Discontinuing Support for NSFW Imgur r/subsections Associated with Reddit(blog.imgur.com)
blog.imgur.com
Discontinuing Support for NSFW Imgur r/subsections Associated with Reddit
https://blog.imgur.com/2019/10/14/discontinuing-support-for-nsfw-reddit-subsections/
141 comments
Clicking https://i.imgur.com/nZHfzdV.jpg yields "Sign in required - This page may contain erotic or adult imagery. You'll need to sign in if you still want to view it.".
Opening the same URL by copying and pasting it to the address bar shows the image without needing to sign in.
Opening the same URL by copying and pasting it to the address bar shows the image without needing to sign in.
Imgur does something goofy with the referer that you've clicked a link from. I'm by no means a competent web programmer or understand how linking/referrers/etc. work but at one point I had a little doodad in GreaseMonkey/Tampermonkey that pulled imgur images in and plopped them on your Facebook page.
What I found was that if the page referrer was Facebook, you got nothing, the imgur site attempted to redirect you back through to their galleries, but if you used the link directly you'd get the image.
I never figured out exactly what's happening, I used a code snippet that stripped out the referrer info and everything started working.
What I found was that if the page referrer was Facebook, you got nothing, the imgur site attempted to redirect you back through to their galleries, but if you used the link directly you'd get the image.
I never figured out exactly what's happening, I used a code snippet that stripped out the referrer info and everything started working.
I think you can do it without extensions in firefox since they let you configure your own referrer-policy: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re... (search for "about:config")
But even in my own APIs I check for referrers to make sure they are actually coming from my site so I assume this will break some pages.
But even in my own APIs I check for referrers to make sure they are actually coming from my site so I assume this will break some pages.
See also - Smart Referer[1] firefox extension. Only blocks cross-domain referer leak, and has a built-in whitelist to prevent breakage.
^1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smart-referer...
^1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smart-referer...
Maybe they're also using the Accept: header, which would reveal whether the browser is loading a page or an embedded image?
Not if you right-click and open in a new tab. Must be a referrer thing.
I only briefly read it but it seems they'll still support uploading legal NSFW for any subreddit just marked as hidden so it doesn't show in their public gallery, which makes sense to me.
Yeah, does anyone browse subreddits using just imgur anyway?
So long as you can load images on reddit itself I don't see the problem
So long as you can load images on reddit itself I don't see the problem
There is a weird segment of "imgurians" who comment only on imgur posts. They're a bit of a joke on some communities, like /r/repsneakers where users buy replica designer sneakers (aka fakes) and post them to imgur with titles like "Couldn't afford rent this month but got these" and the imgur people flame the imgur comments.
In fact there is a running gag that imgurians are like a tiny world populated by a people that is oblivious of the fact that there exists an outside world (Reddit) and that they are constantly being observed by people in said outside world.
Only that I had no clue there was a community or comments for a long time. Imgur was the reddit community image bucket and nothing more, until I learned people use it as a lilliputian version of reddit
They've been drifting apart for a while now. Reddit now has its own image hosting and Imgur has been distancing itself from Reddit and promoting itself as its own platform.
As someone who couldn't care less about their shitty platform, what alternatives are there? I can remember when Imgur was first launched as a super-simple image host that wasn't full of crap and watermarks like Photobucket. Now it seems as if history has repeated itself, with Imgur becoming the very thing it sought to displace.
I think that means one of two things, with two different outcomes:
A. Creating a super-simply image host that isn't full of crap and watermarks like Photobucket or Imgur will yield a profitable business.
B. A is in fact not profitable, and adding crap and watermarks is part of the normal evolution of an image hosting business once you gain moderate amounts of traction that starts to stress your finances.
A. Creating a super-simply image host that isn't full of crap and watermarks like Photobucket or Imgur will yield a profitable business.
