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I have tried to build a similar service (https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh), and made a lot of choices that would supposedly increase goodwill: - No ads

I have tried to build a similar service (https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh), and made a lot of choices that would supposedly increase goodwill: - No ads - Open source - Extremely transparent The opinion of Reddit's userbase was almost universally positive. However, the Reddit admins did not like that at all. They banned the domain for weeks right after launch, and only unbanned it after quite a lot of begging. They also shadowbanned my personal account for a while, and that wasn't too easy to get lifted, either. They're very hostile to anything but Imgur these days. Hell, I worry about writing this here, because if they see it, we might get into another round of bullshit with them.

mtrn 13y ago
Nice, thanks for building this service. I'm all for diversity.
opendais 13y ago
For what it is worth, I think Mediacrush is awesome. I'd use it over imgur. However, I do not use image hosting in general enough to consider spending money on it. And honestly, I worry about the long term financial sustainability of your project which is why if I ever had a need [a reason I'd spend money], I'd probably host it myself. That is one reason I think transparency [while nice in theory] is dangerous if implemented too early in practice. I know I'd have dropped it the first month I went -$400. :/ Do you have any plans beyond donations to plug that hole?
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  You can host it yourself if you worry about it going away, instructions are available on GitHub [1] and support is available in #mediacrush on irc.freenode.net That being said, we've tossed some ideas around. We might use ads if we can find a privacy-friendly way to do it. We also have some thoughts on other routes for monetization, but we aren't working on that much. We can support it out of our own pockets, and intend to do so for the foreseeable future. [1] https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush
  - opendais 13y ago
    I was aware but thank you for the reminder. I just don't have a need for an image hosting service that meets the"worthy of financial expenditure" qualification. :) Have you considered ads that don't do retargetting, etc? They would not be as profitable but if it was simple CPM/CPC display ads with the level of transparency you've shown to date, I'm not sure how that would conflict your privacy principles.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
      Can you suggest an ad provider that meets our needs? We haven't found one yet (fwiw, we're not looking very hard).
      - opendais 13y ago
        https://www.projectwonderful.com/privacypolicy.php https://www.projectwonderful.com/privacypolicy.php Seems reasonable to me. If you feel it isn't, I'd suggest you just try to start your own ad network. It would be more work...but you'd have complete control.
        Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
        Thanks for the tip! They look pretty good from the offset, we'll start a deeper evaluation among ourselves and see if they'll meet our needs.
        pearjuice 13y ago
        You could try http://buysellads.com/ http://buysellads.com/ It's really clean. They have a lot of control though.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
bane 13y ago
Wow, what a great service! I've heard of several other cases like this which is why I brought up reddit's unusual leniency towards imgur at all. As we can see by reddit's investment there was clearly some kind of out of band discussion that helped legitimize imgur on the site. In their defense, before imgur came along, image hosting was a pretty terrible affair, front to back. Imgur was such an obvious improvement over what came before that it was hard to argue against.
- astrange 13y ago
  Image hosts start out well and go bad once they've run out of money. kth.cx aka imageshack aka yfrog was just as good once, but now see where they are, covered in ads. Of course, they had to pivot after getting banned from SA. Imgur and tumblr have so much money they can continue pointlessly providing a free service for at least a little longer.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
    The nice thing about being open-source is that you can self-host if you're getting worried.
afterburner 13y ago
Does the Reddit community/admins also tend to downvote any picture not submitted via imgur?
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  I don't know about the admins, but I haven't noticed a lot of downvotes just because things aren't submitted with Imgur. There are occasionally people who do complain about the choice in host and just say "because it's not Imgur", but they're rare.
  - koyote 13y ago
    I think that also usually only happens when people upload to hosts that are not supported by RES or are simply very slow to load. I doubt most RES users would notice a picture being on a different host 99% of the time (I know I don't)
    - _ak 13y ago
      Anything not on Imgur usually loads really slow, especially gifs.
lanaius 13y ago
You must be doing something correct since RES updated to better support you.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  We actually contribute a lot of code to RES. Improved RES support was my doing. https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite/graphs/contributors https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite/gra... It's worth noting that RES has nothing to do with the Reddit admins - it is not an officially sanctioned extension.
markkat 13y ago
I'll check it out. It's nice to have another option. Drop a link on Hubski. Most of us there use imgur. (I run Hubski)
korzun 13y ago
You either did something questionable or broke the rules. Also in reality, you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially that late in the game.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  The feature we brought to the table to compete with was turning GIFs into HTML5 video, so they save bandwidth and get extra features. This seems to be doing pretty well, though another competitor has shown up and seems to be doing better than we are in that space - even though they offer an inferior service. As for questionably breaking the rules, we pretty much followed in Imgur's footsteps. Even if this was too much, it hardly justifies the crucification we received.
  - korzun 13y ago
