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Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

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Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#321

Post by 6stringmerc »

Searched this entire thread and no mention of DMCA or Safe Harbors. Linking to a 3rd party is good to avoid worrying about that sort of stuff. Not that I'm an advocate for illicit rehosting, but just commenting as an observer.

It gets briefly touched on at the very end of the article, but self-hosting may carry with it a whole lot of extra work to avoid getting a big bullseye painted on the company. I'm sure more than a few content creators - probably in the adult business - have their lawyers on speed dial. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

It's not just a PR thing, it's a legal thing.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#323

Post by gthtjtkt »

makecheck wrote: post #274

Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function . If you can’t easily see an image as soon as you click on it — on mobile or otherwise — then the image service has completely failed. The sad thing is, they could have added non-intrusive ads. DaringFireball does it; write a single line of text such as “This ima…

I think you're severely underestimating the success of Imgur. It has essentially become an image-based Reddit clone, with its own thriving community of users who never leave the site.

It's no longer just a place for Redditors to dump their images. And it's a good thing too, because this probably would've killed them if they hadn't gone that direction.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#324

Post by dexterdog »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #280
Melk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that imgur started out profitable but that ended when gifs became popular. /r/all is about 50% gifs nowadays. The low bandwidth of an image host makes it possible to allow hotlinking but that doesn't work with videos.

The drive to make imgur its own community with its own comments, logins, etc greatly predates its support of gifv. If anything gifv has saved it tremendous bandwidth. Its been hosting gifs since the beginning, even absurd 50-100mb ones. They never bothered to put in a reasonable file size limit. Also, this move also only happened when a lot of traffic was going to gfycat, which supported mp4/h264/webm/whatever files…

But it was some geek's side project originally.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#325

Post by patrickaljord »

6stringmerc wrote: post #321

Searched this entire thread and no mention of DMCA or Safe Harbors. Linking to a 3rd party is good to avoid worrying about that sort of stuff. Not that I'm an advocate for illicit rehosting, but just commenting as an observer. It gets briefly touched on at the very end of the article, but self-hosting may carry with it a whole lot of extra work to avoid getting a big bullseye painted on the company. I'm sure more tha…

> no mention of DMCA or Safe Harbors. Linking to a 3rd party is good to avoid worrying about that sort of stuff

As an ex-isoHunter, I can tell you still need to worry about that kind of stuff, even if you're not hosting, linking to a massive amount of pirated content will get you sued quickly too.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#326

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

dominotw wrote: post #305
makecheck wrote: post #274

Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function . If you can’t easily see an image as soon as you click on it — on mobile or otherwise — then the image service has completely failed. The sad thing is, they could have added non-intrusive ads. DaringFireball does it; write a single line of text such as “This ima…

> Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function. Imgur is my main form on entertainment and the app currently lives on my homescreen. Mindless fun and good vibes unlike reddit which makes me angry/sad/depressed. Imgur would have been dead with this Reddit move if they had not evolved, they obviously saw it c…

> Mindless fun and good vibes

And then, sadly, the periodic misogyny-denial post, anti-feminist circle jerk that usually originates on Reddit but then enough people in the Imgur community upvote. This exact thing has made me decide to stop even looking at Imgur. :/

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#327

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

MBCook wrote: post #316
dominotw wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function. Imgur is my main form on entertainment and the app currently lives on my homescreen. Mindless fun and good vibes unlike reddit which makes me angry/sad/depressed. Imgur would have been dead with this Reddit move if they had not evolved, they obviously saw it c…

I know there is some kind of community on Imgur, but I wonder what percent of it (or the content it enjoys) only exists because it was the unofficial image host for Reddit. Once Reddit is largely gone, will the community survive?

Yes, absolutely; the Imgur community is completely and totally distinct from Reddit (to the point where people bitch about even seeing the reddit stuff! There's even the comment-meme 'roddit pls' etc)

The big question is simply how Imgur will continue to (sustainably) grow that community. This really brings the question back to the very root: "How do we make Imgur the de-facto image hosting/sharing site in the world"

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#328

Post by fs111 »

joshdickson wrote: post #303
fs111 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gruber has super differentiated, high editorial value content Oh, you mean: "Apple products are the best! Google sucks!" Yes, high quality content indeed...

Gruber has done more to get high-level Apple people talking publicly answering unscripted questions than maybe anyone else in the media. Read him, learn from him, and like him or not, that's up to you, but at least respect what the guy has done.

Sorry, but it is just a fanboy blog for fanboys.

The only thing I give him credit for is markdown. That is a very good contribution, but I really don't have to read his "blog".

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#329

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #18

Having a third party host Reddit's images gave away a bunch of control to the point that imgur has its own community based upon the site . At the time Reddit didn't have the resources to make a competitor but this seems to be a good move now that imgur is doing dark patterns.

What is the dark pattern that Imgur is doing?

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#330

Post by gnarbarian »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #241
gnarbarian wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way cheaper. Amazon is a middleman for hardware. Even at smallest scales the cost of buying a server pays off within a year. In exchange you get convenience and the ability to scale up on demand without buying more hardware.

I'm sure buying the server pays off, but what about running and administering it? What's the minimum commercially you'd spend to get cross-continent redundancy on hardware you manage in-house. Just the accounting cost of paying wages for technicians in two countries probably means you need to be a quite large company. There are middle grounds, managed co-location say, but then you're not likely to save much over usin…

You still have to manage/ administor the aws instance. It only really saves you from the overhead involved with hardware failures.
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