPlusPlus 4y ago
  this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledildonics ?
- sizzle 4y ago
  I’m sure Snapchat is foaming at the mouth to get this Metaverse SnapVR sexting chat app ready to go to dominate the market fueled by raging hormones.

navane 4y ago

I assume the nsfw users are less interesting to the advertisers, but more demanding to their file servers. From that perspective it could be a money saving measure, at the cost of growth.

segasaturn 4y ago

Imgur has been lousy for a while, redirecting direct image links to their awful js-heavy reddit clone site. They've been due to be replaced for a while but this will definitely accelerate that. Also, the irony of the Tumblr comparison is that Tumblr has become my default social image hosting provider now that they allow soft porn and have a paid ad-free subscription. The tables have turned!

chrisan 4y ago
> redirecting direct image links to their awful js-heavy reddit clone site Are you perhaps copying the wrong thing when trying to share? I've never had this happen. Even copying an image link from their homepage at the time of this post works as expected https://i.imgur.com/v052wgb.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/v052wgb.jpeg (some starwars cartoon) or https://i.imgur.com/VT1B7fn.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/VT1B7fn.mp4 (some cat with a pineapple)
- Jenk 4y ago
  You first link redirected me to https://imgur.com/v052wgb https://imgur.com/v052wgb
- Workaccount2 4y ago
  I have use https://libredirect.github.io/ https://libredirect.github.io/ to get around imgurs stupid redirect nonsesne. It acts as a frontend that can directly load the image on a clean page. So now I get https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/v052wgb.jpeg https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/v052wgb.jpeg and https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/VT1B7fn.mp4 https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/VT1B7fn.mp4 when i click so I can actually load them without all the bs.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y ago
  Oh, that is weird. I just clicked on the direct links you posted, and it did indeed redirect me to their awful JS-riddled UI. It definitely didn't do that back in the day. Thanks for the pineapple cat, though. Big fan of that part.
- thomond 4y ago

kgbcia 4y ago

I find peace in text based forums such as this one. There is no chance of me encountering any explicit images.

sizzle 4y ago

I mean the site is ad infested and slow as hell to load, such a fall from their former grace when they were seen as an internet darling next to photobucket type sites when options for uploading and hotlinking were limited due to bandwidth constraints. I think Reddit started hosting their own content or whatever the redgif site is seems to have taken over Imgur for a while now and the images/vids load lightning fast in comparison to Imgur with my ad blocker lighting up like a Christmas tree every time I visit an Imgur link. I would be happy to never visit that site again.

chongli 4y ago
the site is ad infested and slow as hell to load, such a fall from their former grace when they were seen as an internet darling This is the cycle of a lot of ad-driven businesses. They start out sleek and quick to load because they’re ad-free. They grow insanely fast and burn runway. Then they begin loading the site down with ads to monetize the users. This leads to a gradual exodus and eventual death (or death in the star-like sense of eternal irrelevance). It seems to be an unstable equilibrium. If you want to stay on top in terms of users and actually make money you’ve got to have a lean and highly optimized site with non-intrusive ads. On the other hand, if you give in to the temptation to take any ad who wants you then you doom the site in exchange for a short term profit.
- biztos 4y ago
  I wonder: if you know this, and expect it will happen, is that kind of company still a good investment? It could be that Imgur has already more than paid back its acquisition price to MediaLab[0] and now they are willing to risk killing it in order to not have the NSFW hassle with their banks. Or not, but it seems like this happens enough that the money people should understand it by now. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674883
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  Enshittification [0] [0] https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

causi 4y ago

Frankly I'm surprised they haven't dropped off already. I revisited them recently and it's now 90% self-fellating political posts.

Macha 4y ago
Reddit has been all over the spectrum politically over the years. It started out with techno-libertarians, then edgy internet atheists, then was arguably the home of donald trump's alt-right campaign (and similar r/european), and then when they got banned some of them spread into other subreddits, so some are surprisingly right wing political, and some of them went off to voat and truth social etc.
mrjh 4y ago
Yeah, the content took a HARD turn to the left in the last few years. I don't remember it being anywhere near as political even as recently as 5yrs ago. That suggests either a dramatic change in audience, or some algorithmic change that pushed that content more. I'd love to know what actually happened.
- NL807 4y ago
  Imgur changed hands, new owners took a more heavy handed approach with moderation policies, which removed NSFW-ish content, partly because they were deemed sexist, partly to appease advertisers and to make Appstore folks happy. This ultimately fostered the emergence of an insular, far-left leaning community.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- causi 4y ago
  It was always rather left but at least it was clever left. Now it may as well be copied from some octogenarian's Facebook profile. "Like THIS if you think Donald Trump should be in JAIL!" Frankly, hearing grade-school versions of my own opinions parroted back at me ad nauseum is more annoying than if the posts were coming from other end of the spectrum. At least you can make a useful comment on something you disagree with. Now Imgur is all echo chamber all the time.