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"Is this overkill for viewing the occasional Imgur image? Probably." From the last couple of weeks of researching some stuff, it makes perfect sense - I keep s

"Is this overkill for viewing the occasional Imgur image? Probably." From the last couple of weeks of researching some stuff, it makes perfect sense - I keep stumbling across blogs and documentation that uses Imgur, and it's really quite annoying that I can't see the screenshot or image that is being referenced. It hasn't /quite/ hit the point to put something in place, but this is super helpful for the final straw - when it comes!

jamesbelchamber 10mo ago
It's been eye-opening how far-reaching Imgur really is - for example, some of the images on the Core Devices (the new Pebble folks) website are actually on Imgur. This simple block is relatively trivial to bypass - but if they disappear tomorrow, a lot of things break.
- jsheard 10mo ago
  > but if they disappear tomorrow, a lot of things break. Tale as old as time, long-running forums are graveyards of dead Photobucket, Tinypic and Imageshack embeds. Imgur has lasted longer than most but the cycle will probably repeat eventually, especially since they were acquired by faceless corpos a few years ago.
  - bennyp101 10mo ago
    A service shutting down, or being replaced is very different to one being blocked at a country level because of waves hands things
    - NooneAtAll3 10mo ago
      > waves hands things government censorship called it for what it is
      - jsheard 10mo ago
        The Online Safety Act is clear-cut censorship but that's not why Imgur left the UK. They were facing fines for violating the UKs data protection laws, specifically a set of rules that were introduced years before the OSA was even passed. Their parent company hasn't pulled any of their other services from the UK either, which you'd expect them to do if their goal was to protest or avoid the OSA.
        card_zero 10mo ago
        ... in regard of age checks, yes? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo If you follow the links to earlier articles you get to this one about fining TikTok: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65175902 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65175902 "There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws." ... "When you sign up you can be targeted for advertising, you can be profiled, your data contributes to an algorithm which feeds content," said the Information Commissioner. So even before the OSA, the idea was: social media sites using algorithmic feeds must prevent children's access, and just asking "are you over 13" isn't enough. That's a demand for age verification, in practice.
  - rafabulsing 10mo ago
    I've said before that the age of an internet user can be estimated by how many free image hosting services they have seen come and go, like rings on a tree trunk.
  - Figs 10mo ago
    > Imgur has lasted longer than most They did a big data purge years ago, and were already enshittified almost a decade before that.
    - chrisjj 10mo ago
      Only "removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" right?
- NooneAtAll3 10mo ago
  makes me thankful for imgur deleting anonymous uploads a year or 2 ago that made multiple forums I've been on rush to download everything to their servers
muyuu 10mo ago
it will certainly not stop at Imgur also, if foreign servers notice no real loss of traffic because people just circumvent draconian censorship measures from authoritarian regimes, then they can more safely ignore them without real repercussions the EU seems to be following soon, so it's important that people have readily available tools so the power dynamics change and it doesn't become economically unfeasible to refuse censorship pressures
tim333 10mo ago
I've found it a bit harder than I thought to bypass but veepn free with the location set to Singapore kind of works, if slowly.
FerretFred 10mo ago
Overkill right now, probably, but the Government seems hell-bent on locking down access to more and more things that we see as completely normal, so I'd say that it's forward planning.
- necovek 10mo ago
  When that happens, most VPN providers will face similar destiny. Which means that we'll all have to run our own VPNs, possibly masquerading as HTTPS traffic, if that remains viable against government interference (eg. they might ask to re-encrypt all traffic by ISP-level certs, and block any traffic unreadable by them). Internet as we know it is fading away.

jamesbelchamber 10mo ago

It's been eye-opening how far-reaching Imgur really is - for example, some of the images on the Core Devices (the new Pebble folks) website are actually on Imgur. This simple block is relatively trivial to bypass - but if they disappear tomorrow, a lot of things break.

jsheard 10mo ago
> but if they disappear tomorrow, a lot of things break. Tale as old as time, long-running forums are graveyards of dead Photobucket, Tinypic and Imageshack embeds. Imgur has lasted longer than most but the cycle will probably repeat eventually, especially since they were acquired by faceless corpos a few years ago.
- bennyp101 10mo ago
  A service shutting down, or being replaced is very different to one being blocked at a country level because of waves hands things
  - NooneAtAll3 10mo ago
    > waves hands things government censorship called it for what it is
    - jsheard 10mo ago
      The Online Safety Act is clear-cut censorship but that's not why Imgur left the UK. They were facing fines for violating the UKs data protection laws, specifically a set of rules that were introduced years before the OSA was even passed. Their parent company hasn't pulled any of their other services from the UK either, which you'd expect them to do if their goal was to protest or avoid the OSA.
      - card_zero 10mo ago
        ... in regard of age checks, yes? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo If you follow the links to earlier articles you get to this one about fining TikTok: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65175902 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65175902 "There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws." ... "When you sign up you can be targeted for advertising, you can be profiled, your data contributes to an algorithm which feeds content," said the Information Commissioner. So even before the OSA, the idea was: social media sites using algorithmic feeds must prevent children's access, and just asking "are you over 13" isn't enough. That's a demand for age verification, in practice.
- rafabulsing 10mo ago
  I've said before that the age of an internet user can be estimated by how many free image hosting services they have seen come and go, like rings on a tree trunk.
- Figs 10mo ago
  > Imgur has lasted longer than most They did a big data purge years ago, and were already enshittified almost a decade before that.
  - chrisjj 10mo ago
    Only "removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" right?
NooneAtAll3 10mo ago
makes me thankful for imgur deleting anonymous uploads a year or 2 ago that made multiple forums I've been on rush to download everything to their servers

muyuu 10mo ago

it will certainly not stop at Imgur also, if foreign servers notice no real loss of traffic because people just circumvent draconian censorship measures from authoritarian regimes, then they can more safely ignore them without real repercussions the EU seems to be following soon, so it's important that people have readily available tools so the power dynamics change and it doesn't become economically unfeasible to refuse censorship pressures

tim333 10mo ago

I've found it a bit harder than I thought to bypass but veepn free with the location set to Singapore kind of works, if slowly.

FerretFred 10mo ago

Overkill right now, probably, but the Government seems hell-bent on locking down access to more and more things that we see as completely normal, so I'd say that it's forward planning.

necovek 10mo ago
When that happens, most VPN providers will face similar destiny. Which means that we'll all have to run our own VPNs, possibly masquerading as HTTPS traffic, if that remains viable against government interference (eg. they might ask to re-encrypt all traffic by ISP-level certs, and block any traffic unreadable by them). Internet as we know it is fading away.