Imgur is about to purge unregistered image uploads

[lazygecko]

It's outlined here in their new terms of service:

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029

 

"Our new Terms of Service will go into effect on May 15, 2023. We will be focused on removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account from our platform as well as nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content. You will need to download/save any images that you wish to save if they no longer adhere to these Terms. Most notably, this would include explicit/pornographic content."

 

That's very convenient sweeping phrasing they're using, and I have no real reason to believe in a charitable interpretation regarding what kind of images will be exempt from this.

 

Anyone who's been active on the internet for long enough will be more than familiar with how ephemeral these image hosting services can be in the long term. It's a precarious business at best, and seems like it's finally their time to start heading in the same direction as Imageshack and Photobucket. Imgur has been the de facto standard for image uploads for well over a decade now, and a lot of web articles, informative social media posts, etc, have been using it to host images externally. So there's a good chance most of that is going to disappear again in yet another big online extinction event. So if there's anything out there that you want or need preserved, now is the time to be proactive about it since the window is closing fast.

 

Spoiler

Also, Photobucket was always a piece of shit even back in the day and it boggled me how people put up with it even back then.

 

[Gez]

1 hour ago, lazygecko said:

Also, Photobucket was always a piece of shit even back in the day and it boggled me how people put up with it even back then.

Yeah, I used Imageshack back then. Photobucket was just too annoying from the start, while Imageshack started good and then went crappy.

 

Anyways, RIP Imgur, you had a longer run than anticipated. I never had to make an account on there (just like I never made one for Imageshack), and I'm not going to make one in response to this.

 

There's a ton of old screenshots, plus the "share your sprites/textures/etc" content that is going to die now.

[Noiser]

That's bad news... It would be good to have a backup to all those sprites and textures posted here.

[Reisal]

People still use Imgur?

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

4 hours ago, Noiser said:

That's bad news... It would be good to have a backup to all those sprites and textures posted here.

If someone gives me pointers towards stuff that particularly needs rescuing, I can help go on a saving spree.  I'm particularly interested in Heretic/Hexen related stuff of course, but I'll grab anything Doom-engine-related as needed.

 

As I recall one of the pain in the ass things about Imgur is that it replaces filenames with a random hash so unless people have integrated credits into the image itself (a practice I wholeheartedly endorse), it will take extra time over just clicking a download to make sure everything is attributed properly.

[lazygecko]

You could probably create some data scraping script to go through entire threads on Doomworld and save all the bitmap contents in them. Though that doesn't factor in attribution of authorship.

[NiTROACTiVE]

It's a good thing all of the pictures I uploaded on Imgur are attached to my account. As for Imgur banning porn, it's Tumblr all over again.

 

9 hours ago, Armaetus said:

People still use Imgur?

Imgur is convenient for me, as I used it to upload textures that I want to display on the forum. What do you use to host images on forums?

Edited April 21, 2023 by NiTROACTiVE

[Murdoch]

You shouldn't rely on online services to be around forever, and they certainly shouldn't be your only copy of something you care about. That's not just tempting fate, that's kicking fate in the nuts and daring it to chase you.

[Gothic]

5 hours ago, Armaetus said:

People still use Imgur?

Before the announcement, was there any reason to not use it?

[RDETalus]

I'm a bit confused here: If I upload a photo without an Imgur account (I didn't even know you could do that), then that photo can be deleted? If I upload a photo with my Imgur account, then I am safe?

[Murdoch]

2 hours ago, RDETalus said:

I'm a bit confused here: If I upload a photo without an Imgur account (I didn't even know you could do that), then that photo can be deleted? If I upload a photo with my Imgur account, then I am safe?

 

That is my interpretation of the wording.

[Jello]

2 hours ago, RDETalus said:

I'm a bit confused here: If I upload a photo without an Imgur account (I didn't even know you could do that), then that photo can be deleted? If I upload a photo with my Imgur account, then I am safe?

