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Imgur Crackdown


Morrigan
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So, I didn't know this (obviously now I do), but RP forums host their images on Imgur. Now I knew some friends hosted a thing or two on there or shared images to be from there but I didn't know that sites were fully hosting their layout design images on Imgur.

 

Now, that being said, I guess the amount of people that host their files there is so much that Imgur has actually banned jcink from using their images at all, and I guess that would mean even trying to show a funny image in a thread is out now, due to the abuse. (You can read about it here).

 

Now with the information there I feel I must ask, how many people host images on Imgur (including link banners and sig banners)? What are your thoughts on the massive ban hammer that they threw down? Where are you moving your content to?

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They are being jerks with this. They will lose many people with this.

 

Fortunately I have them on photobucket, but many people I know have them on imgur and are screwed now :(

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I was using imgur until I heard about this the other day, now I have gone back to tinypic.  Although I left tinypic partly because it changes my stuff from .png, which is what i always save as, to .jpg when they are uploaded.  But since imgur has decided to do this I will live with tinypic until I decide to try something else.  Although for my site graphics I just uploaded them to the file manager on jcink and that's where they are.  Character images on the other hand are on tinypic for now.

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Well tinypic doesn't actually change the file format it's just the way they format their URLs to include the .jpg to make it universal. This is why gifs still work when they have a .jpg file extension. In case you were curious. @KARA BELLA

 

I agree it's pretty infuriating @Elena and this is why I always caution people to at least search for keywords in TOS.

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@Morrigan I did not know that but I realize gifs would not work if they actually did change the file name.  Still not sure I like it though, like I'm not sure I like what imgur decided to do.

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- Offers image hosting service which is no doubt centred around using the direct link option that they have available.

- Tells members they can no longer do this (how dare they use service as intended?)

 

You know, Imgur would not have this problem if they didn't decide to remove pro subscriptions and give all accounts those full access. They're saying it's hard dealing with the massive bandwidth issues. Well, they created them for themselves.

 

So disappointed. Never going back.

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I've always used Photobucket. I abhor what they've done with it, it runs insanely slow now, but, still works for all my linking needs so I just deal with it.

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@CovertSphinx I hated how long the links were with photobucket, although I haven't used in like ten years.  I don't even think I would be able to log into my photobucket account anymore.

 

@Honorem I just went though and deleted all the images I uploaded to imgur and my account.  They don't want people to use their site that way then I don't need to have any affiliation with them whatsoever.

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I'm in the process of rehosting everything myself.  Will be removing my account as well once I'm done.  My co admins have done the same with their images and accounts. 

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5 minutes ago, KARA BELLA said:

@Honorem I just went though and deleted all the images I uploaded to imgur and my account.  They don't want people to use their site that way then I don't need to have any affiliation with them whatsoever.

Indeed, absolutely agree. If they didn't want hotlinking, they should have been enforcing it this strongly from the very beginning, and not provide a direct link 'for layouts'.

 

Again I'll say I think they dug their own grave but cutting out pro subscription. Before that happened, free accounts were only allowed 250 images and a certain amount of bandwidth. Am I saying that's good to restrict users like that? Of course not. But they clearly underestimated how much bandwidth would be accumulated by lifting that restriction and giving unlimited access to every user. They're essentially punishing users for their own inept decision.

 

I'll also add one more thing: I paid for a year of pro service to Imgur two months before they lifted the restriction back last year or whenever it was. Did they have a notice on the subscription page letting users know this would soon be free? No. Did they offer refunds to people like me who essentially wasted their money? No. What can I say, I'm very indifferent toward them now.

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48 minutes ago, Honorem said:

Indeed, absolutely agree. If they didn't want hotlinking, they should have been enforcing it this strongly from the very beginning, and not provide a direct link 'for layouts'.

 

Again I'll say I think they dug their own grave but cutting out pro subscription. Before that happened, free accounts were only allowed 250 images and a certain amount of bandwidth. Am I saying that's good to restrict users like that? Of course not. But they clearly underestimated how much bandwidth would be accumulated by lifting that restriction and giving unlimited access to every user. They're essentially punishing users for their own inept decision.

 

I'll also add one more thing: I paid for a year of pro service to Imgur two months before they lifted the restriction back last year or whenever it was. Did they have a notice on the subscription page letting users know this would soon be free? No. Did they offer refunds to people like me who essentially wasted their money? No. What can I say, I'm very indifferent toward them now.