B. A is in fact not profitable, and adding crap and watermarks is part of the normal evolution of an image hosting business once you gain moderate amounts of traction that starts to stress your finances.
It's like Jamie Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment, but applied to image hosting sites: "Every image host attempts to expand until it is no longer able to host images. Those image hosts which cannot (or refuse to) so expand are replaced by ones which can."
It's a modern day Plato's cave it seems
Pics or it didn't happen.
People have been comparing it to the civilization inside the locker in Men in Black. Kinda hard to find comments, but here is one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ag2vpg/a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ag2vpg/a...
Little known (?) fact: buying knock off anything from outside the country is a great way to be excluded for eligibility in Global Entry. They see you as an importer of counterfeit goods, regardless of the quantity you are importing.
Clearly some people are.
I once posted some random photo on Imgur to share with a larger group of friends, and I guess I left the display option set to the default of public. Next thing I know, I get a comment from an Imgurian who found it through the Imgur image listing saying something like "What is this? Why did you think I would care about this?"
I once posted some random photo on Imgur to share with a larger group of friends, and I guess I left the display option set to the default of public. Next thing I know, I get a comment from an Imgurian who found it through the Imgur image listing saying something like "What is this? Why did you think I would care about this?"
Yeah I've uploaded stuff in the past to imgur for sharing on reddit and come back later to some very strange comments.
Its super common. The imgur app has it shared to the public gallery by default and you need to mark it "hidden" manually each time you upload.
If you browse imgur's New gallery you see images posted by mistake all the time.
If you browse imgur's New gallery you see images posted by mistake all the time.
Imgur is nice for loading galleries so it's heavily used for nsfw comics on /r/doujinshi
Was
If I'm reading correctly, you will also need to log into Imgur. "any pages that we know to contain NSFW content will now require that a user log in and acknowledge that they are 18+ years of age in order to view."
So this is making the Reddit -> imgur experience more crappy for people browsing Reddit.
Imgur has been on a trend of walling off their garden, first deprecating the Mobile Web experience in favor of their frigging app, and now this. I can understand why they want to reduce their footprint for NSFW image hosting, but if you just wanted to look at an NSFW subreddit to see some images, this is going to make things more annoying.
So this is making the Reddit -> imgur experience more crappy for people browsing Reddit.
Imgur has been on a trend of walling off their garden, first deprecating the Mobile Web experience in favor of their frigging app, and now this. I can understand why they want to reduce their footprint for NSFW image hosting, but if you just wanted to look at an NSFW subreddit to see some images, this is going to make things more annoying.
If you're only interested in scrolling through images, Imgur offers a much better user interface for that. can browse with just the arrow keys.
You also now need to login to their website to see it. Which is quite a hurdle, I’d say.
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IIRC creating an imgur login requires using a "non disposable" email address, ostensibly feeding into the larger surveilliplex.
A problem with this is that many Imgur links link not to the embedded page (i.imgur.com) but to the display page (imgur.com). Normally this was, at worst, slightly annoying. Now you're forced to login to view the picture.
Not only is this a hindrance to users but it actively blocks archiving.
Not only is this a hindrance to users but it actively blocks archiving.
To be honest I've noticed that links to specific images (i.imgur.com/blah.jpg) get rewritten once they hit some specific traffic-threshold.
imgur rewrites them so they can serve you adverts, and modal dialogs telling you to install their application.
imgur started out well, as a fast and simple image-host, but like all the others it tries to recoup money by serving adverts and getting up to increasingly shady things.
Soon it will be time for the cycle to repeat and a new host launch itself; no doubt with a cute tagline saying they'll even host nsfw content.
imgur rewrites them so they can serve you adverts, and modal dialogs telling you to install their application.
imgur started out well, as a fast and simple image-host, but like all the others it tries to recoup money by serving adverts and getting up to increasingly shady things.
Soon it will be time for the cycle to repeat and a new host launch itself; no doubt with a cute tagline saying they'll even host nsfw content.
