Well crap. Acquisitions like this are rarely a good thing for people who preferred the product/service to remain as it had been before. There's already a screenshot of an article in the comments...
Well crap.
Acquisitions like this are rarely a good thing for people who preferred the product/service to remain as it had been before. There's already a screenshot of an article in the comments on Imgur showing that the new owners "plan to introduce ads over the coming weeks" to cover their costs.
Personally, I use Imgur as my go-to image-hosting site for Reddit, sharing direct links of images in my Reddit posts, meaning that the images load in-line, without having to go a separate page with branding or links on it.
I'll be on the lookout for a new image hosting solution.
I don't see a privacy policy... Their TOS says that "In more serious circumstances" if you violate their TOS (aka upload something illegal) "you will be reported to the appropriate authorities....
I don't see a privacy policy...
Their TOS says that "In more serious circumstances" if you violate their TOS (aka upload something illegal) "you will be reported to the appropriate authorities. Relevant information in offending cases is recorded and stored, to assist the authorities." So they must be storing something, but I see no disclosures of such.
As someone else pointed out, that's exactly how Imgur started, to help the Reddit community. It soon grew far too large. Also, I lack the knowledge to make an image host or to pay for bandwidth...
I'll be on the lookout for a new image hosting solution.
Why don't we make one?
As someone else pointed out, that's exactly how Imgur started, to help the Reddit community. It soon grew far too large.
Also, I lack the knowledge to make an image host or to pay for bandwidth costs, the primary reason that most hosting services no longer officially allow what Imgur (still) allows - direct linking with no interstitial page with branding and ads.
There already is and I cannot recommend them enough: https://www.patreon.com/cubeupload no compression, funded by donations, ads and patreons. According to the patreon, they currently are not...
no compression, funded by donations, ads and patreons. According to the patreon, they currently are not self-sustaining, so I don't know, but I use them everywhere I can.
Yeah, Imgur has been gradually getting worse for years now (ever since they started trying to be a social media site instead of just an image host, IMO), but at least the image hosting service...
Yeah, Imgur has been gradually getting worse for years now (ever since they started trying to be a social media site instead of just an image host, IMO), but at least the image hosting service itself was still reasonably solid. Even that seems to have rapidly gotten worse over the last few years now too though. A few weeks ago I couldn't even upload anything for about 3 days straight... I just kept getting a "page not found" error every time I clicked on my own Images page. It was pretty infuriating.
And another thing that pissed me off too; About a year ago they also changed my username without even informing me, despite me having had it for over 11 years. I just logged in one day and noticed it had been changed from No-Shit-Sherlock to Sherlock. No warning, no notification, no word from them on why... though presumably because it had the word "Shit" in it. Seriously? WTF?
Ah well... the seemingly endless cycle of the web repeats. Time to finally start looking for an alternative again. It gives me no joy to say that though, since I was huge fan of Imgur (and /u/MrGrim) back in the day, and even had Imgur Pro back when that was a thing... Which I still don't understand why they ever stopped offering; "Here, take my money" - "Naw, we'd rather just serve you ads instead (which you will never see since you use adblock)" :(
That's OK, Imgur of today isn't the Imgur of old. I still remember the announcement thread, and it was simple and no-nonsense. I get it that it's not a money-making business to run it the way that...
That's OK, Imgur of today isn't the Imgur of old. I still remember the announcement thread, and it was simple and no-nonsense. I get it that it's not a money-making business to run it the way that I'd like to see it run, but do miss it.
Probably more for their image uploading infrastructure than for their social aspect, it'll play a role, but I can't imagine a better reason than infrastructure.
Probably more for their image uploading infrastructure than for their social aspect, it'll play a role, but I can't imagine a better reason than infrastructure.
Any half-competent web developer could knock up an imgur clone in a couple of weeks. Bit longer if you want the social stuff as well, but the core bits are simple. There's nothing particularly...
Any half-competent web developer could knock up an imgur clone in a couple of weeks. Bit longer if you want the social stuff as well, but the core bits are simple. There's nothing particularly complex there, they host on AWS so most of the heavy lifting is automagic - they're just a database with a big filestore backing. You'd need someone with some scaling experience but modern software is so much easier to scale these days anyway. It's not like you'd need to get in there and manually tune very much, just throw more hardware at it until it works. If they just want infrastructure this is a very expensive way to go about getting it.
99% they're buying it for the userbase, to show them adverts. Because image hosting is a very effective money sink otherwise. It's all constantly escalating costs - storage and bandwidth especially.