    The difference is that you were too late in the game. When image hosting started blowing up alternatives to Imgur were horrible, horrible ad farms with low quality images that took several seconds to load. Comparing to what Imgur brings to the table and what you bring to the table, the different is not that drastic. Also you can't compare rules Reddit has in place now with rules it had years ago. There has been weeks where multiple image providers with shitty off the shelf solutions would be doing same thing you were trying to do after seeing Imgur take off every single day. Like I said, it's just too late at this point. Find another market.
    - korzun 13y ago
      It's not a discouragement, so don't take it as such. I founded similar service before Imgur was born and was trying to compete with them way before you did. Word of advice, stop allowing NSFW. You do not want to go down that path, there is no money in it and it will impact your business in a negative way when you decide to become profitable.
      - prawn 13y ago
rgbrgb 13y ago
Yes, a lot of the big subreddits have whitelists that your site has to get on by being popular--kind of a catch 22.
ghani 13y ago
You promote your site on reddit very aggressively, and consistently smear reddit's moderators as bad guys. You're a liar, and definitely not some poor victim. edit: Things you have done include running a bot to constantly promote MediaCrush on reddit (which you refer to as, "a little spammy"), vote-gaming by upvoting your bot's posts, removing any and all of your posts where you receive negative press, and slandering reddit moderators.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  Now that I notice you've edited in some arguments, let's clarify these points: - We ran a bot that, upon explicitly being asked to by a user, would convert a post to HTML5 video - Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out. - We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. - I've shared some choice words about a few moderators who I've had a bad experience with. However, I've qualified myself every time, providing plenty of reasons for why I feel the way I do. The bot was a problem during the first few days of launch. It's hard to argue that it was spam when it only worked when summoned by a user. The vote gaming argument has merit - but we did stop once we realized that it was a bad idea. Even with all that in mind, these problems were only relevant during the first week or so of our lifetime, and doesn't really justify the relationship we've had with the admins from then out. You'd think that when the users of Reddit were clearly so excited about the service, the admins would take a moment to get in touch and talk to us about it civily, instead of taking such a hostile (and really, anti-user) stance towards the service. Side note: there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services - bots that don't wait for a user to request their help. These bots haven't had a negative impact on the competing services.
  - ghani 13y ago
    > We ran a bot that, upon explicitly being asked to by a user, would convert a post to HTML5 video Your bot's account is gone, so there is little evidence to cite. However, I remember how present and obnoxious it was. Promotions for MediaCrush definitely did not appear solely when a user mentioned MediaCrush. It was enough of a problem that an admin on reddit asked you to stop: http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png > Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out. Many other domains have been blocked from reddit for the same behavior (e.g. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg-businessweek/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg... ), but you consistently portray reddit's admins as people who had it in for your site in particular, which is dishonest. > We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. Yes, you do. They cannot be found from your user page anymore, but I've personally watched you delete your comments in threads where you promote yourself and get bad press. > I've shared some choice words about a few moderators who I've had a bad experience with. However, I've qualified myself every time, providing plenty of reasons for why I feel the way I do. You've said things that are explicitly untrue about reddit's mods and admins. Mainly that they were big, bad, imgur-partial bullies. Here is the supposedly hostile, anti-user stance that moderators took towards MediaCrush: http://i.imgur.com/iuMFUOO.png http://i.imgur.com/iuMFUOO.png http://i.imgur.com/GI8MFje.png http://i.imgur.com/GI8MFje.png http://i.imgur.com/boKDi3I.png http://i.imgur.com/boKDi3I.png These quotes come from a thread that you started, when you thought that you could push around reddit's mods: http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creators_of_mediacrush_versus_the_moderation/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat... You're the one at fault for your problems with reddit, and it is low of you to pretend reddit's mods and admins are the bad guys. > The bot was a problem during the first few days of launch. It's hard to argue that it was spam when it only worked when summoned by a user. The vote gaming argument has merit - but we did stop once we realized that it was a bad idea. The bot that you ran promoted your site obnoxiously in many subreddits, and there are plenty of accounts banned via /r/reportthespammers that do exactly the same thing. I don't feel that you can argue it was not spam. > there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services This is a tu-quoque, and doesn't justify you in any way.
jotm 13y ago
Can't you get the .com domain? Every time I see your site being mentioned I avoid using it because of the domain name for some reason. It just sounds weird and not too legit. How do you even say it out loud? "It's Media C R U dot S H. Mediacrush, get it?" :-). Then again, Imgur isn't much better...
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  The .com used to be in use, but appears to be defunct now. In any case, we have no money, so we can't buy it for the usual cost of a squatted domain.
ilaksh 13y ago
Clearly reddit had an early vested interest and used their dominant media position to "pick a winner" in that space which enriched their portfolio. This should certainly be illegal if it isn't already. Although, making anything related to money illegal in this society almost seems futile at this point with de-regulation so out-of-control.
- nl 13y ago
  Most people would call that a strategic alliance. And as for "their dominant media position".. An alliance between Fox, NBC CBS and ABC would have a "dominant media position". A random internet forum.. not so much.
colmvp 13y ago
I use mediacrush all the time on /r/hockey. Didn't know that the Reddit admins didn't like it.

