Other Imgur bans direct/hotlinking

[The Fuzzy Pixel]

So this is a thing now apparently. Put your tin foil hats on as you ponder the why's to this issue, because I can't make heads or tails of it. People using imgur might want to find a new image hosting site eventually, though; seems like imgur already dropped the axe on jcink forums.


[serious] Imgur banned Direct/Hotlinking, what alternates to Imgur do you prefer? • /r/AskReddit


From imgur ToS under 'Stuff not to do':


Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it.

 

[Seiden]

I seriously thought imgur was an image hosting website....


So, what am I supposed to do now ?

 

[Muffinboi]

I'm guessing that the Imgur staff or whatever are under the belief that their site is a social media site and not an image hosting site now.

 

[MolecularMachine]

But wasn't hosting images to link to Reddit the entire reason Imgur was made in the first place? That's absolutely batty.

 

[The Fuzzy Pixel]

I seriously thought imgur was an image hosting website....
So, what am I supposed to do now ?

I'd suggest slowly moving your images to another hosting site. Imgur does have a 'downloard account images' in account settings, but the process for that is weird. More than likely you're going to get this message:


"You have a lot of images! It's going to take us a bit to get your download ready for you. We will email you when it's ready, so be sure your account email is correct."


From what I've been told that can take hours. Personally I just downloaded albums individually, but you might get the above message again if there's too many images. Do what you gotta do? Breaking large albums down into smaller albums helps.


Some alternatives for you:


UltraIMG - 100% Free Image Hosting - Upload JPG BMP GIF PNG


Has mass upload capability, drag and drop function, encourages hotlinks, has albums, and has no bandwith limit/album limit/image limit either. Generally, the easier go to. The only downside is that you can't organize your albums themselves, so you're stuck in the order you've uploaded them.


imgbox - fast, simple image host


Has mass upload ability, drag and drop, doesn't encourage or discourage hotlinks. You can create albums when you upload, and you can also edit images too on the fly. The only downside here, is that albums have a max size of 500 images, and that you can't share the account for someone to see all the galleries. You can share individual galleries however.


Then there's the obvious photobucket or tinypic.

 

[DaManofWar]

Like the wrath of Sir Intrega Fairbrooks Winegates Hellsing, Imgur purges.

 

[Seiden]

I do not have an account so my hosted pics will just get losts... Anyway, thanks a lot for your help and links !

 

[welian]

From what I've heard, this was mainly to kick a bunch of indie forums in the nuts for using them as a replacement for a content delivery network. Generally speaking, If an image is part of a site - avatars, headers, etc. - them it should be hosted on the site server, not imgur.