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Imgur's community was in revolt

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Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#11

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #5

What's interesting about imgur, and telling of how times changed, was that it was created mostly to fill the gap in unreliable uploading of images to reddit. Which begs the question: What the hell was reddit doing that they didn't immediately implement an image hosting feature to keep users on the platform? Imgur rose to fame because it was the darling image host of reddit users, and it wasn't long before imgur neede…

Also it was a different internet. We hadn't fully internalized that Reddit was becoming more a stupid meme/image/video dump primarily than a place for discussion of articles.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#12

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #5

What's interesting about imgur, and telling of how times changed, was that it was created mostly to fill the gap in unreliable uploading of images to reddit. Which begs the question: What the hell was reddit doing that they didn't immediately implement an image hosting feature to keep users on the platform? Imgur rose to fame because it was the darling image host of reddit users, and it wasn't long before imgur neede…

> What the hell was reddit doing that they didn't immediately implement an image hosting feature

Maybe partly because it wasn't Imgur that added image hosting to reddit it was more reddit always had images they were just on ImageShack, PhotoBucket and there was another reddit darling one who's name escapes me before imgur which I think added ads or started deleting images that caused Imgur to be created.

So Imgur was more just the most successful in a long line of image hosts and the only one to successfully transplant reddit users to their own thing.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#14

Post by pak9rabid »

AngryData wrote: post #10
jtokoph wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be cost. I don’t think Reddit had much, if any, revenue at the time and images would likely require orders of magnitude more storage.

Yeah, when imgur came about reddit was 99% text on the site. Hosting images would have been a huge step up in cost considering the user count. Then of course people realized that if imgur can make money on ads thanks to reddit's traffic, reddit could potentially make even more and it has been all down hill from there.

Not to mention the liability of hosting users' media, which would have needed costly moderation to ensure nothing too illegal made its way in.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#15

Post by muppetman »

jdlyga wrote: post #13

How did it come to this? Wasn't imgur a free owner operated service for uploading images to reddit?

It was, then reddit did their own image hosting and Imgur had to shift to keeping their own community, and slowly introducing ads (the reason Imgur was started in the first place was because the found was sick of bad image sharing sites with ads) Eventually the Imgur founder sold it, and here we are today.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#16

Post by ebiester »

transcriptase wrote: post #9

I remember when imgur was created as a fast, no login-pushing, non-scummy alternative to ad-ridden clickjacking hosts that censored nsfw and controversial content. Then it became all of that on steroids except with a comment section and a weird community that didn’t realize they were living in the plumbing of other platforms like Reddit.

They knew. Most of them migrated from another community. They migrated on the community reputation of MrGrim and his community cultivation.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#17

Post by duiker101 »

jdlyga wrote: post #13

How did it come to this? Wasn't imgur a free owner operated service for uploading images to reddit?

That was a long time ago. In 2014 they took a bite of the poisoned apple and received 40 mil. I can imagine that's where the rat race began, till they sold to this MediaLab company in 2021.

I can imagine anything of value, both culturally and technologically, is just being squeeze for any possible penny.

Re: Imgur's community was in revolt

#18

Post by koakuma-chan »

jtokoph wrote: post #8
Workaccount2 wrote: post #5

What's interesting about imgur, and telling of how times changed, was that it was created mostly to fill the gap in unreliable uploading of images to reddit. Which begs the question: What the hell was reddit doing that they didn't immediately implement an image hosting feature to keep users on the platform? Imgur rose to fame because it was the darling image host of reddit users, and it wasn't long before imgur neede…

My guess would be cost. I don’t think Reddit had much, if any, revenue at the time and images would likely require orders of magnitude more storage.

Isn't storage cheap? Telegram advertises as free unlimited storage.
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