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by jsheard 207 days ago
> but if they disappear tomorrow, a lot of things break.

Tale as old as time, long-running forums are graveyards of dead Photobucket, Tinypic and Imageshack embeds. Imgur has lasted longer than most but the cycle will probably repeat eventually, especially since they were acquired by faceless corpos a few years ago.
3 comments
rafabulsing 207 days ago
I've said before that the age of an internet user can be estimated by how many free image hosting services they have seen come and go, like rings on a tree trunk.
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Figs 206 days ago
> Imgur has lasted longer than most

They did a big data purge years ago, and were already enshittified almost a decade before that.

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chrisjj 206 days ago
Only "removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" right?
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bennyp101 207 days ago
A service shutting down, or being replaced is very different to one being blocked at a country level because of waves hands things
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NooneAtAll3 207 days ago
> waves hands things

government censorship

called it for what it is

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jsheard 207 days ago
The Online Safety Act is clear-cut censorship but that's not why Imgur left the UK. They were facing fines for violating the UKs data protection laws, specifically a set of rules that were introduced years before the OSA was even passed. Their parent company hasn't pulled any of their other services from the UK either, which you'd expect them to do if their goal was to protest or avoid the OSA.
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card_zero 206 days ago
... in regard of age checks, yes?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo

If you follow the links to earlier articles you get to this one about fining TikTok: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65175902

"There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws." ... "When you sign up you can be targeted for advertising, you can be profiled, your data contributes to an algorithm which feeds content," said the Information Commissioner.

So even before the OSA, the idea was: social media sites using algorithmic feeds must prevent children's access, and just asking "are you over 13" isn't enough. That's a demand for age verification, in practice.

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