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[–]derkevevin 13 insightful - 2 fun13 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

What is bad about imgur? Just wondering.

[–]la_cues[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

On desktop, the forced redirect of direct image links to the image "page", with all the bloat of "similar images", the ads, and the social aspects. (Imgur takes 10s of seconds to load for me at times)

On mobile, the slow loading times to push the app. Just the bloat overall.

Their "social/political" leanings in their community. Also, just the general push for Imgur to BE a social community of memes and stupid pics. Tracking and all the rest that comes with it.

Finally, this is just my speculation, but Imgur was essentially only a tool for hosting images for that other "-dit" site, for many years. I could think ~70% of clicks are just between these two parties, driving tonnes of ad revenue, and there would be at least a little collusion.

From their "privacy" policy:

Information we collect and the purposes for which we use it

Automatically collected information

Our servers automatically collect the following information regarding devices that access our site or app: device characteristics (including device ID for mobile devices), operating system, browser type, IP address, username from stored cookies if present, dates and times of each login, page and image viewing statistics, and incoming and outgoing links. We also log the metadata associated with any uploaded images. We use this automatically collected anonymous data to analyze how our site and app are used so as to keep them optimized, to determine the popularity and usefulness of various features, to maintain the integrity of user accounts so that each user can see his or her posts and the upvotes, downvotes, and comments to them, and to enable users with usernames to access their posts, albums, and membership information. We also use such data to enable us to comply with copyright law, with 18 USC §2258A (illegal content), and to respond to lawful requests by public authorities, including national security, courts, and law enforcement.

None of this information is “personal data” – that is, data we could use to identify a specific person. Some of this information could, however, become personal data because we provide automatically collected anonymous data to third party advertisers to supplement the tracking information described below, and those third parties might be able to combine our anonymous data with other data they have to enable them to identify people.

https://imgur.com/privacy/

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

This seems like it can all be fixed by browser extensions/plug-ins, or even using something like Brave Browser and a VPN.

Idk, I kinda always liked Imgur because it removed meta/exif data

"EXIF data/metadata is removed from all images upon upload. There is no setting available to retain the data."

I honestly could care-less about their community or political leanings (although I have noticed certain albums getting locked and requiring you to make an account to view them, political albums, that is), I never interacted with them, only used them as an image host because of how streamlined and reliable it was.. But the stripping of exif/metadata is a nice feature, or so I thought. I don't really upload from mobile often so it isn't that much of an issue, but it seemed useful.

Do you know if any of the hosts you listed in your OP do the same (and if so which ones)?

Thanks for the post! :)

[–]la_cues[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

They say they remove it, but their privacy policy almost says otherwise to me:

Our servers automatically collect the following [...] device ID for mobile devices [...] IP address [...]

We also log the metadata associated with any uploaded images. [...]

None of this information is “personal data” – that is, data we could use to identify a specific person. Some of this information could, however, become personal data because we provide automatically collected anonymous data to third party advertisers to supplement the tracking information described below, and those third parties might be able to combine our anonymous data with other data they have to enable them to identify people.

They clear the exif/metadata when it's viewed by others, but they log it in their servers?

So they log your IP, the device ID, and the metadata of the image, and justify selling it to third parties because they just call it "not personal data"?

(I'm actually a little confused about the wording)

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wow, that's fucked lmao! I missed that when you originally quoted it!