Staffing Imgur Crackdown

[VirusZero 176]

CandleJack, the goal of Imgur was and is to share them on imgur... To highlight the most popular on imgur. Not to hotlink them onto other sites (using their bandwidth in the process without any ad views in compensation). They had hotlinking available before because they wanted to offer it as an option, with the caveat not to abuse their servers. But that's exactly what started happening (which lead to the CDN bit getting added in January 2014). And yes, they were a lot vaguer on their core purpose years ago. Which, since you've stated you were a member for years (I'm presuming more than 2)... you predate that bit so I can understand where the issue can come from. Even if you had fully read the ToS it wouldn't have mattered because back then they really didn't state it couldn't be used for that sort of thing. I won't say you're totally in the right there, but you're not entirely in the wrong either.

 

Though next we'll probably just see the option to hotlink removed entirely because people are going to keep doing it because, exactly as I stated, they feel entitled to.  (Or if not removed entirely, severely limited so that only selected sites can. They may have it so places like Reddit, which gives them a ton of traffic/money, is allowed to but your self-hosted site is rejected.)

 

Honorem, I didn't mean to take a shot directly at you (or you CandleJack, or anyone particular really). I've seen this sentiment being expressed in a number of other places too. (But I can't say I trust the staff enough there to be reasonable about it.)

And honestly, now that I've cooled off (also a reminder, never post when angry because it comes off sounding harsher than you may mean it to), a large part of this is the fact that I keep seeing this behaviour crop up over and over. (It got bad enough that I ended up leaving another site for over a year because of how entitled people got on it.) I mean people act like they can do whatever they want, whenever they want and without any repercussions. They don't want to take a few minutes to read the terms, they just do whatever because it suits them. As Candlejack's pointed out even other sites did this too. They encouraged people to use imgur for something it was never really designed for/to do. That was reckless and stupid on their part. They actively contributed to this kind of "meltdown" situation. 

 

I also encourage everyone to always read (don't skim, actually read) the terms of service of any site you use. Know what limitations they have because they're there for a reason. Sometimes those reasons are protect themselves from abuse, other times it's to protect end users. And then there are times when it's both. (Like cases of shared hosting where people use stupidly resource hungry scripts that ruin everyone else's experience.)

And if you pay for these services (or depend on them in any way)... check back on them every 6 months or whenever you're going to renew. Things do change over time. (I mean Imgur is a prime example. Their ToS changed numerous times over the years as people used the service in ways they didn't like.) So this way you know what rights they have, what rights you have and what you're agreeing to.

 

Also since we're talking imagehosts... Don't use flickr for this type thing either. They're very much against it too. 

 

Edited February 13, 2016 by VirusZero

[Morrigan 1,826]

Good point @VirusZero I enjoy reading ToS's because I like to be sure I have my liberties. This is why I don't use Google Docs or Evernote TBH.

 

On a lighter note? Read article 57.10 here and let me know what you think.

[VirusZero 176]

I believe it requires a sub-paragraph detailing headshots and their necessity. Because that's the only way to be sure. And a further sub-clause about less stingent resource application in the aforementioned sub-paragraph. 

 

 

 

[CandleJack 0]

16 hours ago, Morrigan said:

On a lighter note? Read article 57.10 here and let me know what you think.

 

I didn't see that coming. XD 

[Elena 546]

16 hours ago, Morrigan said:

Good point @VirusZero I enjoy reading ToS's because I like to be sure I have my liberties. This is why I don't use Google Docs or Evernote TBH.

 

What, Google Docs is against collaborative writing too?

[Morrigan 1,826]

No but in their documentation they technically have free rights to anything that you post on their servers and the ability to redistribute it if they want to. Will they? Probably not but could they? Absolutely.

Edited February 13, 2016 by Morrigan
The Their was wrong.

[Elena 546]

OK. This is something I don't care about  They can redistribute anything I write, since they most likely provide credits.

