Imgur's community was in revolt

Perceived Long-Term Decline of Imgur

• Several commenters say “years-long degradation” started well before the 2021 acquisition.
• Early red flags: redirecting direct image links to ad-heavy pages, gimmicky overlays (e.g., swipe prompts), and later TikTok-style videos under the requested image.
• Deletion of large swaths of old content (e.g., retroactive nudity bans) is seen as breaking an implicit “trusted host” contract.

Reddit Parallels and Why External Image Hosts Existed

• Imgur originally filled Reddit’s gap: fast, free hosting when Reddit was mostly text and external links.
• Reasons Reddit didn’t host images early:
  • Storage and bandwidth were much more expensive; Reddit was small, underfunded, and busy just staying online.
  • Hosting images brings added legal risk and moderation burden, especially for NSFW and borderline content.
• Earlier hosts like ImageShack and Photobucket became slow, ad-infested, paywalled, or deleted popular images, prompting the creation and rapid adoption of Imgur.

Porn, Liability, and Moderation Culture

• Multiple anecdotes describe early Reddit as awash in porn and minimally moderated, with “anything legal” (or close to it) tolerated.
• People recall creepy or borderline subreddits (jailbait-style, creep shots, bestiality, white supremacist spaces, Gamergate organizing).
• Many argue this made first-party image hosting a legal and reputational nightmare.
• There’s an extended philosophical debate:
  • One side emphasizes free speech = legality.
  • The other stresses platforms’ right not to host disturbing but legal content, and notes “hardcore free speech” platforms tend to become unusable for most people.

Imgur as Utility vs. Community

• Some are surprised Imgur has a “thriving community” at all; they only ever used it as plumbing for Reddit/forums.
• Others insist the on-site community has existed for over a decade, often unaware of (or indifferent to) its role as Reddit’s image backend.
• Reports of a hostile, insular culture: welcoming if you fit in, aggressive and incurious if you don’t.
• Confusing privacy/public defaults led to “accidental” public posts from people who thought they were just uploading to embed elsewhere.

The Revolt, AI Moderation, and Outcome

• The immediate trigger: new owners fired human moderators and replaced them with “AI moderation.”
• Protest tactics evolved: middle-finger images, mass TOS-violating porn, solid-black “blackout” posts, and oversized images/videos to strain infrastructure.
• By the time of discussion, visible protest largely subsided; front page looked normal to some, though others still noticed unusually racy content and oversized files.
• One view: like Reddit’s API revolt, it won’t change management but will push some users off the platform or to Lemmy/other sites; another notes the revolt briefly made Imgur better by crowding out political spam.

Economics, Enshittification, and Alternatives

• Broad agreement that “nothing is free”: once investor money runs low, platforms must monetize, often via ads, engagement tricks, or policy changes that alienate users.
• Imgur’s trajectory is framed as a standard “enshittification” arc: beloved simple tool → VC-funded growth → pressure to extract more value → community backlash.
• Some argue Imgur’s meme-heavy community is almost impossible to monetize well, making drastic moves inevitable.
• Alternatives mentioned:
  • catbox.moe: intentionally simple host, community-funded; supporters pitch in monthly, but others warn that such funding is fragile (e.g., Patreon issues) and that overexposure could overload it.
  • s3nd.pics and similar minimalist hosts trying to recreate “old Imgur” with fewer ads/algorithms.

Wider Web Annoyances

• Side discussion about intrusive email gates and modals on the article’s site;
  • The publisher claims this is partly to combat AI scraping and support journalism.
  • Commenters doubt the technical effectiveness and compare modals to the old popup-ad problem, now largely unsolved at browser level.