Their whole front page has dozens of these same images. And I’m not much of a imgur user to dig around.
The people who created imgur sold it to MediaLab. ML had been struggling with bills in general, and they lost a couple lawsuits regarding content. In a completely unrelated move, they banned NSFW content, fired the community moderators and local development teams and replaced them with AI and overseas workers, resulting in unequal rules enforcement and broken infrastructure. Videos wouldn't upload, wouldn't play, or freeze partway through. Uploads would disappear without notice. A barely-nsfw post would be deleted and the user warned, while other more NSFW posts made it to the front page. Etc, etc. In short, there's been a lot of simmering discontent with the platform for a while now.
So, you remember that video/gif of Nazi Richard Spencer that's been circulating for a few years now? Back when that first came out, naturally some people posted it to imgur - and the content teams deleted the posts and warned the users, who promptly posted screenshots of the warnings, causing even more users to upload Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. They got deleted/warned, pretty much just causing a cascade of Nazi-punching content, until literally the entire popular feed was just Nazis getting punched.
Well, later last week, notifications failed on imgur for some reason - no notifications when you got a reply, or your post reached the front page or got an award, or the people you were following posted something - just dead silence. We were patient, but it started to annoy people. A couple people uploaded images complaining about the lack of notifications, only to have their posts deleted or hidden and in a couple cases they got warned. And it's pretty much spiralled exactly like the punching Nazis meme: notifications remained down, posts complaining about it got taken down, posts complaining about MediaLab's censorship got taken down, and then the entire front page became this.
Notifications are back on now, though they seem less frequent than normal, and new content is starting to reach the front page but users are still pissed. There have been repeated discussions about moving elsewhere, but no consensus has emerged yet. PixelFed doesn't scratch the same itch, a bunch of people moved to discord but others don't want to, some people just disappeared or stopped posting. And that's where we are, as of this morning.
Thalion@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
I remember when Mr Grim announced on Reddit that he was creating Imgur to replace all the shit image hosting sites. And now here we are
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
I remember being perplexed a few years back when a coworker started talking to me about “imgur posts” and “imgur comments”. I was like, “the image hosting site?”
So weird
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
I noticed with amusement once that some of my uploads for Reddit had comments, even full discussions and unanswered questions addressed to me. It was like finding out the mice in the walls had built a shrine to me.
arschflugkoerper@feddit.org 3 hours ago
I remember the imgur Community being referred to as sewer people on reddit.
Pechente@feddit.org 5 hours ago
Lol same here. I wish Imgur stayed a simple image hosting site
Bongles@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
I actually started on imgur before I used reddit at all. I used to browse “i am bored” as a kid/teen. Eventually I thought, man I really only want the funny images, is there something that’s just that? That’s when I found imgur and I was hooked. “Sarah please” and all that.
BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
It’s life if the underground rats of New York built their own society lol
ech@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
I’m in the same boat. I only ever used the site as an easy, hassle-free image host. When they steadily increased the hassle and included more and more ads, I stopped using it in the end. No clue that it turned into it’s own social media site, or how that even happened.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
They had full-on fan events too 😝
jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
It’s the circle of life.
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 1 hour ago
Selfhosting and federated services cain be a pain sometimes but at least it doesn’t do this
makyo@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Yep we’re all used to enshittification by now