I guess I'm kind of curious about that myself. I've been using them for a few years now, but I was under the assumption that you had to make an account to upload images. 

 

So... this sounds like people were using it as a free way to upload images, without even making an account, imgur was supposed to host these images forever? I mean, my account is free, and it doesn't sound like it'll be affected by this. Of course I also have those images saved on my computer, but assuming somebody was going to host your pictures for free, forever, when you didn't even bother to make a free account seems... kind of ridiculous. I realize it can cause problems with things being lost because of it... but yeah, they can't host things forever. Nor should they be expected to.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Jello

[RDETalus]

 

37 minutes ago, Jello said:

So... this sounds like people were using it as a free way to upload images, without even making an account, imgur was supposed to host these images forever?

 

Yeah those mega bits don't grow on trees, I was surprised that they even let you upload photos without an account.

 

I was about to purchase whatever subscription they had, but then I noticed they don't say a thing about paid services so it seems that it won't effect free account users.

Edited April 21, 2023 by RDETalus

[Dr. Zin]

Honestly it's not surprising, most of these "free" online services are moving towards restricting what they offer for free or are squeezing users into monetizeable accounts to try and turn a profit. The "free as in beer" internet services of the last fifteen years were driven by interest rates being held super low after the 2008 recession, since borrowing money was almost free if you were a corporate investor/venture capital firm looking to gamble on startups. As long as there was the carrot that eventually one of the big monopolies would eventually buy your company for the investors to get a big payday they'd keep pumping money in and offering these services at a loss. Now interest rates have gone back up and the big boys aren't buying every loss-leader service just because it claims 75% market share, so investors now want to see their startups actually turn a profit. Hence the clearing out of old data filling up servers and trying to push users into accounts that can be used to collect personal data and package it for sale, and potentially upsell to paid accounts.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Dr. Zin

[Biodegradable]

Feckless corpo-speak aside, nothing in their announcement really suggests a company being out of touch and about to do something stupid that kills their site. They're not even working in some kind of subscription service, though that could always happen later like an Amazon Prime subscription or Twitter Blue thing for added perks. They're just doing away with uploading images without an account and don't want to be liable for illegal shit, hence the pornography ban. Unlike Tumblr, Imgur has never had a massive NSFW culture of sorts, so that's not going to hurt their traffic much. Hell, they're not even going to use a stupid robot to misinterpret everything as nipples and said they'll still have human moderators, so all forms of artistic nudity will still be allowed. Aside having to make an account to use Imgur, I'm not really hearing much of a down side except perhaps if you're too scared to store a porn stash in your computer, in which case, sucks to be you. Hell, I've had an account since 2015 and I didn't know you COULD upload stuff to it without one.

 

Honestly, of all the big old website business moves we've witnessed over the last few years, this one actually makes sense. I don't see much, if anything, to really moan about here. It takes two seconds to make an account and carry on using it as normal.

 

[ShallowB]

Huh.  Didn't even know until today that you could upload pictures without an account.  That's surprising, and it makes sense to purge those, although I'm scared about how many pages of the texture and sprite threads both here and on Zdoom are going to suddenly lose all their content.

 

The porn though? Dude, that's a huge chunk of your users.  Have you learned nothing from Tumblr?

Edited April 21, 2023 by ShallowB

[Ludi]

I wonder if we could move this stuff into a jumbo-sized texture pack and upload it to /idgames before it all goes away. Not only are some of these textures useful, but they're also historical artifacts worth preserving.

[Biodegradable]

10 minutes ago, Ludi said:

I wonder if we could move this stuff into a jumbo-sized texture pack and upload it to /idgames before it all goes away. Not only are some of these textures useful, but they're also historical artifacts worth preserving.

 

I think it's safe to assume every single texture that has ever been shared on DW via a Imgur link for the purpose of display in a thread post has already been properly archived elsewhere.