> To be honest I've noticed that links to specific images (i.imgur.com/blah.jpg) get rewritten once they hit some specific traffic-threshold.
I didn't realise they had a traffic-based condition that did this, too. Wow.
They've been pretty hostile with this sort of thing for a while. Look at this behaviour:
They use UA sniffing to disguise this behaviour from technical users on desktop. They also detect if you're using curl and spoofing a mobile UA (which sends Accept: * / *), in which case this dark UX pattern is disabled.
I didn't realise they had a traffic-based condition that did this, too. Wow.
They've been pretty hostile with this sort of thing for a while. Look at this behaviour:
# Mobile UA
$ curl -v -H "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,applciation/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8" -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:68.0) Gecko/68.0 Firefox/68.0" https://i.imgur.com/6WAZZpN.jpg
< HTTP/2 302
< retry-after: 0
< location: https://m.imgur.com/6WAZZpN?r
# Desktop UA
$ curl -v -H "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,applciation/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8" -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0" https://i.imgur.com/6WAZZpN.jpg | file -
< HTTP/2 200
< last-modified: Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:45:26 GMT
< etag: "21d323ddb1c1926ab0d7a5bb9786c996"
< content-type: image/jpeg
...
/dev/stdin: JPEG image data, baseline, precision 8, 2250x1500, components 3
They use UA sniffing to disguise this behaviour from technical users on desktop. They also detect if you're using curl and spoofing a mobile UA (which sends Accept: * / *), in which case this dark UX pattern is disabled.
I was wondering why there was no easy way to access embedded images on their mobile site. This is so much worse than expected.
To some extent it is a positive feature. I appreciate that the embedded images don't waste a bunch of bandwidth and load quickly.
The embedded page still appears to require sign in, see the link above. When I click the link, it converts to the non embedded page, then I have to edit the url back to the direct link.
The notice made it seem like you would either have to login or click an over 18 verification modal. Hopefully they won't requiring logging in.
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Ah, the only thing more reliable that the lifecycle of a Phoenix is the lifecycle of an image host ...
Birth, awesomeness, turns out to be expensive, somewhat less awesome, "no, really, this shit is expensive please give us money", kinda sucky, "hey, we need to monetize, get this porn off of here", really sucky, "Oh, crap, 95% of our use cases were porn. Ooops.", death.
"Ready normal people! Ready! Ready! Ready!" <song starts> "The Internet is for porn ..."
Countdown until someone creates the next "image host that doesn't suck" in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...
Birth, awesomeness, turns out to be expensive, somewhat less awesome, "no, really, this shit is expensive please give us money", kinda sucky, "hey, we need to monetize, get this porn off of here", really sucky, "Oh, crap, 95% of our use cases were porn. Ooops.", death.
"Ready normal people! Ready! Ready! Ready!" <song starts> "The Internet is for porn ..."
Countdown until someone creates the next "image host that doesn't suck" in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...
The key is extracting VC money by downplaying the amount of porn. Who can count the numbers? It may be art, for all I know.
What tune are we singing the song to?
'Modern Major General' from HMS Pinafore might fit.
Edit: The internet is for porn and has everything that's sexual.
From web cams, sex tapes, phat ass, big jugs, erotica homosexual.
And if you find a kink absent.... You're one fked up individual.
Edit2: Repeated lyrics repeated. (I'm sure Lennon and McCartney didn't get it right 1st time).
'Modern Major General' from HMS Pinafore might fit.
Edit: The internet is for porn and has everything that's sexual.
From web cams, sex tapes, phat ass, big jugs, erotica homosexual.
And if you find a kink absent.... You're one fked up individual.
Edit2: Repeated lyrics repeated. (I'm sure Lennon and McCartney didn't get it right 1st time).
You have missed out on one of the best youtube videos. https://youtu.be/YRgNOyCnbqg
> And if you find a kink absent.... it's time to buy a camera
I'll save that for verse 2, when I work out how to fit rule 34 in...
I find it interesting that advertising on pornographic content in a lot of English speaking countries seems difficult whereas in East Asia it does not really seem to be an issue, or at least I’ve never heard of it being an issue. Is this a thing or am I just ignorant? If it is true, could anyone fathom why?
Part of the monetization issue, at least in the United States, is that banks are under pressure to not do business with those involved with pornographic content, via those who want to stamp out such things. The banks seem to be the weak link; they'll disconnect from other payment gateways that do allow such content, etc.
That's not true. Banks charge more for porn vendors because of high chargebacks and fraud. No one boycotts banks over porn.
at the risk of begging the question: who's pressuring the banks and why do they want to stamp out such things to begin with? Is there some hidden financial incentive or is it a pure political interest happening from a different place of power than the usual government system?
I assume it's because Western civilization is based on Judeo-Christian morality, where sex outside of marriage, sexual self-gratification and sex for pleasure are considered immoral by many people, so any company associating itself with pornographic content through advertisement will be considered immoral by association. East Asian countries, being based on a different cultural and religious framework altogether, likely don't consider most forms of human sexuality to be taboo.
It's not West; it's Anglo and Puritan. Germany isn't afraid of sex.
Just checked. Most adverts are for paid porn and toys, not other goods and services. Is this not the same in the West?
I’m more referring to sites like Pixiv as an example, which, while they are not in the business of pornography, do in fact host a fair bit of it.
One difference is that Pixiv requires you to be logged in to see NSFW content, much like the new Imgur changes, but I suspect this is for other reasons. I haven’t checked to see if doing that actually shows different things in terms of advertisements.
OTOH, I’ve never heard of any advertisers pulling out of an entity due to pornographic content in Japan.
One difference is that Pixiv requires you to be logged in to see NSFW content, much like the new Imgur changes, but I suspect this is for other reasons. I haven’t checked to see if doing that actually shows different things in terms of advertisements.
OTOH, I’ve never heard of any advertisers pulling out of an entity due to pornographic content in Japan.
Just tried Pixiv.. Hit the OAuth with Google button, and after OAuthing, it then asks for your Google password... That isn't how OAuth is supposed to work...
It does what? Are you sure??
I haven’t tried OAuth on Pixiv but they have a fairly good engineering culture and would be surprised if they are asking for your Google password.
Edit: I just tried. The password it’s asking for is the one that will be associated with the Pixiv account that is created. Whether that is how federated login should work is arguable, but it’s a fairly common pattern.
I haven’t tried OAuth on Pixiv but they have a fairly good engineering culture and would be surprised if they are asking for your Google password.
Edit: I just tried. The password it’s asking for is the one that will be associated with the Pixiv account that is created. Whether that is how federated login should work is arguable, but it’s a fairly common pattern.
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America is still trying to come to terms with expressing sexuality. Give it another 50 years and we might get there.
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It's been more prevalent recently and I think it's just part of a larger fear of guilt by association. Some other comment mentioned banks/payment gateways being a part of it, but I don't think it's just that.
A more reputable company just might not want their ad displayed on a site that might have porn or questionable content. Look at how YouTube ads and monitization have changed in just the past few years. There were real issues with major ads getting displayed on popular but questionable videos.
We're heading into a much bigger issue of call-out culture. We're seeing academics, programmers, CEOs, authors and comedians being told they need to resign from positions or be ousted for single political comments or a single donation to one cause made years ago. Then people go back through history and pull up every questionable thing that person has done or said.
I don't think it's tangentially related; and that it's affecting the business of Internet advertising.
A more reputable company just might not want their ad displayed on a site that might have porn or questionable content. Look at how YouTube ads and monitization have changed in just the past few years. There were real issues with major ads getting displayed on popular but questionable videos.
We're heading into a much bigger issue of call-out culture. We're seeing academics, programmers, CEOs, authors and comedians being told they need to resign from positions or be ousted for single political comments or a single donation to one cause made years ago. Then people go back through history and pull up every questionable thing that person has done or said.
I don't think it's tangentially related; and that it's affecting the business of Internet advertising.
"Discontinuing support" is nice newspeak for "banning", since there's no technical overhead for NSFW content specifically.
Their logic is weird, too - it's not like NSFW subsections make Imgur less "fun and entertaining". Quite the reverse! And it's not as if you could stumble across these - you basically had to type the URL in by hand.
Their logic is weird, too - it's not like NSFW subsections make Imgur less "fun and entertaining". Quite the reverse! And it's not as if you could stumble across these - you basically had to type the URL in by hand.
This is probably a good time for someone to create an image host based on IPFS or Swarm as a replacement for imgur for these communities. There's a lot of content on reddit like sorting by Top to see the best posts which is now missing. That's a good chunk of the culture of some subs.
The only realistic option is to host media on the same service that's consuming it or hosting the media on a decentralized service that you don't have to worry about being shut down in the future.
The only realistic option is to host media on the same service that's consuming it or hosting the media on a decentralized service that you don't have to worry about being shut down in the future.
It's not fully decentralized and more focused on reducing bandwidth load on the actual site than anonymity or resilience, but the sadpanda's H@H system is one example of such a thing: https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Hentai@Home
e: this is mainly interesting because it demonstrates that there are people willing to donate storage/compute/bw to p2p nsfw image hosting, not because the underlying tech is particularly revolutionary or should be used as a model for future systems
e: this is mainly interesting because it demonstrates that there are people willing to donate storage/compute/bw to p2p nsfw image hosting, not because the underlying tech is particularly revolutionary or should be used as a model for future systems
We're working on an IPFS based FB Groups solution. We're not running after NSFW content, but people will be able to create private groups, encrypt and self-host their content, and encrypt it. We're also planning on having web support so you can load content from your node. So I think eventually people will consume the app this way too! Would love your feedback: https://permaweb.io
IPFS seems like a really good solution. I've read other posts on here on how it's difficult to setup websites on IPFS, but just straight up media (images and video) seem like a perfect use case.
Practical IPFS image hosting looks an awful lot like image hosting without IPFS. Most of your traffic's gonna be through gateways, not over IPFS proper. You've still gotta have always-on servers pinning (storing) everything for reliability. There also doesn't seem to be a good way to make mobile devices—most of the clients out there—useful parts of the distributed network.
HN throws IPFS around a lot as if it's free storage + free bandwidth. But as you point out, you still must run an origin server. At which point it's just a slower, crappier CDN where you stand up your other CDN nodes yourself. Your content doesn't just magically spread to random nodes once you broadcast it.
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Will people use a service for NSFW contents? I doubt.
Is mixed SFW/NSFW social media more trouble than it's worth? Tumblr did the same thing. Permitting NSFW may enable some promising growth stats in the early stages, but perhaps there isn't a lot of long term value to be extracted from it.
Tumblr is dying fast, because they removed their nsfw content.
That's the point the parent poster is making: tumblr had incredible growth at the start and stayed popular, but it was difficult to monetize because of the nsfw content.
It was difficult to monetize because rather than resetting advertiser expectations for what it means to engage with tumblr's user base, they destroyed their product instead.
We don't have the internal charts of advertisement revenue and engagement. What if they had tried a lot and that line kept shifting down and down, with small bumps here and there with limited sales successes? What if the execs at Verizon were like, "We don't want to keep going down that route .. we don't want those types of advertisers .. we need to not be afraid of associating this more with the Verizon brand?"
I have a feeling there was a lot of internal push back and fourth, but they were either losing too much money or only getting advertisers they weren't comfortable with.
It's more complicated that just advertisers expectations.
I have a feeling there was a lot of internal push back and fourth, but they were either losing too much money or only getting advertisers they weren't comfortable with.
It's more complicated that just advertisers expectations.
Apple locked NSFW off Tumblr via it's App Store lockdown.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90304153/seven-weeks-after-nsfw-...
https://www.fastcompany.com/90304153/seven-weeks-after-nsfw-...
From my understanding this was due to excess or unreasonably long times to remove child sexual abuse content.
You say that, but I'm sure many platforms have tried doing that for a long time. 4chan, for example, struggled with this from the start and as far as I know, they haven't come up with a solution that isn't porn ads.
> "resetting advertiser expectations for what it means to engage with tumblr's user base"
If the only way to save your platform is to reform society, then your platform is already dead.
If the only way to save your platform is to reform society, then your platform is already dead.
Doesn't change that the NSFW content was the glue for the community. Without a community, you don't even have a chance at monetiztion.
Well, that's also the question -- if they hadn't allowed NSFW content in the beginning, would a different community (an easier to monetize community) have arisen? There's no way to know.
Tumblr was dying the moment they began relying on nsfw content. Like a soaking wet arctic explorer who feels warm because his body has begun shutting down bloodflow to his limbs. The sensation of thriving/warmth masks the reality; that the situation is already incompatible with survival and it's only a matter of time before he collapses, no matter how great he feels in that moment.
They still had large communities of people independent of porn; lots of left leaning, LGBTQ audiences .. lots of young adults and high school kids oddly ... but they had always allowed NSFW content, so that segment kept growing as well. It's hard to separate the two at that point.
And that's what did them in. It was inevitable from the beginning, what happened was only a matter of time. Porn kills monetization and having a userbase that insists on having porn will consequently kill your platform. It may seem to be running smoothly for a while, but that's just borrowed time.
hmm .. so do you think Reddit is going to hit the same issue soon? I wonder if Reddit will ban all NSFW subs within the next year or two.
It's not clear to me how important porn is to reddit; it's possible reddit could ban porn without upsetting most of their users. Not every site with porn is doomed.
In the long run though, I expect reddit to ban porn. It might be a few more years, there are a lot of factors in play, including the patience of their investors and whether or not an influential media company decides to do an exposé on reddit hosting amateur pornography without vetting peoples' ages and/or hosting professional pornography in violation of copyright law.
In the long run though, I expect reddit to ban porn. It might be a few more years, there are a lot of factors in play, including the patience of their investors and whether or not an influential media company decides to do an exposé on reddit hosting amateur pornography without vetting peoples' ages and/or hosting professional pornography in violation of copyright law.
It's bizarre that porn kills things that seem to only die when the porn leaves, and the most successful non porn content is softcore porn.
Why NSFW contents became problem for both Tumblr and now Imgur? Anything specific?
It’ll be interesting to see how cooperative Reddit’s user base (and moderator base) will be with this. Of course they mark certain subs NSFW by default, but I’ve come across a fair bit of content on non-NSFW subs that’s definitely NSFW; usually somebody points that out, OP tags it, and that’s that. However, if NSFW links don’t work on Imgur and uploaders just stop tagging content as NSFW to circumvent that, will Imgur have to have moderators review content as well? One thing that a lot of people miss about crowd-sourced censorship is that the majority of the crowd has to be on board with it or it doesn’t work.
Tumblr wiped off half their value by doing that.
More than half, didn't they sell for $3M or something absurd?
Yep. Purchased in 2013 for $1.1B, sold in 2019 for <$3M. More than 99.7% value lost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumblr
Most of that was an absurd overvaluation followed by smothering to death by titan of industry Marisa Mayer, who can always be relied on to lose a billion dollars if there's $10milliom in it for her.
Quite possibly another Tumblr moment for Imgur. We'll see.
They're not deleting content, just forcing you to log in.
It’s probably good for reddi
Funny, your comment kind of reads like you were assassinated mid sentence by HackerNews robots just for mentioning a rival network like reddi
It's almost like they think reddi
An honest question: Why and who in the payment space penalizes sites for allowing NSFW content? I can't understand why Visa, or Paypal would have moral grounds to block that content if they also process payment for strictly-porn sites.
Paypal doesn't process such payments.
Mastercard have a huge list of arbitrary rules.
Visa and Mastercard charge significantly extra to process adult payments.
Mastercard have a huge list of arbitrary rules.
Visa and Mastercard charge significantly extra to process adult payments.
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Ah thanks for the clarification. Do you know under what pretense they charge the higher rates? I can imagine there is more fraud for adult payments, but would they also charge higher for gambling or other fraud prone payments in that case?
One story I've heard is that adult content payments have a very high rate of chargeback, claiming it was fraud after the fact as a way of saving face when someone else (like a spouse) sees it in their transaction history.
But as you say, adult content isn't the only high-risk business but payment processors seem to care much more about it than others.
My guess is that it's just exactly what it looks like - a squeamishness to be associated with activities that culture targets as "non-respectable". "If people pay for porn with Paypal, then they'll think of Paypal as a porn payment provider and not want to use Paypal to pay for normal things".
But as you say, adult content isn't the only high-risk business but payment processors seem to care much more about it than others.
My guess is that it's just exactly what it looks like - a squeamishness to be associated with activities that culture targets as "non-respectable". "If people pay for porn with Paypal, then they'll think of Paypal as a porn payment provider and not want to use Paypal to pay for normal things".
Does stripe do the same too?
Unfortunate but not surprising. I can see why they wouldn’t be keen on that type of content
Agreed; but isn't this shooting them in the foot in the same way Tumblr did? I wonder why they did this instead of adding stronger filters / controls to separate the populations
Because all roads lead to Apple Store's TOS and their anti-adult content stance. Sure they could apply stronger filters but unless they police it well they suffer the prospect of being banned like Tumblr etc. Besides, it's not easy implementing a scalable content filter without user support and if users aren't cooperating then it's probably easier and cheaper to nix the idea completely.
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Scratch anti-adult and substitute pro-family. Perspective matters, and that's the approach Apple takes.
I sure do love foreign megacorps shoving their "pro family values" on me when I don't have a family. Guess some CEO knows better than I do what I should be doing.
How does adult content hurt families? Over here in the EU we get graphic sex scenes on government funded TV channels in the middle of the day, society has not collapsed (yet?).
That might be true if the app was rated for all audiences; but most "shows you arbitrary Internet content" apps, including Tumblr, Facebook, and even alternative web browsers, end up rated 18+. It should only be adults using it; Apple's "pro-family" content controls should ensure that.
That should be read anti-adult-content, not anti-adult.
If "ABC Family" channel didn't want to show any content that would come off as "lewd" or "adult" would you call them wanting to maintain a family friendly atmosphere, or anti-adult-content?
They're not removing the NSFW content but making it effectively unlisted, bit of a different situation I'd say
I'm under the impression that this is a far smaller slice of imgur than it was for tumblr.
Yet another blow in the war on porn. Can we just accept that the parents need to be the ones to act as porn gatekeepers via acting as gatekeepers to the internet? Once the kid hits the internet, they're gonna find porn one way or another. Changes like these don't solve anything imho.
Does this have anything to do with children? I figured this was for advertising; major cooperations probably don't want their ads associated with porn.
Yea, it seems more about advertisers than censorship. They need to make money to host thing x and don't want their brand to be associated with thing y.
There is no war on porn and I don't think the imgur is trying to solve anything except for their liability and responsibility to sensitive material that needs to be curated and sectioned off from some users.
There is a war on porn in the UK and Australia to say the ones that I am aware of.
I’ve noticed they’re intentionally reducing image quality on mobile with ad blockers lately as well.
For reference how imgur was started 10 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/my_gift_t...
A prophetic comment in OP:
[–][deleted] 21 points 10 years ago Anyone can make an image hosting service that doesn't suck. But tell me in a year or two if you're still around and not sucking. Then I'll consider it.
A prophetic comment in OP:
[–][deleted] 21 points 10 years ago Anyone can make an image hosting service that doesn't suck. But tell me in a year or two if you're still around and not sucking. Then I'll consider it.
So, I guess Imgur has now just about announced their inevitable death. If you uploaded pics there, I suggest getting them before they end up gone.
> ...I guess Imgur has now just about announced their inevitable death.
That's extremely dramatic to say. Did you even read the full post? They aren't doing anything unreasonable, compared to say Tumblr, and what they did. All they are doing is putting NSFW content behind a login. Nothing is getting deleted, or not allowed anymore.
That's extremely dramatic to say. Did you even read the full post? They aren't doing anything unreasonable, compared to say Tumblr, and what they did. All they are doing is putting NSFW content behind a login. Nothing is getting deleted, or not allowed anymore.
Yeah I read the same thing and it’s a repeat of when Tumblr, Tripod, Yahoo Groups, etc all started their paths to remove NSFW content.
Tumblr put stuff behind a login before eventually purging it.
How can image services avoid hosting child pornography? If a user submits an image of themselves at age 17 and lies about their age, can the host be held liable for distributing illegal content? That seems like an existential business risk for any site that hosts nsfw. There’s no viable way to check a user’s actual age (when depicted) under current business models. And what is and isn’t nsfw?
It all sounds complicated.
It all sounds complicated.
It only seems that complicated because you’re applying weird HN pedantry on fairly reasonable laws. This isn’t an existential business risk unless you’re straight up ignoring CAM you’ve been made aware of.
This is a constant source of work for these providers, but complicated this is not.
This is a constant source of work for these providers, but complicated this is not.
Not trying to be pedantic; it just seemed like an interesting problem. I’ll take your word for it that it isn’t interesting:)
I don’t know how they make money. Ad rates aren’t that great and bandwidth isn’t that cheap.
I don’t know how they make money. Ad rates aren’t that great and bandwidth isn’t that cheap.
I'll be interested to see how they try to tackle this.
Are they going to manually identify NSFW images? Scrape known-NSFW subreddits? Look at the Referer header?
Can just see folks on Reddit using its own built-in image upload functionality. Imgur has been largely redundant since this was launched (and offers an increasingly poor, ad-ridden UX full of dark patterns), to be honest.
Are they going to manually identify NSFW images? Scrape known-NSFW subreddits? Look at the Referer header?
Can just see folks on Reddit using its own built-in image upload functionality. Imgur has been largely redundant since this was launched (and offers an increasingly poor, ad-ridden UX full of dark patterns), to be honest.
Thinking to build a service to host NSFW content. Anyone who would like to join?
Yeah I'm down that sounds like fun, idk how to PM you though..
Awesome, man! Let's start
Email me: [email protected]
Email me: [email protected]
Since you need to log in now, I wonder if they're also keeping track of which users are viewing what content, and what subreddits etc. that content is associated with.
Imgur blocked in Turkey so I've been using imgurp.com/[imagelink] proxy.
Thinking about if this effects my usage of Imgur?
Thinking about if this effects my usage of Imgur?
Well imgur is going to die really quick
cryptozeus(1)
But images are still hosted there and I presume new images are still added e.g. https://i.imgur.com/nZHfzdV.jpg (mildly NSFW but in a NSFW reddit).
From a desktop browser the first link will show: "As of Oct 2019, Imgur will no longer display NSFW Imgur r/subsections associated with Reddit subreddits. No Imgur content has been deleted or moved, and is still available at its original Imgur URL. As an alternative, you can browse the visual contents of any subreddit using third-party tools such as https://www.redditery.com and https://redditgrid.com."