
Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur - coloneltcb
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/reddit-image-uploads/
======
zitterbewegung
Having a third party host Reddit's images gave away a bunch of control to the
point that imgur has its own community based upon the site . At the time
Reddit didn't have the resources to make a competitor but this seems to be a
good move now that imgur is doing dark patterns.

~~~
Others
What dark patterns are they implementing?

~~~
finnn
"direct" links to an image uploaded sometimes/usually redirect to imgur page,
with lots of ads and shitty content, obnoxious, animated overlays that block
out part of the image on mobile, etc

~~~
onli
None of that is a dark pattern.

A dark pattern is an UI design that motivates users to use the program/site in
a way profitable to the site, but contrary to users' interest. To trick
people, see [http://darkpatterns.org/](http://darkpatterns.org/). Redirecting
to the whole page instead of the link is just a hotlink protection (as
debatable as that is for an image hoster). Animated overlays in mobile is just
shitty advertising and UX. But no dark pattern here.

I saw that multiple times here on HN now that people misuse the term. It's a
pity, the original idea is something to be aware of, and diluting what dark
pattern means hinders that awareness.

~~~
lmm
Having links that used to be hotlinks no longer be hotlinks is a dark pattern;
also URLs that look like hotlinks (ending in .jpg or similar) but aren't. I'd
argue that serving ads sometimes but not always is a dark pattern
(particularly if they use cookies or similar to never serve ads to the
original uploader).

~~~
onli
Again, no. A dark pattern is an UI that makes the user do something he does
not want. The best example is linkedin trying to get people to spam their
contacts with invites. The pre-checked "subscribe to the newsletter" checkbox
is a dark pattern. Same is the checkbox you need to check to _not_ subscribe
to the newsletter.

A hotlink is no user interface, changing its behaviour is not a dark pattern.
Serving ads never is one (though ads itself can use dark patterns), regardless
whether the uploader sees them or not. Those are different kind of tricks that
have ( _edit:_ almost) nothing to do with what the term dark pattern
describes.

 _Edit:_ I'd argue that links that used to be hotlinks not being hotlinks can
maybe be part of a dark pattern. If an UI tried to get people to share a site,
and the people do that only because they think the links are hotlinks, then
that UI could be a dark pattern and the non-hotlinks a part of that. But the
dark pattern is then the UI presenting the hotlink, the "share this image
directly" widget, not the hotlink itself.

~~~
lmm
> Edit: I'd argue that links that used to be hotlinks not being hotlinks can
> maybe be part of a dark pattern. If an UI tried to get people to share a
> site, and the people do that only because they think the links are hotlinks,
> then that UI could be a dark pattern and the non-hotlinks a part of that.
> But the dark pattern is then the UI presenting the hotlink, the "share this
> image directly" widget, not the hotlink itself.

I'd say the URL itself can be UI - users know what a URL to a direct image
looks like and how that differs from what a URL to a page tends to look like.

~~~
onli
That does not matter. An URL alone does not entice users to do nothing. You
need more to get a proper dark pattern, to get the "convincing the user to do
things" part of the definition of what makes something a dark pattern in the
first place. Please, look as well at the website
[http://darkpatterns.org/](http://darkpatterns.org/) to see what a dark
pattern is about.

~~~
sbarre
So you're saying if it's not on that website it's not valid?

Come on.. If I see a URL that ends in JPG, my understanding is that I am about
to load an image. If the site then shows me a page full of ads with my image
somewhere on there, that's _exactly what you described_.

The site is tricking me into doing something that is to their benefit and to
my detriment. Showing me a URL that _looks like a link to an image_ is
absolutely encouraging me to do something. It's telling me "hey click here
you'll see the image right away"..

I did not want to see a page full of ads, I wanted to see a single image, but
now the site has monetized me without my consent.

