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First off: great work! The age old question is how you afford to run this, and how if you get popular do you not become an imgur yourself and have their same p

First off: great work! The age old question is how you afford to run this, and how if you get popular do you not become an imgur yourself and have their same pressures to delete, moderate and make money.

rvavruch 3y ago
Thank you! My thinking is to start with donations. There is no such thing as a free service. If people get value from using it to upload anonymously and they want to keep it going, makes sense to donate. In the future I could also add a subscription account for additional features, access to an API, bigger upload limits, transformations, greater ability to organise, etc.
- not_your_vase 3y ago
  Is there a backup plan? Not saying that relying on donations is impossible, but realistically there is a very small chance that enough donation will flow in continuously. As a sidenote, reddit is (was?) the one of main user of imgur, however https://www.google.com/search?q=%22haasie.com%22+site%3Areddit.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22haasie.com%22+site%3Aredd... yields no results - maybe it is worth to promote it there also.
  - rvavruch 3y ago
    Your question honestly got me thinking. If everything goes completely sideways there are a number of shuttering options I can think of. One is to turn off any new uploads, and just serve the existing content, presumably the bandwidth on old content would be much lower - until some sustainable plan can be devised. Last resort is to approach the ArchiveTeam mentioned here to see if and we could to setup a maintenance service. To your side note, yes, I want to promote it on Reddit, as soon as I've added a few more features - like donations.
flangola7 3y ago
I say we need basic universal internet infrastructure in the same way we have roads, libraries, hospitals, mail service, etc. Fundamental services like email, image and video hosting, backup storage, small cloud nodes, and so on. All partially or fully publicly funded, with no bloat or wasted overhead trying to commercialize it into an advertising platform filled with spyware and dark patterns.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Why shouldn't image and video hosting be a paid service? I don't think there ever was any free method of mass distributing information. Or storing it if someone didn't find it interesting. If you need to share something, you should burden the cost. Just because some idiots thought they had a model that didn't work doesn't mean there isn't real costs involved. And those should be paid. In free market they should approach margin.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    The world lacks a good system for microtransactions to make paying the actual costs feasible. Also I'm already paying my ISP for a connection, and so is everyone that views the things I host, so personally I hope for advances in P2P to leverage that existing already-paid-for bandwidth for distribution instead of having to toss more money on top.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  Or people could pay the pittance that it would be if just a fraction of users chipped in. Why is "the government should pay for it" always a comment in every thread on HN? Is there something I haven't understood about this community.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    > Or people could pay the pittance that it would be if just a fraction of users chipped in. If only there was some way to gather and organize this rich fraction of users' contributions. Maybe we could create some kind of assembly where we discuss and vote on how to do so. >Why is "the government should pay for it" always a comment in every thread on HN? Is there something I haven't understood about this community. Because the purpose of government is to organize and manage society and that requires funds to do so? I'm not sure how to answer such a simple question with such a self-evident answer. How old are you?

rvavruch 3y ago

Thank you! My thinking is to start with donations. There is no such thing as a free service. If people get value from using it to upload anonymously and they want to keep it going, makes sense to donate. In the future I could also add a subscription account for additional features, access to an API, bigger upload limits, transformations, greater ability to organise, etc.

not_your_vase 3y ago
Is there a backup plan? Not saying that relying on donations is impossible, but realistically there is a very small chance that enough donation will flow in continuously. As a sidenote, reddit is (was?) the one of main user of imgur, however https://www.google.com/search?q=%22haasie.com%22+site%3Areddit.com https://www.google.com/search?q=%22haasie.com%22+site%3Aredd... yields no results - maybe it is worth to promote it there also.
- rvavruch 3y ago
  Your question honestly got me thinking. If everything goes completely sideways there are a number of shuttering options I can think of. One is to turn off any new uploads, and just serve the existing content, presumably the bandwidth on old content would be much lower - until some sustainable plan can be devised. Last resort is to approach the ArchiveTeam mentioned here to see if and we could to setup a maintenance service. To your side note, yes, I want to promote it on Reddit, as soon as I've added a few more features - like donations.

flangola7 3y ago

I say we need basic universal internet infrastructure in the same way we have roads, libraries, hospitals, mail service, etc. Fundamental services like email, image and video hosting, backup storage, small cloud nodes, and so on. All partially or fully publicly funded, with no bloat or wasted overhead trying to commercialize it into an advertising platform filled with spyware and dark patterns.

Ekaros 3y ago
Why shouldn't image and video hosting be a paid service? I don't think there ever was any free method of mass distributing information. Or storing it if someone didn't find it interesting. If you need to share something, you should burden the cost. Just because some idiots thought they had a model that didn't work doesn't mean there isn't real costs involved. And those should be paid. In free market they should approach margin.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  The world lacks a good system for microtransactions to make paying the actual costs feasible. Also I'm already paying my ISP for a connection, and so is everyone that views the things I host, so personally I hope for advances in P2P to leverage that existing already-paid-for bandwidth for distribution instead of having to toss more money on top.
carlosjobim 3y ago
Or people could pay the pittance that it would be if just a fraction of users chipped in. Why is "the government should pay for it" always a comment in every thread on HN? Is there something I haven't understood about this community.
- flangola7 3y ago
  > Or people could pay the pittance that it would be if just a fraction of users chipped in. If only there was some way to gather and organize this rich fraction of users' contributions. Maybe we could create some kind of assembly where we discuss and vote on how to do so. >Why is "the government should pay for it" always a comment in every thread on HN? Is there something I haven't understood about this community. Because the purpose of government is to organize and manage society and that requires funds to do so? I'm not sure how to answer such a simple question with such a self-evident answer. How old are you?