Really? You can't? Seems a bit naive to think that this has to do with anything other than money and have adds written all over it. Show me one example where an acquisition like this have been for...
Really? You can't? Seems a bit naive to think that this has to do with anything other than money and have adds written all over it. Show me one example where an acquisition like this have been for the benefit of the users. It's an automatic red flag for me and bye.
Well crap.
Acquisitions like this are rarely a good thing for people who preferred the product/service to remain as it had been before. There's already a screenshot of an article in the comments on Imgur showing that the new owners "plan to introduce ads over the coming weeks" to cover their costs.
Personally, I use Imgur as my go-to image-hosting site for Reddit, sharing direct links of images in my Reddit posts, meaning that the images load in-line, without having to go a separate page with branding or links on it.
I'll be on the lookout for a new image hosting solution.
Try cubeupload! Free, old, direct links...
I don't see a privacy policy...
Their TOS says that "In more serious circumstances" if you violate their TOS (aka upload something illegal) "you will be reported to the appropriate authorities. Relevant information in offending cases is recorded and stored, to assist the authorities." So they must be storing something, but I see no disclosures of such.
I don't think they claim to be more private than a regular service. An account is required to upload images.
Have signed up, am enjoying not getting my verification email and the site claiming to have sent it and refusing to send another
Well I didn't say it was perfect lol
It's funny because that's how Imgur started.
As someone else pointed out, that's exactly how Imgur started, to help the Reddit community. It soon grew far too large.
Also, I lack the knowledge to make an image host or to pay for bandwidth costs, the primary reason that most hosting services no longer officially allow what Imgur (still) allows - direct linking with no interstitial page with branding and ads.
There already is and I cannot recommend them enough: https://www.patreon.com/cubeupload
no compression, funded by donations, ads and patreons. According to the patreon, they currently are not self-sustaining, so I don't know, but I use them everywhere I can.
abload.de
MediaLab's management of Kik is outright criminally negligent. I recommend this podcast about it.
The other day someone suggested me cubeupload. Really satisfied with it. Imgur went to shit a long time ago.
Wonder if they can still make it worse than it currently is, that website is plain unusable the way it is currently. Error pages everywhere.
Yeah, Imgur has been gradually getting worse for years now (ever since they started trying to be a social media site instead of just an image host, IMO), but at least the image hosting service itself was still reasonably solid. Even that seems to have rapidly gotten worse over the last few years now too though. A few weeks ago I couldn't even upload anything for about 3 days straight... I just kept getting a "page not found" error every time I clicked on my own Images page. It was pretty infuriating.
And another thing that pissed me off too; About a year ago they also changed my username without even informing me, despite me having had it for over 11 years. I just logged in one day and noticed it had been changed from No-Shit-Sherlock to Sherlock. No warning, no notification, no word from them on why... though presumably because it had the word "Shit" in it. Seriously? WTF?
Ah well... the seemingly endless cycle of the web repeats. Time to finally start looking for an alternative again. It gives me no joy to say that though, since I was huge fan of Imgur (and /u/MrGrim) back in the day, and even had Imgur Pro back when that was a thing... Which I still don't understand why they ever stopped offering; "Here, take my money" - "Naw, we'd rather just serve you ads instead (which you will never see since you use adblock)" :(
That's OK, Imgur of today isn't the Imgur of old. I still remember the announcement thread, and it was simple and no-nonsense. I get it that it's not a money-making business to run it the way that I'd like to see it run, but do miss it.
Imgur died to me when they started blocking direct links on mobile. I dont want and don't need another social network.
Probably more for their image uploading infrastructure than for their social aspect, it'll play a role, but I can't imagine a better reason than infrastructure.
Any half-competent web developer could knock up an imgur clone in a couple of weeks. Bit longer if you want the social stuff as well, but the core bits are simple. There's nothing particularly complex there, they host on AWS so most of the heavy lifting is automagic - they're just a database with a big filestore backing. You'd need someone with some scaling experience but modern software is so much easier to scale these days anyway. It's not like you'd need to get in there and manually tune very much, just throw more hardware at it until it works. If they just want infrastructure this is a very expensive way to go about getting it.
99% they're buying it for the userbase, to show them adverts. Because image hosting is a very effective money sink otherwise. It's all constantly escalating costs - storage and bandwidth especially.
Really? You can't? Seems a bit naive to think that this has to do with anything other than money and have adds written all over it. Show me one example where an acquisition like this have been for the benefit of the users. It's an automatic red flag for me and bye.
That's too bad, but Imgur's UX dropped off the cliff a long time ago.
I've been using ImgBB instead mostly.