Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

minimaxir.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 75 posts

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#51

Post by mzs »

judk wrote: post #4
ehutch79 wrote: post #2

I honestly don't see an issue. if you're sharing links to images on imgur, you're denying them ad revenue and just leaching bandwidth. I'm all for adblockers, but complaining you can't direct link images is kinda...

Imgur was founded as a reddit-friendly image host. "The new site for reddit images, written by a redditor. None of the slow ad-laden crap of imageshack!" Now, it is slow ad-laden crap, to the point that I just hit Back button after hitting a link and seeing the page frame load before the image. It has been fascinating to watch the common startup pattern of "I am one of us, making our life awesome" messaging covering…

Back in 2012 Sarah basically said try DnD when the simple choose a file to upload /?noFlash page went away. The flash uploader didn't work on FreeBSD any more and DnD on FF would upload the file and then return an error. She nor anyone else never replied again after I tried to follow-up with that. Imgur had changed.

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#52

Post by mzs »

eli wrote: post #47
stordoff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creator of imgur (MrGrim on Reddit) has said on multiple occasions that hotlinking is acceptable way to use imgur: Four years ago - "I created imgur because the other image hosting sites forced you to see their ad-ridden pages (TinyPIC). I would never do the same to you. If you want to direct link to the image, then by all means do so."[1] Three years ago - "People linking to the page rather than the image is wha…

IMHO, "hotlinking" isn't the same as directing people from social media directly to an image url. You can still put " rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/..."> on your web page and it will still work. The context of doing that is different from pointing someone directly to an image with the intent of showing it to them.

And how will that continue to work when if it goes beyond Twitter, G+, and FB? Most browsers send a referrer in HTTP GET for the img tag. It works now for those because google and facebook grok the html, pull out the image, and cache it.

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#54

Post by malnourish »

mmahemoff wrote: post #17

I tried linking to a photo I'm hosting in a Pro account: https://twitter.com/mahemoff/status/431487389866139648 Even for a Pro account, the image redirects from Twitter. It doesn't redirect me, but it redirects everyone else (I tested from Incognito mode). Which seems not quite what I thought I was paying for. Also as a paid user, if I click on anyone else's images, they still redirect like they would for a guest/fre…

I'm getting no redirect.

Firefox Beta with adblock

Not logged in to imgur

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#55

Post by lcampbell »

mzs wrote: post #52
eli wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, "hotlinking" isn't the same as directing people from social media directly to an image url. You can still put " rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/..."> on your web page and it will still work. The context of doing that is different from pointing someone directly to an image with the intent of showing it to them.

And how will that continue to work when if it goes beyond Twitter, G+, and FB? Most browsers send a referrer in HTTP GET for the img tag. It works now for those because google and facebook grok the html, pull out the image, and cache it.

In an context, your browser should send an appropriate Accept header[1]; this can be switched upon in the backend to select the appropriate representation (e.g., to serve an image rather than HTML). So hotlinked images should continue to work, while normal links will redirect to the HTML wrapper.

--

[1] Though, rather unfortunately, most browsers do not seem to send reasonable Accept headers. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTTP/Content_negoti..., "Default Values" and "Values for an image".

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#56

Post by infinita740 »

izzydata wrote: post #50

Not sure why today is the first day I'm hearing about imgur. Are they somehow superior to dropbox for image linking? Do they have a desktop syncing application with quick access to hotlinking url's from a context menu? What is imgur's selling point?

Imgur and Dropbox are for two totally different purposes. Typically you would use imgur when you quickly want to share an image (no need for an account), post images on reddit or on a forum (no limit on bandwidth and direct linking).

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#57

Post by eli »

mzs wrote: post #52
eli wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, "hotlinking" isn't the same as directing people from social media directly to an image url. You can still put " rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/..."> on your web page and it will still work. The context of doing that is different from pointing someone directly to an image with the intent of showing it to them.

And how will that continue to work when if it goes beyond Twitter, G+, and FB? Most browsers send a referrer in HTTP GET for the img tag. It works now for those because google and facebook grok the html, pull out the image, and cache it.

Uh, well if it went beyond direct links from social media then it probably would break hotlinking. Hasn't done that though -- not yet, anyway.

Re: Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

#59

Post by kudu »

There's a huge contradiction in this article. It gets close to saying that this behavior is unethical, then makes a point of saying that it won't say that it is. Of course it is. When a website offers me a direct link, I expect a direct link. If they can't make money offering direct links, they should stop offering them or find a new business model!
Post reply on HN