Imgur's Community Is In Full Revolt Against Its Owner (404media.co) 33
Imgur users have flooded the image-hosting site's front page with pictures of John Oliver giving the middle finger to parent company MediaLab AI. The revolt follows staff layoffs that eliminated human moderators and the breakdown of core site functions including video playback for non-logged-in users and failed image uploads.
A former employee confirmed MediaLab AI laid off Imgur's moderation team without notice and reassigned remaining staff to other projects. The company acquired Imgur in 2021 after founder Alan Schaaf departed. MediaLab AI faces lawsuits from Schaaf and other former site owners over allegedly withheld acquisition payments.
A former employee confirmed MediaLab AI laid off Imgur's moderation team without notice and reassigned remaining staff to other projects. The company acquired Imgur in 2021 after founder Alan Schaaf departed. MediaLab AI faces lawsuits from Schaaf and other former site owners over allegedly withheld acquisition payments.
too late, completly enshittified (Score:5, Insightful)
I uploaded a 28kb png file there the other day. Imgur displays this for other users as a 77kb lossy webp file. Not only wasting effort doing a conversion, but making everything worse in the process.
suddenly looking for a new throwaway image host
Re: (Score:2)
webp file
For which, Google probably slipped the owners a few hundred million dollars.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
As a chronic Imgur user I can confirm two things;
1) Imgur does not share your images to others unless you explicitly select "Share with community." There is a separate field to copy just the link to the image you upload.
2) Imgur will not recode your image to webp. As far as I'm aware, Imgur doesn't even support webp - you definitely cannot upload them so I can't imagine they'd serve them.
=Smidge=
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I can confirm you're wrong! Here's an imgur screenshot of them serving webp
https://i.imgur.com/BzhKaym.pn... [imgur.com]
The background image was what I uploaded as png, and it was supposed to be comparing font-rendering, which obviously becomes difficult when they mangle it with lossy webp.
It *is* possible to get the original png out, firefox seems to prefer it, and if you can change your http/accept header you can de-prioritize webp. But I'm seeing the "png" url redirect to html showing a webp img on most chrome brows
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As a chronic imgur user from day one, yes imgur will transcode certain formats straight to webp.
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Can you provide an example of this happening? Just tried it now and they definitely don't let you upload webp, and this is the first time I've ever heard anyone even mention file type conversion of ANY kind other than mp4 to gifv (which the mp4 version still exists...)
=Smidge=
Re: too late, completly enshittified (Score:2)
Lol yes, this has one of my complaints about Imgur for a while. They'll serve you a webp file, but if you try editing it and uploading it back, they won't take it. It's ridiculous.
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Things are confusing as heck on the dynamic hosters. Some also have files ending in .jpg served as webp, and the whole gifv extension is a lie and acts as html page with a webm video, such that saving it is more complicated.
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classism produces corruption which breeds incompetency
Re:too late, completly enshittified (Score:4, Insightful)
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"suddenly looking for a new throwaway image host"
why? Did it not meet your needs? It appears to do exactly what you want it to do, why do you care how wasteful it is internally?
if indeed that ever happened
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because lossy webp (with its mandatory chroma subsampling) isn't fit for the purpose of the image I was trying to convey (pixel art). I chose png because, you know, I wanted it non-blurred and artifact free.
if indeed you can grasp that.
Other options for throwaway image hosts (Score:4)
Alternatively, if you use Discord at all, it's fairly easy to create a server* for yourself and just upload and link pictures from that. There's a fairly small filesize limit and I think they do expire eventually, but it works well if you already use Discord. If you pay for Nitro, I believe you can upload much larger files. (*this is Discord's term for a private group hub, don't blame me if you don't like them using the name "server" for that). Honestly, you could probably do something similar on other social platforms.
Failing that, you can always use any of the big name free cloud platforms and just cull whatever you upload every week so it doesn't take up your allotment. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive (I hate everything about the desktop version and how it tries to take over your computer, but their web interface is usable), etc.
Re: Other options for throwaway image hosts (Score:2)
I doubt catbox will last as long as imgur, but it is much easier to use and very much cooler. Plus it has anime girls, which is a benefit without any disadvantage.
Same old same old (Score:5, Insightful)
The company acquired Imgur in 2021 after founder Alan Schaaf departed.
MediaLab aquired Imgur because Alan Schaaf sold it to them. It's the same old story. The found sells out, walks away with lots of money and the employees and users are fucked. How often has there ever been an acquisition that didn't result in employees and customers getting fucked? Almost never.
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How often has there ever been an acquisition that didn't result in employees and customers getting fucked? Almost never.
I'd have thought it happens all the time with small, private, unsexy businesses. Businesses you'll never hear about or care about because they're so boring. These acquisitions-going-sour make headlines, uneventful purchases don't.
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I'd have thought it happens all the time with small, private, unsexy businesses. Businesses you'll never hear about or care about because they're so boring. These acquisitions-going-sour make headlines, uneventful purchases don't.
I hear a local burger and hot dog joint in Fortuna CA was saved by being sold and is now successful again. I spoke with the prior owner on several occasions because I was working on his trailers (that was my prior job) and he was planning to close it because he allegedly couldn't afford to pay the cooks.
And that's great, but it mostly affects some high school students in one town and just a few employees, so there's no reason for anyone else to care.
At the big corporate level, M&A really do always seem
Re: Same old same old (Score:2)
While in principle, I agree, my personal experience at startups suggests otherwise.
Of the three companies I've worked at that sold, one was a consumer goods company that sold to private equity who stopped paying their workers on time until anyone with other options quit. Another was a platform to connect service providers with clients who was bought by one of the magnificent seven and shutdown. Another was a B2C communications platform that sold to a prominent Valley unicorn after their IPO who came in and
Re:Same old same old (Score:4, Interesting)
...walks away with lots of money...
Except that didn't happen. Per TFS:
"MediaLab AI faces lawsuits from Schaaf and other former site owners over allegedly withheld acquisition payments."
So Imgur isn't completely sold, and may revert back to its previous owners.
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"How often has there ever been an acquisition that didn't result in employees and customers getting fucked?"
Every day.
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Because why the fuck not? He built it, it was his to sell, close, whatever.
He owed his users literally nothing.
Don't like it? Build your own, I hear there's a demand for it. Oh, and whatever you do, don't cash out or some AC choad will complain on Slashdot.
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Can you elaborate?
As a throwaway image host it's fine. The publicly browsable side of things though, is like Reddit threw up. It's a mix of leftist political memes, gawking at females, overused meme tropes, and a disproportionate amount of niche fandoms (furry, brony, etc.).
I think it mostly comes down to that people nowadays expect their content to be algorithmically curated. So, a face full of content that's not your bag stands out a bit more than it would've in ye olden days of the 'net. My take on it is - if you don'
Hmm (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost.
Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
Their moderation is crap anyway (Score:2)
They got stricter rules and now their moderation is way too strict. An image hoster should not care about what people post as unlisted images.