It's true and I won't turn off my vpn for companies that do this crap.

Shit even without a VPN, it might not work unless you make damn sure to link the correct direct image link and not the imgur container link. This has been an issue with imgur on other social media for years now.

It's funny really... what was the quote? You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.

Imgur was started back in the day to provide a no-bullshit image host, because all the others were too corporate / too monetized / too much bullshit/enshittification. So MrGrim started Imgur to fix that.

Then MrGrim took a bunch of VC money, and they eventually sold out, and now the result is the sad shell of what it once was today.

I'm in the UK. I can only see imgur when I do use a VPN.

You don't see imgur because you use a VPN.

I don't see imgur because I won't enable their Javascript.

We are not the same.

Also, anyone in the UK not using a VPN won't be able to see them, since imgur chose to block the UK rather than adhere to age verification laws.

Whatever one thinks about that legislation, other countries (including the whole of the EU and Australia) are likely to do the same and it seems likely imgur will become a US-only resource..

I have to use a VPN to see imgur pics because the UK government is run by wankers 😭 And I don't even live in the UK proper, I'm in N. Ireland, but I'm subject to those bullshit laws with zero recourse.

Did I just become an IRA man? 👀

I honestly don't get why folks use external image providers. Lemmy is perfectly capable of providing post images, just attach it and there you go. Or is it about saving free space on a server?

imgur is a swamp

Same goes for catbox links. Either post the fatbox link instead or choose a different image host, the VPN is not getting turned off just for shitposts.

+1 for postimg endorsement

I don't see the images when I'm on the VPN or off the VPN.

I just yesterday was trying to re-upload a video posted to Imgur that many people couldn't see. Is there a good, privacy-respecting service for videos? Postimage wouldn't allow me to select the MP4 file. It was under 5MB.

Don’t most Lemmy instances have their own image proxies? Or is that just for comments, you mean direct links in posts? I don’t know if those are proxied.

Just proxy Imgur links through duckduckgo with a tamper monkey script. As long as it isn't mass adopted, it should run under the radar okay for day to day browsing 😂

I’m more shocked people still use Imgur for anything anymore.

same goes for anyone using catbox.moe.

it's become such a problem I've started to block users and communities because 95% of their posts are shared catbox links.

i've been using imgbb as an alternative for a few years, they're proba gonna enshittify soon but it's not bad as of now. i make sure to save anything i share to the web on the wayback machine SPN tho..

Trick: If it's asingle image, you can still download it with save link as...

If it's a gallery, it'll unfortunately download a .json file. I'm not sure about gifs.

I'm on Fedia and not using a VPN, I never see imgur thumbnails in the posts, I always have to manually click on a link. I rarely bother to click.

Don't use VPN! Easy! /S

Consider uploading to the fediverse

I would, except GIFs cannot be uploaded. Every single GIF I've ever tried to upload+post is met with '400 unknown error'. Hence Imgur, sometimes catbox.

Lemmy.zip has the same problem when browsing on mobile. There're a lot of moving parts on the fediverse, and it seems like there is constantly something broken.

Imgur is also banned in the uk, I think its due to cyber flashing and epilepsy trolling. Section 187, Online Safety Act.

hasn’t worked for me in over a year. my vpn is always on. fuck imgur

I wonder if using a hash-based system could work slightly better (on platforms where you can't edit image links) in these cases where a platform decides to stop serving to some users or go defunct. So that way, you can at least have a slight chance of 'fixing' an image after the fact.

It wouldn't work with most image share sites, but at least you could rehost it on a mirror yourself.

I find that my ability to load Imgur depends on the exit server I choose. If the server is in the US, it gets blocked. If the server is in South America it works fine. Ecuador works well for almost everything.

I forgot how I found out about it, but is imglink.cc good? I had a look at the site briefly and it seemed okay to me.

catbox.moe used to offer free infinite time uploads without an account until very recently. They changed it to max 2 years. That's where I upload my images and videos (with an account) whenever I need to send bug reports with evidence via email or a repo issue tracker

Poster is right - it is a little funny

heck I often won't see them as I don't like to allow imgur