So for my part I don’t have a gigantic issue with Imgur as a service, but I do have an issue with how bloated the website has become and how they’ve completely degraded the experience on mobile. In general I’m not interested in using an image uploading site like Imgur as social media, so everything but image uploading is overhead for me.
On mobile, Imgur is extremely strict about the experience and “optimization”; direct image links will redirect you to the post instead, and the posts themselves are extremely compressed, which makes images with smaller text basically unreadable, on top of everything else just looking like shit.
My usecase for image hosting is to share with friends, and not have to really worry about looking back at previous images, so I personally rent a server for $3/m (and a domain for like $15/y) and use it to host any files I want to upload. That way I don’t have to worry about third parties screwing with the presentation of my images in ways I don’t want them to.
Drew DeVault wrote a blog post back in 2014 that kind of covers it. Imgur seems to have broke the cycle but that doesn’t mean they haven’t gone to shit. They’ve just somehow avoided collapsing underneath themselves as they continue the enshittification of Imgur.
I am fundamentally opposed to nearly all forms of advertising at an ideological level and go to great lengths to avoid it in as many of its insidious forms as possible. So that is where Drew and I differ. The only form of advertising I appreciate are extremely dry infomercials (no not the for-TV kind) and authentic word of mouth (not to be confused with “native” advertising or sponsors). Ads are a net negative on humanity and in too many ways to list but because the effects go through a layer of indirection - similar to how secondhand smoke is harmful for non-smokers. People are more OK with ads. It took making the public aware of secondhand smoke and the harm that smoking causes - even for non-smokers - before people took a privileged stance against smoking. That same level of awareness and condemnation will never happen with ads because people are OK with getting things “for free” that they otherwise would have to pay for. So they’ll willingly turn a blind eye to the harmful effects of advertisements and “put up with them”.
I am curious here, what is wrong with continuing to use Imgur?
You just need a free account and you can keep posting stuff like before, minus the porn.
I already get that Imgur just deciding to nuke all of its old content for shits and giggles is not a widely popular move and so is the NSFW ban.
So for my part I don’t have a gigantic issue with Imgur as a service, but I do have an issue with how bloated the website has become and how they’ve completely degraded the experience on mobile. In general I’m not interested in using an image uploading site like Imgur as social media, so everything but image uploading is overhead for me.
On mobile, Imgur is extremely strict about the experience and “optimization”; direct image links will redirect you to the post instead, and the posts themselves are extremely compressed, which makes images with smaller text basically unreadable, on top of everything else just looking like shit.
My usecase for image hosting is to share with friends, and not have to really worry about looking back at previous images, so I personally rent a server for $3/m (and a domain for like $15/y) and use it to host any files I want to upload. That way I don’t have to worry about third parties screwing with the presentation of my images in ways I don’t want them to.
I’m more into “free/libre and open source” services lately… just curious to find new alternatives
It’s probably a good idea to always have image host alternatives in place so that we don’t get a tinybb issue in 5 years…or less
Drew DeVault wrote a blog post back in 2014 that kind of covers it. Imgur seems to have broke the cycle but that doesn’t mean they haven’t gone to shit. They’ve just somehow avoided collapsing underneath themselves as they continue the enshittification of Imgur.
I am fundamentally opposed to nearly all forms of advertising at an ideological level and go to great lengths to avoid it in as many of its insidious forms as possible. So that is where Drew and I differ. The only form of advertising I appreciate are extremely dry infomercials (no not the for-TV kind) and authentic word of mouth (not to be confused with “native” advertising or sponsors). Ads are a net negative on humanity and in too many ways to list but because the effects go through a layer of indirection - similar to how secondhand smoke is harmful for non-smokers. People are more OK with ads. It took making the public aware of secondhand smoke and the harm that smoking causes - even for non-smokers - before people took a privileged stance against smoking. That same level of awareness and condemnation will never happen with ads because people are OK with getting things “for free” that they otherwise would have to pay for. So they’ll willingly turn a blind eye to the harmful effects of advertisements and “put up with them”.
Fuck ads.