[Murdoch]

1 minute ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I think it's safe to assume every single texture that has ever been shared on DW via a Imgur link for the purpose of display in a thread post has already been properly archived elsewhere.

 

Quite likely. 

 

22 minutes ago, ShallowB said:

The porn though? Dude, that's a huge chunk of your users.  Have you learned nothing from Tumblr?

 

If those users aren't turning a profit then they are better off without them.

[Biodegradable]

1 hour ago, ShallowB said:

The porn though? Dude, that's a huge chunk of your users.  Have you learned nothing from Tumblr?

 

Tumblr had a very thriving Hentai/NSFW art culture that was a defining factor of its appeal and identity for many people, both artistically and for the horny bastards. A big part of the mass exodus of users that happened consisted primarily of artists who were having all their work taken down by a bot who couldn't tell the difference between an abstract drawing and a literal vagina.

 

I don't see that happening with Imgur.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Biodegradable

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, Biodegradable said:

A big part of the mass exodus of users that happened consisted primarily of artists who were having all their work taken down by a bot who couldn't tell the difference between an abstract drawing and a literal vagina.

 

In defense of the bot, with abstract art that is often an easy mistake to make.

[indigotyrian]

14 hours ago, Armaetus said:

People still use Imgur?

 

The big problem is that for about 15 years imgur was the tool to use to host images for forums, reddit, etc. You ever look something up because you need info on something or you need to fix a problem, find an old forum thread, and it's basically unreadable because the images linked to tinypic or photobucket and the page has just rotted away? That's gonna become way way worse, real soon.

 

2 hours ago, Murdoch said:

If those users aren't turning a profit then they are better off without them.

 

I have absolutely no comment on this.

Edited April 21, 2023 by segfault

[Noiser]

7 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

I think it's safe to assume every single texture that has ever been shared on DW via a Imgur link for the purpose of display in a thread post has already been properly archived elsewhere.

Any evidence of that? Speculating is counter productive.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Noiser

[prfunky]

Fascinating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites

 

[HavoX]

Welp. It was nice while it lasted.

Edited April 21, 2023 by HavoX

[Ludi]

9 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

I think it's safe to assume every single texture that has ever been shared on DW via a Imgur link for the purpose of display in a thread post has already been properly archived elsewhere.

 

Proof or it didn't happen.

[Kyka]

It's a toxic sh*thole anyway. Good riddance.

[Stupid Bunny]

17 hours ago, NiTROACTiVE said:

Imgur is convenient for me, as I used it to upload textures that I want to display on the forum. What do you use to host images on forums?

 

I can't speak for Armaetus but I use postimages.org and have had no complaints so far.  It's a nice super-minimal interface for nothing except putting images somewhere.  Not to say it's as 404-proof as any other hosting site out there but for the moment it seems a solid choice.  (I only wish I could bulk-select-and-move images between folders, but you can't win 'em all I guess)

[SuyaSSS]

WAIT WHAT?!! You don't need an Imgur account to upload on Imgur?

 

I am on the same boat as quite a few people here who didn't know that you can upload images without an account. So, it will be fair to assume that most people who use Imgur for image hosting regularly have an account and don't need to panic. 

Edited April 21, 2023 by SuyaSS

[indigotyrian]

3 hours ago, SuyaSS said:

WAIT WHAT?!! You don't need an Imgur account to upload on Imgur?

 

I am on the same boat as quite a few people here who didn't know that you can upload images without an account. So, it will be fair to assume that most people who use Imgur for image hosting regularly have an account and don't need to panic. 

 

I used (and still used up until now) imgur without an account pretty frequently. This isn't a "don't panic, nothing's gonna happen" situation because shit *will* go missing. We're about to see a shitton of forum posts across the Internet over the past decade and a half just up and disappear, forever. It's not even going to be stuff as fluffy and meaningless as Doom sprites. Hope you don't mind detailed instructions on repairing your used car vanishing.