It feels like you're arguing for argument's sake here.

~~~
onli
One last try. I'll stop then.

If you are really arguing that you are inherently more likely to click on the
direct link, and it is this click impulse that is used to manipulate you, and
that going to a page containing that image plus ads instead is the big
negative outcome, then I understand why it is a dark pattern for you.

I did not see that direct link have a higher affordance (that might stretch
the term a bit too much) to be clicked on. I still don't – but if you think
that there are people that are conditioned to click on those direct links, but
would not click on the normal link, then I'll have o give you the point that
the heuristically changing of the result page might be a dark pattern for
those people.

I'm not aware of that effect, but I can't be sure that for example on reddit
for people without adblocker or on mobile for some time the direct link wasn't
a positive click signal that conditioned them.

I think that explains why I'm arguing. Dark patterns are a manipulation, and
simply showing another page is not something I can count as a manipulation –
it is not the same thing as in a window making people click on the wrong
button (even though I understand that there is a similarity if you follow a
specific line of thinking).

~~~
TeMPOraL
Direct link is a significant "positive signal" for the following reasons:

\- you implicitly expect it won't load _code_ to your browser

\- you implicitly expect it will serve the one and _only_ one resource that
you need

\- you implicitly expect that after receiving the resource no further data
will be exchanged between the client and the server

\- you implicitly expect it will work well with the standard UI of your
viewing platform - for instance, it will be pinch-zoomable on mobile, or
zoomable with mouse in desktop browsers

\- you expect to work well with applicable context; for instance, a direct
image link should work in "href" attribute of "a" tag (resulting in an image
being embedded on a website), it should work with curl or wget (resulting in a
single image file being created on your hard drive), or just browser's "save"
feature (again, resulting in a single image file being created)

I'd call breaking these things a dark pattern. A particularly nasty one at
that, since it's poisoning the well. Breaking users' trust in that URLs do is
one of the many subtle ways of fucking the Internet for everyone for personal
profit.

------
makecheck
Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service
with things that were not only annoying but _interfering with its basic
function_. If you _can’t_ easily see an image as soon as you click on it — on
mobile or otherwise — then the image service has completely failed.

The sad thing is, they could have added non-intrusive ads. DaringFireball does
it; write a single line of text such as “This image brought to you by FooBar,
Inc.” and SHOW THE LINKED IMAGE. No pop-ups, no tricks, no obscurity;
ad+image, done.

~~~
joshdickson
"Daring Fireball does it" has to be the worst possible comparison imaginable.
Gruber has super differentiated, high editorial value content that folks will
pay a premium to put their message next to. Imgur is about as far away from
that as possible. They have to try to make money, it's crazy to sit here and
think you know better than they do on this. Don't you think if they could make
enough money doing what you think, they would do that instead? They are in a
tough industry. They host images (relatively expensive), they have almost no
user information for targeting, most visitors never come back to a page again,
and most of the content posted is super low value. Unfortunately, this is the
result.

~~~
transpy
I wish an image service existed that did some image recognition on the picture
and provided you with relevant, but subtle 'Learn more about this thing'
links.

~~~
larrik
Or even links sending you to the original source of the image (comics
especially)

~~~
transpy
Hey, yes! If reverse image search is possible now, it should be easy to
automatically give credit to original creators, connect them with audiences
and bypass blogspam!

~~~
stanley
How would you determine which reverse image search result is the original
content creator? Just curious.

~~~
timlyo
Finding the oldest image would probably work for most cases, as long as you
found every instance of the image on the internet.

It might work ok for some of the larger comics/image producers.

------
Dramatize
It seemed like Imgur has been getting ready for this for awhile. The
experience using it hasn't been that great since direct linking stopped
working on mobile.

~~~
static_noise
Last time I've opened an imgur link on mobile I got served with an ad popup
and a "virus warning" dialog. That is something I haven't seen in a long time.
Imgur seems to go the way of SourceForge.

