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Other Stuff => General Wargames and Hobby Discussion => Topic started by: Ray Rivers on 19 May 2023, 03:17:12 PM

Title: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Ray Rivers on 19 May 2023, 03:17:12 PM
So I understand that image hosting terms of service for Imgur are changing and images submitted by free users are deleted after not being accessed for 6 months.

Looks like another Photobucket apocalypse inbound.

Folks should plan accordingly and either embed their images to the post or use the gallery for linking their photos.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Elbows on 19 May 2023, 04:31:43 PM
This is actually why I have a blog...mainly because it just lets me throw all my photos on there, but yeah image-hosting is disappearing pretty quick if it's not on a social media platform.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: FifteensAway on 19 May 2023, 05:14:52 PM
As Elbows says, have your own blog.  Google is free.  So, until Google decides to kiss blogging goodbye one day (maybe?), a blog is the way to go.

And if I can manage a blog, you should be able to do it too.  It's pretty easy even for a more-or-less Luddite like me.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: fred on 19 May 2023, 05:29:53 PM
For fucks sake

I’d actually got quite into the workflow of posting images via Imgur

None of it is primary storage for me. But used it lots for forum logs and painting diaries.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: AKULA on 19 May 2023, 05:37:04 PM
Folks should plan accordingly and either embed their images to the post or use the gallery for linking their photos.

Embed? What is this witchcraft?
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Ray Rivers on 19 May 2023, 07:02:32 PM
Embed? What is this witchcraft?

Using the attachments feature. I guess "embed" was the wrong technical term.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Ray Rivers on 19 May 2023, 07:05:47 PM
For fucks sake

I’d actually got quite into the workflow of posting images via Imgur

None of it is primary storage for me. But used it lots for forum logs and painting diaries.

Start a gallery here, Fred. You can link your photos from the gallery to anywhere; though that is actually not correct as you are using the bandwidth of this forum for other purposes. You can still use the gallery to post photos to your threads here.

Does the Pendraken forum allow you to "attach" images to your posts?
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Redshank on 19 May 2023, 07:31:09 PM
So I understand that image hosting terms of service for Imgur are changing and images submitted by free users are deleted after not being accessed for 6 months.

Looks like another Photobucket apocalypse inbound.

Folks should plan accordingly and either embed their images to the post or use the gallery for linking their photos.

Do we know what "accessed" means exactly?

I don't have that many photos on there. It would only take me about 5 mins to go through and click on each one.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: fred on 19 May 2023, 07:40:25 PM
Had a look at the changes - and it references deleting images not linked to active accounts. Which is a bit different. What it means is that if you move on from Imgur then old images you linked to are likely to disappear at some point.

The change was actually live a few days ago (15th)

Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Ray Rivers on 19 May 2023, 08:09:41 PM
Could that also mean that if you don't log onto your account at least every 6 months, it will be considered to be inactive?
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Easy E on 19 May 2023, 08:49:06 PM
Yeah, my Blog has made image hosting much easier.

However, considering what has happened to Message Boards, Vine, Google+, etc.  How long until Blogs are consumed by the other Social Media Apps completely?   
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: fred on 19 May 2023, 10:45:32 PM
Could that also mean that if you don't log onto your account at least every 6 months, it will be considered to be inactive?

Who knows, but possibly.

I suspect they are trying to do a bit of a clear out of old stuff to free up storage capacity. But I’ve not seen the definition.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: FramFramson on 20 May 2023, 07:08:19 PM
There's a trend of this going on among tech companies, despite it having been a taboo for so long, as Google had also announced that they were going to delete any Google or Google-related accounts which have been inactive for 2 years. They've already had to walk back what would have deleted most of YouTube's 20-year history (YouTube being one of many sites owned by Google), but internet history has always been relatively ephemeral and impermanent, especially in the case of anyone who's no longer with us, which is also where the loss might sting the most.

Of course there's legitimate questions about how much effectively-public data a private company should be obliged to archive and for how long; storage costs aren't free and just imagine how much data the internet might accrue in just a century of ever-expanding activity. But it seems the big wave right now is mainly trying to establish new, far more restrictive precedents and simple opportunism rather than any particular crushing burden of cost.

Anyway, rather than straying too far into the off-topic, the point is we should all be prepared both for more sites to announce similar policies and for new restrictions on any and all forms of non-paid storage going forward. LAF's image attachment function will be something of a step backwards unfortunately, as it is sadly a bit dated (and it notoriously sometimes rotates images for as-yet undiscerned reasons), but might still be preferable to any form of outside storage going forward, unless you're confident you'll log in to your Imgur (or other hosting) account every couple of months.   
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Ray Rivers on 21 May 2023, 12:20:39 AM
There's a trend of this going on among tech companies, despite it having been a taboo for so long, as Google had also announced that they were going to delete any Google or Google-related accounts which have been inactive for 2 years. They've already had to walk back what would have deleted most of YouTube's 20-year history (YouTube being one of many sites owned by Google), but internet history has always been relatively ephemeral and impermanent, especially in the case of anyone who's no longer with us, which is also where the loss might sting the most.

Of course there's legitimate questions about how much effectively-public data a private company should be obliged to archive and for how long; storage costs aren't free and just imagine how much data the internet might accrue in just a century of ever-expanding activity. But it seems the big wave right now is mainly trying to establish new, far more restrictive precedents and simple opportunism rather than any particular crushing burden of cost.

Anyway, rather than straying too far into the off-topic, the point is we should all be prepared both for more sites to announce similar policies and for new restrictions on any and all forms of non-paid storage going forward. LAF's image attachment function will be something of a step backwards unfortunately, as it is sadly a bit dated (and it notoriously sometimes rotates images for as-yet undiscerned reasons), but might still be preferable to any form of outside storage going forward, unless you're confident you'll log in to your Imgur (or other hosting) account every couple of months.

An interesting post, mate.

It seems to me that to lose all this content that has been generated on the internet to be a terrible loss. Perhaps what is needed is a National Archive for digital content like the one they have for books.

As for image storage here on LAF, the personal galleries are, IMO, the way to go. Once you have uploaded a photo to your gallery, it is quite easy to use the link of your photo to paste in your posts. I have on many occasions gone to the gallery and viewed hundreds of images just for the fun of it.

Another down side to using the attachment function is that if you go to the "View the most recent posts on the forum" function, attached photos will not be shown, as opposed to those that are linked to.

Perhaps I am unique in that the biggest reason I come here is to see the photos.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: FramFramson on 21 May 2023, 06:55:01 PM
Perhaps I am unique in that the biggest reason I come here is to see the photos.

I would hazard a guess that you're not even remotely unique in this particular sense.  lol  ;)
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Robosmith on 23 May 2023, 05:45:39 PM
This is actually why I have a blog...mainly because it just lets me throw all my photos on there, but yeah image-hosting is disappearing pretty quick if it's not on a social media platform.

Any blog site has the same problem. If you're not paying for it you're not in control and they can pull the plug at any point.
Title: Re: Say goodbye to Imgur hosting!
Post by: Easy E on 24 May 2023, 11:00:45 PM
Technically, any image hosting anywhere online has that problem. 

Just ask the people who used Google+, or Vine, or Friendster, or......