Imgur to erase legacy content not linked to an account, and ban NSFW material

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: The online image hosting and sharing service has announced sweeping changes to its terms of service that'll have a far-reaching impact for years to come. Imgur claims the move will help ensure it remains a safe and fun space on the Internet, but it looks more like a setup for its own Photobucket moment.

Imgur is taking spring cleaning to a whole nother level. From May 15, Imgur will start removing what it calls old, unused and inactive content not tied to a user account. Furthermore, material classified as "nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content" will also be scrubbed from the service. Imgur notes that users wishing to preserve any images that no longer adhere to the new terms will need to download them before sanitation begins.

Imgur will use a mix of automated detection and human review to identify and remove offending content, but said artistic nudes will still be allowed.

Imgur's announcement is twofold, really. Banning adult content is no doubt going to tick some people off, especially those in NSFW communities on Reddit that rely on the service to host the material they share. Imgur could lose millions of users based on this decision alone, much like we saw with Tumblr a few years back.

Arguably, the bigger concern is Imgur's decision to delete older material not linked to a user account. For years, the service has allowed users to host images without requiring them to be linked to an account. By wiping older content, Imgur is positioning itself for its own Photobucket moment.

Photobucket operated a free image hosting service for several years that was used by millions of people to share media on forums and blogs, both of which were popular before social media took over. When the service switched to a subscription model in 2017, swaths of hosted images disappeared, resulting in countless web posts that were more or less useless without images.

The same is likely to happen again – albeit with more of an impact on social media – when Imgur starts purging legacy content next month.

Image credit: 404 by Erik Mclean, Confusion by Erika Wittlieb

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98393-imgur-erase-legacy-content-not-linked-account-ban.html

 

[VariableSpike]

Imgur doing a tumblr, wonder who jumps on the bandwagon instead....

 

[kira setsu]

Wonder how long before another site takes its place, I havent really browsed the imgur app on my phone much lately because most of the post are depressing as hell or telling me about a new thing to get angry at.

 

[RudyBob]

I like looking at boobs as much as the next guy but there is far to much
"nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content" on the internet. I am glad this is being done. I hope others follow.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

I like looking at boobs as much as the next guy but there is far to much
"nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content" on the internet. I am glad this is being done. I hope others follow.

So what's your idea of an acceptable amount?

 

[gigantor21]

"Imgur is shooting itself in the head and hoping it survives" would also work as a headline.

 

[RudyBob]

So what's your idea of an acceptable amount?

That's an unanswerable question

 

[Puiu]

They probably just ran out of space on their PC and are doing some spring cleaning.

 

[James Ryan]

This will be like Onlyfans Dropping NSFW content...

 

[Shaitan]

LOL. Effin' LOL. So you had Tumblr which did the EXACT same thing in banning and their market value dropped like a rock in several months.
Oh well, let's do THE EXACT same mistake and see if this time it works.
Kind of reminds me of Disney's move with Marvel(s) second abomination, the most disliked trailer in history. If Captain Marvel will forever be remembered as one of the biggest scams which brought in a ton of cash ('you have to see this movie because it's part of the Avengers blah') and a ton of people got fooled ONCE, (while some other "fragile white men" like me happily decided not to ever go and see anything related to Marvel's stuff.ever again), people woke up against the woke sh!t; in the meantime: I'm happy, my wallet's happy, never seeing Marvel or other movies with "THE MESSAGE", the end. Because, you know, when you do something anti-consumer, well... one way or the other, it will backfire.
Tumblr value went down the drain because they suddenly decided to remove triple x content because righteousness.
Let's hope some other company will take over and replace these two, Tumblr and Imgur, while the 1mbeciles which came up with this "great" idea of content removal never find a job again.