mtrn 13y ago

Nice, thanks for building this service. I'm all for diversity.

opendais 13y ago

For what it is worth, I think Mediacrush is awesome. I'd use it over imgur. However, I do not use image hosting in general enough to consider spending money on it. And honestly, I worry about the long term financial sustainability of your project which is why if I ever had a need [a reason I'd spend money], I'd probably host it myself. That is one reason I think transparency [while nice in theory] is dangerous if implemented too early in practice. I know I'd have dropped it the first month I went -$400. :/ Do you have any plans beyond donations to plug that hole?

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
You can host it yourself if you worry about it going away, instructions are available on GitHub [1] and support is available in #mediacrush on irc.freenode.net That being said, we've tossed some ideas around. We might use ads if we can find a privacy-friendly way to do it. We also have some thoughts on other routes for monetization, but we aren't working on that much. We can support it out of our own pockets, and intend to do so for the foreseeable future. [1] https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush
- opendais 13y ago
  I was aware but thank you for the reminder. I just don't have a need for an image hosting service that meets the"worthy of financial expenditure" qualification. :) Have you considered ads that don't do retargetting, etc? They would not be as profitable but if it was simple CPM/CPC display ads with the level of transparency you've shown to date, I'm not sure how that would conflict your privacy principles.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
    Can you suggest an ad provider that meets our needs? We haven't found one yet (fwiw, we're not looking very hard).
    - opendais 13y ago
      https://www.projectwonderful.com/privacypolicy.php https://www.projectwonderful.com/privacypolicy.php Seems reasonable to me. If you feel it isn't, I'd suggest you just try to start your own ad network. It would be more work...but you'd have complete control.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
        Thanks for the tip! They look pretty good from the offset, we'll start a deeper evaluation among ourselves and see if they'll meet our needs.
        pearjuice 13y ago
        You could try http://buysellads.com/ http://buysellads.com/ It's really clean. They have a lot of control though.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago

bane 13y ago

Wow, what a great service! I've heard of several other cases like this which is why I brought up reddit's unusual leniency towards imgur at all. As we can see by reddit's investment there was clearly some kind of out of band discussion that helped legitimize imgur on the site. In their defense, before imgur came along, image hosting was a pretty terrible affair, front to back. Imgur was such an obvious improvement over what came before that it was hard to argue against.

