Many years ago I did an analysis on how fast Imgur grew on Reddit: https://minimaxir.com/2017/06/imgur-decline/ https://minimaxir.com/2017/06/imgur-decline/ Re

Many years ago I did an analysis on how fast Imgur grew on Reddit: https://minimaxir.com/2017/06/imgur-decline/ https://minimaxir.com/2017/06/imgur-decline/ Reddit adding its native hosting effectively kneecaped it, however, although from Imgur's perspective it's hard to say that's a bad thing since they just lose money on bandwidth. Since then, Imgur has been strongly pushing non-direct image links where they can show ads.