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Imgur will also be deleting images that aren't associated with a user account. https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029/ https://help.imgur.com/h

by ndiddy 4y ago

Imgur will also be deleting images that aren't associated with a user account. https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029/ https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029/

unixhero 4y ago
Yeah this is the death of trust for Imgur. Bye bye
- unixhero 4y ago
  Or should I say death knell
londgine 4y ago
currently when uploading an image to stack exchange it is stored in imgur. I wonder if they will move to another host.
account42 4y ago
This is hardly the first image host that dies. Is there any way to sustainabley fund long term sleek non-ad-infested image hosting? There are some that are donation-funded (e.g. https://abload.de/spenden_en.php https://abload.de/spenden_en.php) but I don't know how sustainable that is once the service becomes popular enough that commercial usrs might end up using it as free image storage. Another option is of course to have many smaller hosts, down to personal sites at the extreme. But that only changes the loss from shutdowns from big events to a steady stream of entropy. We really need a much more expanded Internet Archvie that can serve content at reasonable speeds along with browser and forum plugins to automatically redirect old linnks there.
fenomas 4y ago
This strikes me as being at least as big a deal as the NSFW bit. For 10+ years, imgur has been many people's go-to way of hosting an image they want to post to a forum or whatever. Many of those people will have paid little attention to whether or not they were logged into imgur when they posted each image. In short, it sounds like a lot of image links are about to break.
- jaredandrews 4y ago
  Yup! I have used imgur numerous times thru the years when posting Stack Overflow questions, new feature pull requests on open source apps, troubleshooting reddit posts etc. Very sad to think all that visual context will be lost.
- DanTheManPR 4y ago
  This is going to be incredibly damaging to forums, in the same way that Photobucket's deletions were. Old forum posts are becoming a ghost town of broken image links.
  - 3nf 4y ago
    This was already happening (as early as 2019), but on a forum-by-forum referer ban for hotlinked images. Imgur support wouldn't respond to forum owners. https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2912540 https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2912540
- Arrath 4y ago
  I've used imgur to host many images over the years, never once have I bothered to make an account. Goodbye, old forum post contents.
- GavinMcG 4y ago
  Effectively monetizing the hosting of images embedded elsewhere seems like a fool's errand—at best, it's possible to subsidize that usage with other revenue streams. The vast majority of people wanting to post images on forums have never financed their posting and the communities themselves haven't managed to either. Photobucket and Tinypic left a lot of litter on forums that survived their era, and Imgur will ultimately do the same.
  - fenomas 4y ago
    It seems a bit like they're saying: "ohhhhh, did you people think we were an image hosting site? Heavens no, we're an SNS and always have been. We'll update our rules to clarify this". Which seems... aspirational?
12907835202 4y ago
This is incredibly vague "We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" What is old, unused and inactive? That could be 10 year old images or 10 month old images. I have no idea. Is an image getting regular hits going to be deleted? Who knows... I guess many will still be on archive.org if someone is late to the party downloading a backup.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I think it's pretty clear. They are making no promises at all for storing anonymous content. It's at their discretion.
_8j50 4y ago
Several screenshot apps upload to imgur without an account too
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  I wrote a command line screenshot tool that did exactly that years ago...
piperswe 4y ago
This is going to end up being a new Photobucket situation... hopefully Archive Team can try and figure out what images are at risk, especially if they're linked from forum threads and the like, and make sure they're in the Wayback Machine.
- yreg 4y ago
  This might be naive, but couldn't they just hand over the images they want to get rid of to Archive? Anyway, a good trigger to make a donation I guess.
smeagull 4y ago
It'll be another swathe of the internet that just has no images again, just like when photobucket deleted old images.
SCdF 4y ago
It's the bigger deal IMO, or at least _for me_. One of imgur's selling points was you opened imgur.com and hit cmd+v to paste the screenshot, or dragged the image over, and bam! You had a sharable version. No muss, no fuss. The number of times I have used this to share something on a forum or troubleshoot something is uncountable.
azangru 4y ago
And to think that StackOverflow is using Imgur for image upload!
- account42 4y ago
  StackOverflow is not just embedding random imgur-hosted images for that though but have a special arrangement with images hosted at i.stack.imgur.com - I doubt this change applies to them.