 

As far as I am concerned that's just bad service.

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45 minutes ago, KARA BELLA said:

 

As far as I am concerned that's just bad service.

Same here. Important to note that I did get my refund though, but only after I contacted them myself. Again as you said it's just bad service and a bad way to treat customers in general.

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I agree that Imgur was fully within their rights to do it. They had in their Terms of Service that they were not to be used as a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Their goal was never to compete with photobucket or imageshack or tinypic. Anyone who used them that way was fully in the wrong. (Read the Terms of Service because they spell out this kind of stuff. This was never a hidden thing. It was spelled right out. People just ignored the terms because it was inconvenient for them.) And at any time they could have cracked down. They choose now because it was starting to cost them. 

 

People don't understand this but bandwidth has to come from somewhere. And it's cost racks up in a hurry. People never stop and realise that it's not just them. They forget/fail to realise that when they post an imgur link as their avatar or whatever that it's not just them loading it... Everyone who visits their site loads it. Every guest, bot and member. 

So if you presume an average site that loads 1000 pageviews a week... That means for 1 image it gets loaded a thousand times. If that image is 3 kilobytes, that 1000 loads means it uses 3 megabytes. Now, if they have 2 images at a thousand loads... it's 6 megabytes. If they have 10 images? 30 megabytes. Which sure, that's not a lot... except multiply that 20,000 forums doing that.  Suddenly those 10  3 kilobyte files per forum are using over 600,000 megabytes of bandwidth in a week (or 2.4GB per month for just those).

But you know what? people aren't loading 3 kilobyte files. Most of them are a variety of sizes between 50-400 kilobytes. So that means the amount of bandwidth they're going through is significantly higher. Presuming 50kb minimum they're using about 40 terabytes a month of bandwidth! ( 40 TB = 40,000 GB = 40,000,000 MB = 40,000,000,000 KB.)

Spoiler

50 Kb per file

10 files per site

1000 page views per week (for each site)

20,000 sites

4 weeks per month.

 

50x10x1000x20,000x4= 40,000,000,000 kilobytes used.

Divide by 1,000,000 to get gigabytes (or 1,000,000,000 to get terabytes).

So about 40,000 gigabytes a month in bandwidth. Bandwidth from some places costs as much as $1 for 1GB so they're spending up to $40,000 extra per month because people are doing this. And that's on top of their normal usage.

 

Now of course this all presumes perfect numbers. Fact is that people are uploading vastly different file sizes, and accessing them more or less frequently (depending on where on their site they're appearing and how often they're loaded).

Plus it may not have been 20,000 sites doing this. It could have been 2000 or even just 20. But that doesn't matter because it doesn't change the crux of the argument... People were doing it, it was costing them money so they put a stop to it. 

 

Personally, I think anyone who says they should be allowed to do this is just being entitled. If you think this is ok, remember that the next time you're punishing a member for misbehaving because you shouldn't punish people for breaking your rules, not when you think it's ok to break other's rules. 

 

Also to anyone who says they didn't want hotlinking so they should have enforced it in the beginning... I have to ask: How do you know they didn't? Just because you don't see them doing it doesn't mean it's not happening. 

 

Note, if it seems like I'm angry here... I am. I'm just so sick of people's sense of entitlement that they should be allowed to do whatever then act surprised and shocked when things blow up in their faces. I don't think this is bad publicity or customer service either, this is them saying "Hey! what you're doing hurts us... we're stopping you from doing it." No different than any of us would do on our forums as admins. 

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8 minutes ago, VirusZero said:

Also to anyone who says they didn't want hotlinking so they should have enforced it in the beginning... I have to ask: How do you know they didn't? Just because you don't see them doing it doesn't mean it's not happening. 

 

Note, if it seems like I'm angry here... I am. I'm just so sick of people's sense of entitlement that they should be allowed to do whatever then act surprised and shocked when things blow up in their faces. I don't think this is bad publicity or customer service either, this is them saying "Hey! what you're doing hurts us... we're stopping you from doing it." No different than any of us would do on our forums as admins.

May as well have just directly quoted me. At any rate, sorry it made you angry. Guess we just gotta agree to disagree eh.