[Rivfader 76]

I did use imgur for all of my sites images, because the short links were nice and I too assumed that it was an imagehost in the same line as photobucket and all those other sites. Oops, I guess I was wrong there! Luckily I didn't have an outrageous amount of images on my site to replace. I gave jcink's image hosting feature a shot, and I'd advise everyone to use it if they're with jcink. Postimage.org is another great alternative. It's quick and you have the option to resize an image while uploading it, which always comes in handy.

[Guest Archaic Cyborg]

I'm in the middle of rehosting all my stuff. Fuck imgur. When you make a service free to all users, with unlimited bandwidth... What did they expect people would do?

 

I'm trialing ultra img. Their layout is similar to imgur, but it's faster and the upload/album settings are much better. I have old photobucket accounts, but it's ridiculously slow, and the ads... Too much questionable popup windows, even with adblocker installed, etc.

[CandleJack 0]

On 2/16/2016 at 6:23 PM, Blackjack Bart said:

I'm in the middle of rehosting all my stuff. Fuck imgur. When you make a service free to all users, with unlimited bandwidth... What did they expect people would do?

 

I'm trialing ultra img. Their layout is similar to imgur, but it's faster and the upload/album settings are much better. I have old photobucket accounts, but it's ridiculously slow, and the ads... Too much questionable popup windows, even with adblocker installed, etc.

 

I have tried this service out, too. Here's my initial review on Ultraimg:

• Layout is simple and effective. There's a fast response time. Sorry, Photobucket.
• You have a mini-profile thing. You can upload a small BG/banner for your page.
• This is a true image hosting service. Upload and hotlink to your hearts content.
• You have the options to make everything that you upload private.
• You have the options to make your album private. (full feature list here)
• FAQ's page is short and to the point. Same is said for the TOS.
• Links are nice and to the point. Example: http://www.ultraimg.com/images/wipthumbnail.png
• I really like this service for it's need to host images. 

Edited February 20, 2016 by CandleJack
I forgot to add in a link for viewer reference.

[Rune 1,099]

I have yet to see them actually take any action on this... It'll be interesting to see if they actually do but I suspect it won't be worth the time/energy to try to find EVERY image used on Jcink and they'll give up fairly quickly.

[VirusZero 176]

I thought they already took action and blacklisted Jcink. I mean it really wouldn't be that difficult... there are multiple ways they could do it. (Blacklisting Jcink's server via .htaccess is just one, relatively simple, way of doing it.)

 

Though it may not necessarily show up for everyone yet depending on how long their cached files stick around. (For those unaware, browsers often download and keep a copy of frequently visited sites so the don't have to pull from the servers. They sometimes take weeks to update these caches depending on user settings, frequency of visits and etc...)

 

Plus anyone using a custom domain might not be affected since instead of coming from <url>.jcink.net it'd come from <mysite>.<tld> which wouldn't be blocked. It'd be trickier to block those with domains individually, but still not impossible. It'd just take a bit more work. Though don't tempt fate and push your luck here because it is still doable.

(Alternatively they can simply create a whitelist and only let certain sites link content, basically as a screw you to everyone. That's equally simple to do...)

 

Spoiler

I mean blocking via .htaccess is literally as simple as:

 

order allow,deny
deny from 123.45.67.890
allow from all 

 

And to block all but a few select sites?

order deny,allow
allow from mydomain.tld
deny from all

Add whichever sites want to whitelist and just like that loads of sites will find things stop working.

 

[Cloud 0]

I was never a huge fan of imgur or Photobucket. I used to be a big imageshack fan, but they changed and their service went to the gutter. Now I use Postimage, what Imageshack used to be, plus nifty software to make my life easier. If I want to upload an image to my account I just have to hit F7 and the software starts the upload process automatically, anywhere on my computer. It also makes taking a screen shot so much better. Like, night and day. 

 

Glad I missed out on this bad experience. Already had enough in my time online with image hosting sites.