astrange 13y ago
Image hosts start out well and go bad once they've run out of money. kth.cx aka imageshack aka yfrog was just as good once, but now see where they are, covered in ads. Of course, they had to pivot after getting banned from SA. Imgur and tumblr have so much money they can continue pointlessly providing a free service for at least a little longer.
- Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
  The nice thing about being open-source is that you can self-host if you're getting worried.

afterburner 13y ago

Does the Reddit community/admins also tend to downvote any picture not submitted via imgur?

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
I don't know about the admins, but I haven't noticed a lot of downvotes just because things aren't submitted with Imgur. There are occasionally people who do complain about the choice in host and just say "because it's not Imgur", but they're rare.
- koyote 13y ago
  I think that also usually only happens when people upload to hosts that are not supported by RES or are simply very slow to load. I doubt most RES users would notice a picture being on a different host 99% of the time (I know I don't)
  - _ak 13y ago
    Anything not on Imgur usually loads really slow, especially gifs.

lanaius 13y ago

You must be doing something correct since RES updated to better support you.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
We actually contribute a lot of code to RES. Improved RES support was my doing. https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite/graphs/contributors https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite/gra... It's worth noting that RES has nothing to do with the Reddit admins - it is not an officially sanctioned extension.

markkat 13y ago

I'll check it out. It's nice to have another option. Drop a link on Hubski. Most of us there use imgur. (I run Hubski)

korzun 13y ago

You either did something questionable or broke the rules. Also in reality, you have no chance trying to compete with Imgur on their own home turf especially that late in the game.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
The feature we brought to the table to compete with was turning GIFs into HTML5 video, so they save bandwidth and get extra features. This seems to be doing pretty well, though another competitor has shown up and seems to be doing better than we are in that space - even though they offer an inferior service. As for questionably breaking the rules, we pretty much followed in Imgur's footsteps. Even if this was too much, it hardly justifies the crucification we received.
- korzun 13y ago
  The difference is that you were too late in the game. When image hosting started blowing up alternatives to Imgur were horrible, horrible ad farms with low quality images that took several seconds to load. Comparing to what Imgur brings to the table and what you bring to the table, the different is not that drastic. Also you can't compare rules Reddit has in place now with rules it had years ago. There has been weeks where multiple image providers with shitty off the shelf solutions would be doing same thing you were trying to do after seeing Imgur take off every single day. Like I said, it's just too late at this point. Find another market.
  - korzun 13y ago
    It's not a discouragement, so don't take it as such. I founded similar service before Imgur was born and was trying to compete with them way before you did. Word of advice, stop allowing NSFW. You do not want to go down that path, there is no money in it and it will impact your business in a negative way when you decide to become profitable.
    - prawn 13y ago

rgbrgb 13y ago

Yes, a lot of the big subreddits have whitelists that your site has to get on by being popular--kind of a catch 22.

ghani 13y ago

You promote your site on reddit very aggressively, and consistently smear reddit's moderators as bad guys. You're a liar, and definitely not some poor victim. edit: Things you have done include running a bot to constantly promote MediaCrush on reddit (which you refer to as, "a little spammy"), vote-gaming by upvoting your bot's posts, removing any and all of your posts where you receive negative press, and slandering reddit moderators.