 

Poke wars might settle this! (I joke, I joke) :P

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Regardless of their original intention, they could have fooled me into thinking that Imgur was a service to be used in that way. After all, they offer several ways to access the files by hotlinking. That said, their TOS spells it out, then their service should have been marketed that way, too. All the gifs, galleries, albums, etc.- they are all being linked to. Imgur still kind of dug their own hole here. What's the point of uploading images if you can't hotlink them? If they wanted to be the Reddit of images, then they shouldn't have offered ways to hotlink the files. If it was just to display a gallery, then they should turn into dA or something similar. If image hosting isn't what they wanted, then I have no idea whatsoever what their company purpose is. Other than looking at their home page, I just see... 

 

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Is this it? To share the most viral images on the 'net? If so.... we can't share them? I mean, just sharing the links to the images themselves is hotlinking, so... Basically, I'm sure it's fun to surf imgur for some funny gifs and images, but if that's the whole idea behind their 'brand,' then unless they come up with something different, I personally don't see that as a way to keep customers.

 

No, I didn't read the TOS in its entirety. I browsed for keywords, but you can still call it my fault. Sure, call me 'entitled' or whatever, but I'm not mad. Their marketing wasn't exactly 'for the most viral images,' when I joined years ago, and its nifty way to organize and nice way to grab the image links didn't exactly do them justice. If this was their intended purpose. Okay. No big deal. But I'm still not using their service anymore. I paid them a pretty penny to expand my limit so I could, you know, host my images and link to them. O_O So it's pointless now. Nothing to make a stink over. It also doesn't make me "entitled." Though I'm pretty sure I'm entitled to stop using their service whenever. It's not like anyone's bound to a contract.

 

Edit #1 -- I decided to check around online to see what comes up for Imgur. A lot, and I mean a lot, of places listing Imgur list this company as an "image hosting" website. A lot of them even write little blurbs about the kind of image host it is, too. So I'm not the only one that mistakenly thought that Imgur thought it was for hosting images for free. Almost everyone, and I say this with confidence, does not read a TOS in its entirety unless there's a legal dispute or they are searching for something specific, which even then, is easy to skim over what is not applied to them. 

 

I don't really have an issue with them in particular, because like I said I'll just move on and not waste my breath, but I don't particularly like it when people accuse me of things of something that may or may not fit the shoe.

 

All I'm saying is that maybe they should move their 'About' page to what people see first, or at least a blurb of it. That's kind of the trend on most professional websites, anyway. 

 

EDIT #2 -- Since I'm searching around the 'net for image hosting options (and not being a professional potato), I figured I would share what I find. I'm not going to dig deep into TOS, so that'll be your job. Personally, if they make me dig to figure out how to use their service, then that's on them.

 

  1. Tinypic -- "TinyPic® is a photo and video sharing service that lets you easily upload, link, and share your images and videos on MySpace®, eBay®, Orkut Scrapbooks, blogs, and message boards." -- [ TOS ] I browsed through it and didn't see any kind of restrictions, other than the content you "post" has to adhere to international laws.  It's owned by PhotoBucket now.
     
  2. Photobucket -- "Photobucket offers photo and video storage, story creation products and sharing services (collectively referred to as "Photobucket Services") that are offered via the Site, other social media, mobile services and mobile applications." -- [ TOS ] I didn't see anything related to "forum/message boards" so this could be interpreted and an open field. I highly recommend scanning this TOS. It's not too long, but there are vague points. Also, if you're using this for image hosting layouts, I suggest having your folders on private lock down. Photobucket now sells prints, so this could be an issue for artists (like me) and other parties.
     
  3. Imageshack -- "Sharing is easy and you have full control of privacy. You can share a single image or even a whole album. Use us for business. We will host your images for your site of forum. Upload quickly and get any link type you need. Discover new inspirations with our follow feature. Follow other photographers, friends and even your family."  -- [ TOS ] The first line in this TOS is "ImageShack is here to serve all of your image hosting needs...
  4. Imagevenue -- "Free Image Hosting for bloggers, message board users, and eBay sellers." -- [ TOS ] Short and to the point.
     
  5. Postimage -- "Postimage.org was founded in 2004 to provide forums with an easy way to upload images for free. Postimage is a very simple, fast, reliable free image host. It's perfect for linking to auctions, message boards, blogs, and other websites. " -- [ TOS ] Short and to the point.

 

And honestly, even though there's a ton of other services, you should also be checking the forum software you're using. I know for a fact that Jcink lets you host images for your forum for free. A lot of forum software do this, so please check on that. Besides, uploading to your forum means that your community can load faster, because it's all on 1 server. There's more pros than cons when it comes to uploading your layout (and related images to your forum) using what your forum host provides. 

Edited by CandleJack
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