Imgur has been my go-to solution for uploading and sharing images and screenshots for years now, but I have become aware of some issues with the site's design that make it a pain for other people to use.

For instance, it's almost impossible to directly link to an image on Imgur, and not an image's page on Imgur. The mobile website experience is also not very good.

Imgur isn't just an image hosting solution either, it's also a social media site. The website seems to detract from the image sharing experience in order to promote its social media side.

I have no interest in that. I just want a solution to host my images so that I can syndicate them elsewhere.

It seems like, in true IndieWeb fashion, the best solution is to just host my images on my own website, and indeed that's what I will probably end up doing.

However, I have a few questions I wanted to ask, starting with recommendations for other websites:

Does any here have an Imgur alternative that they can recommend as a good image hosting and sharing solution?

I checked out a few sites, like Pixelfed, but it seems more like a federated Instagram alternative. Annoyingly, I can't demo the site before creating an account, so I don't actually know what the experience is like.

Assuming there are no recommended Imgur alternatives and I should just host my images on my own website, I would also like to know:

• Should I be worried about "anonymizing" my images and messing with Exif data?
• Can anyone recommend software for optimizing image sizes? (Linux friendly, command-line or otherwise scriptable utilities preferred.)
• As a bonus, can anyone recommend software for optimizing GIF and video files for sharing online? (Same preferences as above.)

Does anyone have a business subscriber Internet connection? Is it worth it?

I just spoke with my ISP, and for an extra $40/mo I can get a static IP address with 100mbps that I can host my own website on. I have a virtualization server, and I've been thinking about hosting my own hobby-scale website for a while. I haven't had any luck finding rack hosting space that I'd feel comfortable using so I'm thinking about just going rogue, and operating solo. If I had a static IP address with a pipe that would allow me to host then all I'd need to do is stand up a server, register a domain, and point it at my IP address.

Other than the typical security risks, what do I need to worry about? Would the experience be worth it?

EDIT: signups are now closed.

relevant blog post

teknik.io is a website that provides services like email, [encrypted] file uploads, Git repos, blogs, URL shortening, and more. I've used them for a few years and they're wonderful. It's all open-source and privacy conscious, maybe some Tildes users would like it?

Registration is usually invite-only, but it's open for a few hours.

Thanks @duckoverflow for mentioning this.

Edit: also their privacy policy is short, simple, and easy-to-read if anyone is interested in that. I'd consider it a great example of what a privacy policy should be.