HN Explorer

Tell HN: Please Stop Using Imgur

69 points by MzHN ↗ HN
Dear HN, please stop using imgur to share images in the posts and comments.

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Why?

I'll admit that first and foremost I have selfish reasons for this. I often read HN on mobile. I also use Firefox on desktop and mobile, as should you[1]. When I tap on a seemingly direct i.imgur.com/yaddayadda.jpg link, I get the imgur UI loading animation, and it never loads. I have not found a way around this, other than using a Chrome based browser.

But my personal reasons aside, I want you to realize that imgur has become the exact kind of service its creator hated[2], and you probably hate too. One where you can't directly link to the image file, and the polar opposite of "no nonsense" image hosting.

Although the downhill started way before, I'll also note that imgur was bought by MediaLab in 2021[3]. If that doesn't ring any bells, have a listen to the episode 93 of Darknet Diaries[4]. If you don't have time for that, let me quote a comment[5] from the acquisition thread: "the general idea seems to buy declining brands for cheap and extract as much value as possible".

I wish I could give you an alternative as good as the original imgur, but as you probably know, it is very difficult to host a no nonsense image hosting service. For context see the imgur IAmA thread[6].

So instead I have some options that may fit at least the HN use case of occasionally sharing a screenshot or a photo.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/goodbye-edge/

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/i/c07u7kr/

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674883

[4] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/93/

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677432

[6] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i/

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What to use instead?

Option 1:

Abuse a popular unrelated service that you already have an account for.

For example Discord, Reddit, Twitter and GitHub all let you upload an image and link directly to it.

In Discord start a personal "Notebook" group and upload your images there.

In Reddit post images to "Your profile".

In Twitter just tweet it, or reply tweet it to yourself if you want it more hidden.

In GitHub drop images in a comment of your own gist for example.

This may not be your favorite option, but it is my favorite option as a reader of your comment or post, because the probability of the link just working and directly opening the image in the future is higher than most other services.

If you feel bad about abusing the service, you could throw some money at them. Discord has Nitro, Reddit has Gold, Twitter has Blue, GitHub has Team.

Option 2:

Take a look at actual imgur alternatives. I looked some up for you, but I can't personally vouch for any of them.

put.re - I was going to recommend put.re, but apparently they're showing exactly why we can't have nice things https://gitlab.com/putre/frontend/-/issues/16 You can request access, but I haven't tried.

upload.vaa.red - Can't tell what the retention time is, otherwise looks good.

imgbb.com - Says direct linking is a paid feature, but seems to work either way, for now.

cubeupload.com - They've had to remove anonymous uploads. See a pattern yet? Otherwise direct links seem to work, sometimes.

You can also take a look at ShareX image uploaders https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/tree/develop/ShareX.UploadersLib/ImageUploaders or custom uploaders https://github.com/ShareX/CustomUploaders

Option 3:

Host your own.

I am not an expert on this, or any of the previous things for that matter, but one combination I saw recommended was Backblaze + Cloudflare.

There are many many options here, and putting something like Cloudflare or any of its CDN competitors in f...

34 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] thread
MzHN
Clickable links:

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/goodbye-edge/

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/i/c07u7kr...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28674883

[4] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/93/

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28677432

[6] https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i/

https://gitlab.com/putre/frontend/-/issues/16

https://github.com/ShareX/ShareX/tree/develop/ShareX.Uploade...

https://github.com/ShareX/CustomUploaders

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There's also this that I left out due to limits:

Option 4:

Because someone is going to mention it anyway: try something crazy like IPFS.

I looked at ipfs.pics, but they say you should now use IPFS Companion instead.

I have doubts about the reliability and long term availability of anything you share via these less traditional solutions. Even if the content itself would survive, your method of linking to the content probably won't, and no one will go down the rabbit hole just to see the screenshot in your comment. Similar problems as web3 in general.

quesomaster9000
Unfortunately ipfs.pics via HTTPS is broken with everything I've tried:

    OpenSSL: error:0A000458:SSL routines::tlsv1 unrecognized name
dontbenebby
I agree with you OP.

It's very difficult to get to a GIF on there. They engineer ever creative ways to serve up those weird gifvs.

Meanwhile, no one seems to want to use APNG, which could easily replace that patent encumbered monstrosity of a standard, especially now that in 2022 storage and bandwidth are much better than when folks would avoid PNG because it doesn't handle the sorts of things you'd use JPEG for with as great reduction in picture quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG

gus_massa
I have the same problem. Have you tried making Firefox load the non mobile page? (The option is somewhere in the vertical dots at the bottom.) (It sometimes redirect to imgur.io, so you may have to fix the URL.)
jchw
I second this notion. Please stop using imgur. The one argument I’d have in favor of it is longevity, but I’d guess a seriously nontrivial of images posted have been deleted for one reason or another by now, so I’m not sure if that even matters to most people.

For the type of people who post here, an S3 bucket or GCS bucket connected to a domain is easy and cheap (Often free) and you can throw Cloudflare over it for extra assurance. (Backblaze is indeed theoretically cheaper, but I haven’t done that one before, whereas I have actually done S3 and GCS. So, YMMV.)

Another option is the plethora of random file hosting services that exist, like Catbox. Especially if you don’t care about long term storage.

basisword
Maybe we just let people use what they want and don’t post nonsense to get some karma? Seriously these “Tell HN” posts that have started appearing en masse in recent months need to stop.
subtra3t
I don't know why you've been down voted. Seriously, stop farming karma and just let people do whatever they want to do.

