PSA: Imgur will begin removing inactive, anonymous image uploads tomorrow. Archive what you can!

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029-Imgur-Terms-of-Service-Update-April-19-2023-

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.

Our goal is that the removal of inactive content will be imperceivable, because ultimately, our intent is to limit the disruption to Imgurians' experience. We plan to use a combination of total views and recent views, among other criteria, to define content as inactive. We also plan on running some smaller scale, reversible tests to ensure we are only removing content that will not have an impact on Imgurians' experience.

I'm not sure exactly what qualifies as "old, unused, and inactive" under the new TOS, but that would be an apt description for this site, so I guess a significant chunk of ilx history is going to vanish like it did when Tinypic and Photobucket took similar steps. Archive your old WDYLLs or album covers drawn from memory or Andrey Arshavin photoshops or whatever you think is worth saving

omg thank you unregistered!!!

yw!

i think i will let the rest of my drunkenly animate fall apart

it is the way of the internet

hmm, this does make it a bit ambiguous though

We plan to use a combination of total views and recent views, among other criteria, to define content as inactive.

i wonder, if you link to an imgur image on ilx, if viewing an ilx thread with the image adds to the "views" on imgur. maybe it does if the image is opened in a new tab?

i should know this kind of thing, but i don't. anyone else have thoughts?

https://i.imgur.com/5LpmYrd.gif

i wonder, if you link to an imgur image on ilx, if viewing an ilx thread with the image adds to the "views" on imgur. maybe it does if the image is opened in a new tab?

i should know this kind of thing, but i don't. anyone else have thoughts?

I logged into my imgur account and checked the view counts for some private photos of Uncle Kracker that I posted on ilx, and they have a few hundred views. I doubt hundreds of people opened images of Uncle Kracker in a new tab, so a visit to a thread containing an imgur image should contribute to its view count. but I have no idea what criteria imgur is using to determine if a photo is "unused and inactive"

I guess I kinda idiotically trusted imgur not to execute a tinypic style purge because...idk, it was created by a redditor? it had its own community with sad little meet and greets and in-group memes (mostly just the Travolta and Javert gifs)? but wikipedia says it was acquired by "MediaLab AI, Inc., a holding company of internet brands", so now it's just another cold, unfeeling file hosting service. I wish the internet archive (or some other org with a real interest in preserving internet history) would launch a widely used image host so this kind of thing wouldn't keep happening every 5 or 10 years. but nobody really cares if bodybuilding forum threads from 2008 are still readable in the present day, so I'm not holding out hope

CONTENT NOT VIEWABLE IN YOUR REGION

Well this isn't ideal is it

I thought Imgur would last 1000 years

This Online Safety Act bullshit is so bad for the internet. Even the Interactive Fiction Competition has had to geoblock the UK for certain entries - I haven't found a good constant-use VPN that works with my OS so I'm resorting to pasting addresses into online VPNs but it is a massive pain in the arse.

Well, that's a pisser. The kick in the teeth is that I can't access Imgur at all, not even to see what images I had uploaded. Someone out there was probably using it as a general-purpose image archive a la Flickr, in which case I'm stuffed they're stuffed.

I think, like a lot of people, I didn't realise Imgur was initially set up as an image host for Reddit. It had its own separate culture, despite being technically just a legal dodge. Now Reddit has its own image hosting service, so Imgur is redundant, but it's still useful for, yes, Ilxor.

For example, I remember noticing that Emma Stone is the spitting image of Ambassador Alpha Centauri from Doctor Who. It's easier to express that thought with images, instead of describing it with words. But perhaps the demise of Imgur will make writing fashionable again. People will stop sharing pictures and will instead share little poems. "I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations - a singular development of cat communications".

Did I mention that I visited CERN last week? I came within a few hundred feet of the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The in-line-graphical, HTML-ised version of the internet. We've come a long way. Sadly there were security gates in the way so I couldn't touch the World Wide Web itself - they probably don't let people mess with the computer it's hosted on, in case they accidentally turn it off - but I did buy a CERN hard hat, just in case.

Also there's a sanctuary for computer mice that I didn't get to visit. Because they wouldn't let me in. Me! CERN! Me!

Someone out there was probably using it as a general-purpose image archive a la Flickr, in which case I'm stuffed they're stuffed.

having gone through the demise of tinypic circa 2019, this time around with imgur i _swore_ i’d do a better job of archiving things i posted. for the most part i did, but i’m still curious if there’s a script i can use or some useful hoonja doonja mac thing to download every image off of a particular page, like say zach's old animations and new visual art, updated every 25 to 60 days

Save the page as html, pull the images out from the resulting folder.

*thanking you*

welp

i am hereby and very officially suing imgur and all related parties to the maximum financial reward for my punishment allowed under current law

can i just ask: is there an option for free image hosting (compatible with ilx) that stands out to anyone? for example, right now i’d love to post an image of frank auerach’s “head of j.y.m.”, 1974. imgur’s out. so. ? sorry for not keeping up with what may be very obvious, but let me know!

*auerbach

I've been using https://imgchest.com/ but honestly I can't believe any service claiming "we'll host your shit forever!" will last more than 5 years.

github should host images just fine and has a longer shelf life than free image hosting sites