~~~
tlrobinson
This seems like a common pattern

1\. Realize you need to make a lot more money (to meet investor expectations,
pay for the fat the company has accumulated, etc)

2\. Panic

3\. Apply dark patterns ([http://darkpatterns.org/](http://darkpatterns.org/))

4\. Something better comes along and eats your lunch

5\. Repeat.

It's sad because imgur was originally created as the "something better".

~~~
sotojuan
I'm sure they made mistakes but when you see massive growth like imgur did
someone's gotta pay the sever bills somehow. Plenty of image uploading sites
have come and gone because of server costs.

~~~
static_noise
Dear lamb, we had a great time but now I have to eat.

------
esolyt
> At this time, the Reddit community can still choose to use Imgur or other
> sites for image hosting.

The fact that they used the phrase "At this time" makes it sound like they are
planning to disable external image links in the future.

~~~
imaginenore
Or just convert all image links automatically. Some websites do it.

~~~
edraferi
There can be very good reasons for this. Gmail, for example, rehosts embedded
images with google to protect users against invisible pixel trackers.

------
whalesalad
Looks like it's backed by S3

    
    
      x-amz-storage-class: REDUCED_REDUNDANCY
      Content-Type: image/jpeg
      Server: AmazonS3
    

Can't imagine that AWS bill...

~~~
oolongCat
What are some better alternatives to s3?

~~~
mozumder
Colocation hosting your own servers around the world... you know, the original
way.

~~~
creshal
Is that really cheaper than S3, though?

~~~
sgk284
Even at Amazon's cheapest posted bandwidth tier you're paying $50+ per
terabyte for bandwidth.

Any dedicated hosting company (OVH, Hetzner, etc...) will cost less than 3% of
that (and that's on the high end).

Bandwidth is cheap, but AWS marks it up roughly 30x-50x what you'd pay in a
dedicated environment.

~~~
MasterScrat
Then why isn't anyone running an AWS-like service focused for bandwidth-
intensive applications hosted on "OVH, Hetzner, etc..."?

~~~
sgk284
Many people do. S3 is convenient though. It handles durability, replication,
uptime, etc... and even with the insane markup on bandwidth many startups /
companies can afford a $10k/mo bandwidth bill because it's cheaper than hiring
some devops and a team to build out the appropriate infrastructure.

~~~
creshal
That's what I meant with " _really_ cheaper". Sure, bandwidth costs are lower
with Hetzner, but that's not everything.

------
tdiggity
Here's a thread that led to people's hate of imgur:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/46cjo5/i_just_want_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/46cjo5/i_just_want_to_say_fuck_imgur_for_overpowering/?ref=search_posts)

It was really annoying on mobile.

~~~
oe
The hate seems to go both ways. Imgur community dislikes lame images from
Reddit appearing on Imgur front page and would like them to go away.

~~~
unlinker
That's funny, when the quality of imgur images and comments is similar to that
of 9gag and reddit itself.

At least on the default subs of reddit you can find a handful of good comments
if you only read the parents. If you go to the children, they all become
obnoxious.

------
6stringmerc
Searched this entire thread and no mention of DMCA or Safe Harbors. Linking to
a 3rd party is good to avoid worrying about that sort of stuff. Not that I'm
an advocate for illicit rehosting, but just commenting as an observer.

It gets briefly touched on at the very end of the article, but self-hosting
may carry with it a whole lot of extra work to avoid getting a big bullseye
painted on the company. I'm sure more than a few content creators - probably
in the adult business - have their lawyers on speed dial. Will be interesting
to see how this plays out.

It's not just a PR thing, it's a _legal_ thing.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
Wouldn't this give Reddit more control though? If the files are hosted
somewhere else they have to rely on that service to handle takedowns. It means
they can still show up all over Reddit and to a lot of users come across like
Reddit is hosting them; speaking from the stand point of your average user,
not Reddit/HN user.

I would imagine Reddit wants to have control and be able to more quickly take
down things versus waiting for moderators to automod or manually remove posts.

~~~
Crespyl
Reddit having more control and being able to take things down may be a mixed
bag at best as far as many users and mods are concerned.