Sure, if you wanna use this free-imgur-alternative-that-probably-won't-exist-tomorrow, go ahead and use it, nobody's stopping you. Just don't be an evangelical about it, and start annoying everyone.

quesomaster9000
Yes, Reddit Bad, Google Bad, Imgur Bad, NFT LOL, Karma Farm, Many Wow++

The web doesn't have to be this way. If there is one last bastion of idealism why can't HN be it, where we talk about the fact that unnecessary compromises have been made which undermine this perceived shared doctrine of integrity.

One thing Imgur and other image hosting sites are doing better than IPFS is permanence, but because they're not compatible with a content addressable web when the host goes down or the image is removed we lose a small piece of history with no way of knowing what it was or even what authenticity is.

There are better ways of doing this, with better compromises, and none of them preclude monetization of content - but the technically illiterate marketeers and MAU metric huffers have won.

spacedcowboy
This seems like a problem for Firefox to fix, not “the rest of the world”
f0e4c2f7
Haven't experienced this. Clickable example link?
GraemeMeyer
Imgur links always do this for me on Safari: https://ibb.co/vcYy458
quesomaster9000
When on mobile I end up missing out on a lot of content because using imgur on mobile is much more painful than it should be.

This is compounded by the problem that mobile devices are often considered second class citizens by developers, so even finding out why imgur is behaving differently between mobile & desktop versions is a mission as there are usually no developer tools or ability to 'view source' or even see the error console.

This trend is being fully embraced by web developers who've taken the poison pill (e.g. Reddit, Imgur) where everything needs dumbing-down with options and normal functionality removed even when the desktop site could be adapted with a few small tweaks.

platz
dont tell others to abuse popular services. thats a great way to get a feature from a platformm removed.
ahnberg
You just have to find the direct link to the image and then use that, and it seems to work always for me so far?

https://i.imgur.com/XjeS3dG.png for example.

quesomaster9000
No, on mobile Firefox that shows an empty 'loading' page and not the image.

It's not just Firefox which is broken, with Chrome it's impossible to zoom into an image as it redirects the i.imgur.com/xxx.ext links to the HTML wrapped page with a low-fidelity thumbnail and no way of extracting the original.

mgdlbp
Broken on Windows 10 Mobile Edge too—blank page when preferring desktop site, low resolution thumbnail when preferring mobile.

(ha, it's not because of obsolescence!)

conradfr
It works for me on Firefox Android, but loads the imgur UI, so probably a redirect.

Sidenote, if I want to upload an image to it I need to display the website as desktop otherwise it says I need the app.

dariusj18
Interestingly when I open that link in my current window I get redirected to the imgur UI, however if I open in an incognito tab it loads the image directly.
closedloop129
How would one start an image hosting service nowadays? Are there any big obstacles? E.g. would it be necessary to have moderators or is it possible to just react to DMCA takedown notices?

I don't see why Imgur doesn't have to face the competition that would force them to be better.

xtracto
If i started an image hosting service today, I'd do it listen private-bin: 100% encrypted in frontend Zero knowledge service with DMCA reporting URL. I dont care about the content.

The problem is how do you monetize such a site.

fastball
Generally I agree, but the only image host worse than imgur is Reddit's image hosting.
alex3305
Although Imgur is not the old Imgur anymore, the suggested alternatives can have more of the same drawbacks.

Discord - Good when you share things within a group, but is really hard to search and generally unavailable to outsiders.

Twitter - Really good when you have a direct link, but more often than not I hit a 'Register Now wall'

Reddit - Seems decent, but when you are using old Reddit, sometimes the galleries will malfunction or only load on new Reddit for some bizarre reason.

GitHub - Image hosting is really good and fast. But sadly the platform is mostly used for development. Also there is still the tendency Microsoft is Bad, so GitHub bad. Although I personally disagree.

What I tend to do recently is to share images on the platform itself whenever possible. So Reddit images on Reddit, GitHub images on GitHub, etc. And repost whenever I need. You are amazed how many platforms (ie. Discourse, GitLab and other forum software) allow inline image uploading. When it is impossible to directly share images I tend to still use Imgur, because it's free and fast.

throwaway0x7E6
it would really be OK to serve the image the way they do, if the website itself wasn't a steaming pile of shit that needs to fetch 2.5 mb of JS and 200 kb of CSS to display an image
mouzogu
or just be a chad and base64 encode your images and share them on pastebin or text dump
cassianoleal
Someone should write a browser plugin for both the encoding/posting and the decoding. Profit!
seanalltogether
> I want you to realize that imgur has become the exact kind of service its creator hated[2]

Imgur now is still nowhere near as bad as places like imageshack or photobucket were prior to imgurs creation. I understand that imgur has to fiddle with direct links to support their business model to stay alive, but things could be much worse.

LinuxBender
In my opinion too many people use/like imgur to get rid of it. Instead consider setting an example. Find some open source, self hosted thing that works well with both desktops and mobile devices [1] and post interesting things to it. I suggest using a CDN and a throw away registrar account/domain unless you have moderators 24/7.

[1] - https://gitgud.io/fatchan/jschan

paintman252
Hmm, I have no idea what you're talking about. I use Imgur every single day and it's great. (and BTW allows direct linking)

I will use it until the day it's shut down.

formerimgur01
Former Imgur employee (left years ago)

I do not agree with the moral framing you are using. Image hosting suffers from the free-rider problem [1], at least given our lack of infrastructure for micropayments in the browser. It is not surprising that there is a shortage of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem