Imgur has blocked the UK

darkgen · Saturday at 12:00

Aye. I seldom post images but happy enough with Slink + ShareX for when I do. Keyboard shortcut to invoke ShareX, select area for image, and it automatically uploads to Slink and sticks the image url in the clipboard to paste wherever I want.

chrcoluk · Saturday at 12:50

grudas said:
Thing with all these alternatives is that I feel sooner or later they’ll go the same way. As I’ve said previously, I used to host.. and the horrid stuff that ended up uploaded was not worth dealing with and I shut it down, that’s before the whole age verification thing came up.

I personally feel that running your own little host is best idea.

It probably is now.

I am part of a game mod project and we have preview images hosted on imgur, right now in the mod manager, people are just seeing placeholder blocked in your country. Probably will have to do something, but in principle might upset the mod authors, so is a little awkward if I just rehost their images outside of their control.

So looking into something like slink which seems to imitate imgur postimg type setup.

aVdub · Sunday at 09:12

A couple of points if switching to S3ND

Your posts are public - Hopefully in time private posting will be implemented
The place has a lot of moaning bitches that will demand you take down something they disagree with, which so far has been AI and food and if you disagree, their moaning bitch mates arrive to give you grief as well... You can add tags so these people can then filter out things that upset them, or you can add them to a blocked list.

Uploading can be up to 10 images at a time and #Tags are allowed and generally the hosting and site seems to be pretty decent, with much work going on in the background to add more features.

throwaway4372 · Sunday at 10:36

CBA dealing with morons just to share an image.

Haggisman · Sunday at 11:10

NetMan said:
Even if Imgur capitulated and forced people to somehow verify their age to upload images would it be enough to appease GDPR and OSA?

In theory they could then prove everyone uploading was over 13 but it would still be impossible to say how old people viewing the images embedded into other sites were so any other similar hosting sites might eventually get blocked as well.

I don't think that would be enough to be honest, it's the people viewing the content who need to be age verified, so essentially you'd need to be age verified and logged into your Imgur account for any images to be visible.

aVdub · Sunday at 11:29

throwaway4372 said:
CBA dealing with morons just to share an image.

Imgur was the same tbh, but you could post and host anon, which allowed you to avoid all the cry baby bitches.

Many of them see it as a community that gives them what they want, because mummy and daddy hate them

unwashed potato! · Sunday at 11:56

aVdub said:
A couple of points if switching to S3ND

Your posts are public - Hopefully in time private posting will be implemented
The place has a lot of moaning bitches that will demand you take down something they disagree with, which so far has been AI and food and if you disagree, their moaning bitch mates arrive to give you grief as well... You can add tags so these people can then filter out things that upset them, or you can add them to a blocked list.

Uploading can be up to 10 images at a time and #Tags are allowed and generally the hosting and site seems to be pretty decent, with much work going on in the background to add more features.

throwaway4372 said:
CBA dealing with morons just to share an image.

Honestly I cannot imagine a more important thing for you guys to moan about and so then the need to avoid using that service.

andy_mk3 · Sunday at 12:00

Slink v1.7.0 has just dropped!

Rich (BB code):

 New Features

    Nested Tags System: Complete hierarchical tag management with tag filtering, search capabilities, and dedicated management page.
    Multi-File Upload: Upload multiple files simultaneously with progress tracking and error handling.
    Image Deduplication: Automatic detection and handling of duplicate images with user-friendly notifications.
    Storage Usage Tracking: Monitor and display storage consumption metrics.
    App Version Tracking: Display current application version in the footer.
    History Grid View: Alternative grid visualization for upload history with toggle between list and grid modes.

⚡ Performance

    Implemented aggregate snapshotting to significantly improve event sourcing reconstitution speed.

️ Improvements & Fixes

    Enhanced UI with dark/light theme support for notices and improved component styling.
    Improved layout and spacing across multiple components for better visual consistency.
    Fixed integration label to correctly display 'External Integrations'.
    Refined button styling with gradient variants and enhanced visual effects.
    Improved link header handling and pagination logic.
    Fixed various layout and styling inconsistencies across components.

Feek · Sunday at 12:05

The first run of automatically converting imgur hosted pictures to attachments has completed, some were missed due to various reasons and the process will be repeated. We're also looking to see if it's possible to automatically convert signatures hosted at imgur so they show as well but no guarantees about that.

aVdub · Sunday at 12:14

unwashed potato! said:
Honestly I cannot imagine a more important thing for you guys to moan about and so then the need to avoid using that service.

They are everywhere mate, some more than others and some take notice more than others.
Give it time and they will offer private hosting of images and it'll be no different than Imgur, which is/was full of them.

KompuKare · Sunday at 14:28

NetMan said:
Even if Imgur capitulated and forced people to somehow verify their age to upload images would it be enough to appease GDPR and OSA?

In theory they could then prove everyone uploading was over 13 but it would still be impossible to say how old people viewing the images embedded into other sites were so any other similar hosting sites might eventually get blocked as well.

A very good point. The OSB keeps giving, and I have to agree with Haggisman there. I guess an embed which needed you to be logged in could work but do any of the image hosting sites currently have that kind of mode?

Feek said:
The first run of automatically converting imgur hosted pictures to attachments has completed, some were missed due to various reasons and the process will be repeated. We're also looking to see if it's possible to automatically convert signatures hosted at imgur so they show as well but no guarantees about that.

Tada! Thanks all the Fallout4 bench images are now all working again.

So any guidelines in terms of max image sizes? I do recall that some of the spreadsheet tables in there are rather large and all png (as hard enought to read without some crazy jpg artifacts!) and OCUK now has to host them.

throwaway4372 · Sunday at 14:32

How much storage did it add up to?

robj20 · Sunday at 15:31

What's the plan for the forum going forward, few other firms I visit self host and limit to 500kb and 1024px on the long edge.

ED209 · Sunday at 15:55

robj20 said:
What's the plan for the forum going forward, few other firms I visit self host and limit to 500kb and 1024px on the long edge.

Feek did mention about hosting on the forum but then said it would need to implement age verification which would not happen (see below)

Feek said:
We're considering it, but it could push us into insisting on age verification, which is not something we're prepared to do as it would kill the forum.

Unsure if there is any other options for the forum but it maybe just a matter of finding somewhere else to host your images.

dymetrie · Sunday at 16:14

I've moved over to postimage, for the time being. Seems pretty basic but works.

Absolutely wouldn't upload anything even slightly sensitive there, though!

Feek · Sunday at 16:42

dymetrie said:
I've moved over to postimage, for the time being. Seems pretty basic but works.

This also appears to be a bad choice. Just look at the first page of the latest F1 thread....

And this is imgbb doing something similar.

Nabinium · Sunday at 17:13

In terms of embedding images on the forum, it may be worth trying imgbox - https://imgbox.com/.

I believe @mattyfez suggested it somewhere, can't remember where. It's free, has a 10MB max file size limit and no hotlinking hard limitations according to https://imgbox.com/help. They claim to host your images forever unless you delete them.

I'm yet to try it myself, but it may overcome the issues mentioned by @Feek that come with imgbb and postimage.

dymetrie · Sunday at 19:34

Feek said:
This also appears to be a bad choice. Just look at the first page of the latest F1 thread....

And this is imgbb doing something similar.

Godsdamnit!

Nabinium said:
In terms of embedding images on the forum, it may be worth trying imgbox - https://imgbox.com/.

I believe @mattyfez suggested it somewhere, can't remember where. It's free, has a 10MB max file size limit and no hotlinking hard limitations according to https://imgbox.com/help. They claim to host your images forever unless you delete them.

I'm yet to try it myself, but it may overcome the issues mentioned by @Feek that come with imgbb and postimage.

Thanks, bud

Pho · Sunday at 21:12

Not sure if anyone's mentioned it but DuckDuckGo have a proxy you can use to quickly bypass the block without using a VPN. Just stick the imgur link at the end and bingo

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https://i.imgur.com/mvC0yIj.jpeg

I also hacked a Tampermonkey script together (ChatGPT did because I was being lazy) which seems to work

Install Tampermonkey extension for your brower
Go to create new script

Paste in this script and save

Code:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Imgur to DuckDuckGo
// @description  Replaces Imgur with DuckDuckGo image proxy links
// @match        *://*/*
// @match        *:///*/*
// @run-at       document-end
// @version      1.0.0
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    const duckify = url => 'https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=' + encodeURIComponent(url);

    function replaceImgurLinks() {
        // Replace <img> sources
        document.querySelectorAll('img[src*="imgur.com"]').forEach(img => {
            img.src = duckify(img.src);
        });

        // Replace <a> hrefs
        document.querySelectorAll('a[href*="imgur.com"]').forEach(a => {
            a.href = duckify(a.href);
        });
    }

    // Run once initially
    replaceImgurLinks();

    // Re-run whenever new content appears
    const observer = new MutationObserver(replaceImgurLinks);
    observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });
})();

You should be good to go

It works for various signatures etc on here anyway.

Feek · Sunday at 21:25

Pho said:
It works for various signatures etc on here anyway.

Bought it, installed the script. I now get a broken image instead of your signature, which, when I try and open in a new window, gives me a broken duckduckgo link that says Safari can't open the page because it timed out.

You owe me £2.99