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
Now that I notice you've edited in some arguments, let's clarify these points: - We ran a bot that, upon explicitly being asked to by a user, would convert a post to HTML5 video - Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out. - We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. - I've shared some choice words about a few moderators who I've had a bad experience with. However, I've qualified myself every time, providing plenty of reasons for why I feel the way I do. The bot was a problem during the first few days of launch. It's hard to argue that it was spam when it only worked when summoned by a user. The vote gaming argument has merit - but we did stop once we realized that it was a bad idea. Even with all that in mind, these problems were only relevant during the first week or so of our lifetime, and doesn't really justify the relationship we've had with the admins from then out. You'd think that when the users of Reddit were clearly so excited about the service, the admins would take a moment to get in touch and talk to us about it civily, instead of taking such a hostile (and really, anti-user) stance towards the service. Side note: there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services - bots that don't wait for a user to request their help. These bots haven't had a negative impact on the competing services.
- ghani 13y ago
  > We ran a bot that, upon explicitly being asked to by a user, would convert a post to HTML5 video Your bot's account is gone, so there is little evidence to cite. However, I remember how present and obnoxious it was. Promotions for MediaCrush definitely did not appear solely when a user mentioned MediaCrush. It was enough of a problem that an admin on reddit asked you to stop: http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png http://i.imgur.com/CDykpWp.png > Yes, we upvoted the bot. We didn't realize it was a problem, and stopped once it was pointed out. Many other domains have been blocked from reddit for the same behavior (e.g. http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg-businessweek/ http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg... ), but you consistently portray reddit's admins as people who had it in for your site in particular, which is dishonest. > We don't remove any posts where we get negative press. Yes, you do. They cannot be found from your user page anymore, but I've personally watched you delete your comments in threads where you promote yourself and get bad press. > I've shared some choice words about a few moderators who I've had a bad experience with. However, I've qualified myself every time, providing plenty of reasons for why I feel the way I do. You've said things that are explicitly untrue about reddit's mods and admins. Mainly that they were big, bad, imgur-partial bullies. Here is the supposedly hostile, anti-user stance that moderators took towards MediaCrush: http://i.imgur.com/iuMFUOO.png http://i.imgur.com/iuMFUOO.png http://i.imgur.com/GI8MFje.png http://i.imgur.com/GI8MFje.png http://i.imgur.com/boKDi3I.png http://i.imgur.com/boKDi3I.png These quotes come from a thread that you started, when you thought that you could push around reddit's mods: http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creators_of_mediacrush_versus_the_moderation/ http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1k6ig4/the_creat... You're the one at fault for your problems with reddit, and it is low of you to pretend reddit's mods and admins are the bad guys. > The bot was a problem during the first few days of launch. It's hard to argue that it was spam when it only worked when summoned by a user. The vote gaming argument has merit - but we did stop once we realized that it was a bad idea. The bot that you ran promoted your site obnoxiously in many subreddits, and there are plenty of accounts banned via /r/reportthespammers that do exactly the same thing. I don't feel that you can argue it was not spam. > there are numerous bots that arguably generate much more spam for competing services This is a tu-quoque, and doesn't justify you in any way.

jotm 13y ago

Can't you get the .com domain? Every time I see your site being mentioned I avoid using it because of the domain name for some reason. It just sounds weird and not too legit. How do you even say it out loud? "It's Media C R U dot S H. Mediacrush, get it?" :-). Then again, Imgur isn't much better...

Sir_Cmpwn 13y ago
The .com used to be in use, but appears to be defunct now. In any case, we have no money, so we can't buy it for the usual cost of a squatted domain.

ilaksh 13y ago

Clearly reddit had an early vested interest and used their dominant media position to "pick a winner" in that space which enriched their portfolio. This should certainly be illegal if it isn't already. Although, making anything related to money illegal in this society almost seems futile at this point with de-regulation so out-of-control.

nl 13y ago
Most people would call that a strategic alliance. And as for "their dominant media position".. An alliance between Fox, NBC CBS and ABC would have a "dominant media position". A random internet forum.. not so much.

colmvp 13y ago

I use mediacrush all the time on /r/hockey. Didn't know that the Reddit admins didn't like it.