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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even managed co-location is cheaper than AWS when you factor in the egress bandwidth charges at scale. Another way to do it is to use dedicated servers. The datacenter will take care of repairs and remote hands functions and all you need is to manage the server from the OS level upwards. No need to have technicians in multiple countries, everything can be done remotely.

Yep this is what we do. It works well.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#333

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.

Sure, you're not wrong on that at all. I follow that linking third party is not a guaranteed pass, but in the scope of infringement penalties the actual hosting is where the real penalty cash can add up from what I've observed. The massive scale of Reddit helps it claim - in my personal perspective - that infringement isn't its main business model, that infringement has been incidental as part of the greater operation. ISO sites probably couldn't make the same sort of claim, I'd guess.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#334
post #319

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…

The mobile experience was horrible. They were doing some weird scrolling thing where it would really mess up my viewport.

Yeah, and when you have multiple images the zoom/expand thing is maddening because it can be super hard to figure out how to unzoom to scroll and see the next image.

Now they're getting those horrifying autoforward fake-virus-scan vibrating ads.

The mobile experience needs a lot of tlc.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#335
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point! I distinctly recall Imgur being started because it was one of those "this used to be something hard, but now Moore's law has made it easy" services. Imgur could afford to allow hotlinking because actually serving images had become a trivial cost. Because no other image-host had capitalized on this, Imgur cleaned up—for a while. Once people started shifting to sharing content mostly as really-inefficiently…

Any modern browser visiting imgur gets H.264/WebM instead of the uncompressed gif. They introduced this 2.5 years ago. After a couple smaller gif only sites made the practice popular. https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/

2.5 years and it still never works on mobile.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#336
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their "gifv" "innovation" was enough for me to stop using them completely.

The ability to host a silent webm and then link to either gif version or webm version is something you find negative? My only annoyance there is that sometimes the embed bugs out a bit, but that's mostly firefox's fault.

Bugs out extremely often on mobile chrome.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#337

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…

> 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. :/

I'm currently working on a competitive image hosting project with a feature called SafeSpace. Just configure your profile with your various triggers and enjoy safe browsing!

More details soon...

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#338
post #285

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 I think they are just the most recent organization to figure out that there's no viable standalone business model in "dumb image host".

Which is, unfortunately, what users need. I wonder if we're doomed to have a new "dumb image host" every few years or if someone will someday figure out how to make a sustainable business out of delivering value in this space, without having to clutter the site with crap.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#339

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…

"Daring Fireball does it" has to be the worst possible comparison imaginable. Gruber has super differentiated, high editorial value content that folks will pay a premium to put their message next to. Imgur is about as far away from that as possible. They have to try to make money, it's crazy to sit here and think you know better than they do on this. Don't you think if they could make enough money doing what you thin…

I wish an image service existed that did some image recognition on the picture and provided you with relevant, but subtle 'Learn more about this thing' links.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :/

I'm currently working on a competitive image hosting project with a feature called SafeSpace. Just configure your profile with your various triggers and enjoy safe browsing! More details soon...

Host it on SquareSpace!
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