by ndiddy 4y ago

Imgur will also be deleting images that aren't associated with a user account. https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029/ https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029/

unixhero 4y ago

Yeah this is the death of trust for Imgur. Bye bye

unixhero 4y ago
Or should I say death knell

londgine 4y ago

currently when uploading an image to stack exchange it is stored in imgur. I wonder if they will move to another host.

account42 4y ago

This is hardly the first image host that dies. Is there any way to sustainabley fund long term sleek non-ad-infested image hosting? There are some that are donation-funded (e.g. https://abload.de/spenden_en.php https://abload.de/spenden_en.php) but I don't know how sustainable that is once the service becomes popular enough that commercial usrs might end up using it as free image storage. Another option is of course to have many smaller hosts, down to personal sites at the extreme. But that only changes the loss from shutdowns from big events to a steady stream of entropy. We really need a much more expanded Internet Archvie that can serve content at reasonable speeds along with browser and forum plugins to automatically redirect old linnks there.

fenomas 4y ago

This strikes me as being at least as big a deal as the NSFW bit. For 10+ years, imgur has been many people's go-to way of hosting an image they want to post to a forum or whatever. Many of those people will have paid little attention to whether or not they were logged into imgur when they posted each image. In short, it sounds like a lot of image links are about to break.

jaredandrews 4y ago
Yup! I have used imgur numerous times thru the years when posting Stack Overflow questions, new feature pull requests on open source apps, troubleshooting reddit posts etc. Very sad to think all that visual context will be lost.
DanTheManPR 4y ago
This is going to be incredibly damaging to forums, in the same way that Photobucket's deletions were. Old forum posts are becoming a ghost town of broken image links.
- 3nf 4y ago
  This was already happening (as early as 2019), but on a forum-by-forum referer ban for hotlinked images. Imgur support wouldn't respond to forum owners. https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2912540 https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2912540
Arrath 4y ago
I've used imgur to host many images over the years, never once have I bothered to make an account. Goodbye, old forum post contents.
GavinMcG 4y ago
Effectively monetizing the hosting of images embedded elsewhere seems like a fool's errand—at best, it's possible to subsidize that usage with other revenue streams. The vast majority of people wanting to post images on forums have never financed their posting and the communities themselves haven't managed to either. Photobucket and Tinypic left a lot of litter on forums that survived their era, and Imgur will ultimately do the same.
- fenomas 4y ago
  It seems a bit like they're saying: "ohhhhh, did you people think we were an image hosting site? Heavens no, we're an SNS and always have been. We'll update our rules to clarify this". Which seems... aspirational?

12907835202 4y ago

This is incredibly vague "We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" What is old, unused and inactive? That could be 10 year old images or 10 month old images. I have no idea. Is an image getting regular hits going to be deleted? Who knows... I guess many will still be on archive.org if someone is late to the party downloading a backup.

Gigachad 4y ago
I think it's pretty clear. They are making no promises at all for storing anonymous content. It's at their discretion.

_8j50 4y ago

Several screenshot apps upload to imgur without an account too

nibbleshifter 4y ago
I wrote a command line screenshot tool that did exactly that years ago...

piperswe 4y ago

This is going to end up being a new Photobucket situation... hopefully Archive Team can try and figure out what images are at risk, especially if they're linked from forum threads and the like, and make sure they're in the Wayback Machine.

yreg 4y ago
This might be naive, but couldn't they just hand over the images they want to get rid of to Archive? Anyway, a good trigger to make a donation I guess.

smeagull 4y ago

It'll be another swathe of the internet that just has no images again, just like when photobucket deleted old images.

SCdF 4y ago

It's the bigger deal IMO, or at least _for me_. One of imgur's selling points was you opened imgur.com and hit cmd+v to paste the screenshot, or dragged the image over, and bam! You had a sharable version. No muss, no fuss. The number of times I have used this to share something on a forum or troubleshoot something is uncountable.

azangru 4y ago

And to think that StackOverflow is using Imgur for image upload!

account42 4y ago
StackOverflow is not just embedding random imgur-hosted images for that though but have a special arrangement with images hosted at i.stack.imgur.com - I doubt this change applies to them.