A lot of users are very twitchy about anything that even hints at censorship
right now.

------
chjohasbrouck
When you're growing as fast as Reddit was, you don't change the recipe, you
just keep cooking it. They already had the ingredients for exponential growth,
so change in general just introduces unnecessary risks. They had no need for a
larger exponent.

The outcome of that is:

-Alien Blue beat Reddit to mobile optimization of Reddit's own platform

-Imgur beat Reddit to sharing images on Reddit

-Reddit and Imgur now exist as pseudo-sister-sites with features that overlap on a fundamental level, and Reddit is cannibalizing its own equity in Imgur

Now that they can't just hire site reliability engineers and watch their graph
go up like a volcano, their only play is to improve their product, but now
they're running uphill.

I think it's generally correct to play it safe and maintain organic
exponential growth if you have it, but when it comes to things as obvious as
mobile optimization and image sharing, maybe it's ok for a company to come out
of their shell and iterate on obvious stuff (even though they don't have to).

------
ourcat
From 2014 When Imgur took $40MM in Funding :
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/after-five-years-of-
bootstr...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/after-five-years-of-
bootstrapping-imgur-raises-40-million-from-andreessen-reddit/)

"In addition, the Reddit investment will finally formalize the already
friendly relationship between the two sites, making them more symbiotic and
maybe even more integrated in some way, though Schaaf declined to go into
details as to what’s ahead for the two, only saying that there’s no promise of
Imgur being Reddit’s “official” image host at this time."

------
siegecraft
The imgur hate in here is odd. It seems like people are just assuming the
worst based on one critical comment thread that got turned into a techcrunch
article. Which is understandable, I don't understand how they can offer a free
unlimited image hosting site (and they've offered it for so long that, well,
you can see the backlash they got when direct linking is taken away). Still,
their management seems savvy enough to know that they would have to carefully
manage that change.

There's at least two distinct types of imgur users, those who only use imgur
as an image host and "imgurians." The huge usage numbers come from the former
while the actual value (IMHO) is in the unpaid labor of the latter group (like
most social media). That means imgur can piss off their freeloaders as long as
they don't upset their community, but this is really no help at all because
the community is far more critical than the freeloaders. Freeloaders don't
care about imgur's community drama.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
People who have negative opinions of things you clearly like often found those
opinions in experiences you are unaware of. My opinion on Imgur involves eight
years of context, remembering pre-Imgur Reddit as well as Quickmeme, watching
Imgur rise and fall, observing the psychology of i.imgur.com leading to
upvotes of Reddit, knowing a pretty religious Imgurian who goes to meetups,
etc.

However, because I disagree with you, according to you I reacted to a
TechCrunch article; there's no better way to get me running to share that
opinion than by poisoning the thread with the assumption that naysayers are
misinformed or oblivious.

Assume people are informed and you'll end up on the right side of disappointed
when they aren't, instead of being embarrassed when they are.

~~~
siegecraft
I would very much like to be informed of those opinions, hence my post,
although apparently not in a mild enough tone to avoid a scolding.

Regardless, I'm a daily user on a variety of platforms (mobile w/o adblock
being one of them) so I am confused that I haven't encountered the highly
annoying behaviors people are describing: direct image links being hijacked or
super annoying browser-highjacking mobile ads (which I have run into in the
past). If I had then I would be rightfully pissed as everyone else seems to
be.

------
pfarnsworth
I don't know why reddit would want to take on the burden and cost of dealing
with images. It might make it incrementally easier, but with something like
RES the entire thing was seamless. Seems like a misplaced focus on a feature
that doesn't bring that much value, and a lot more cost. I'll be curious to
see how successful this ends up being. If they wanted to concentrate on making
the site easier to use, they should have hired the people who made RES.

~~~
fooey
Reddit basically needs an image hosting service to succeed, and Imgur is now
at least as obnoxious as all the previous generation of hosts that lead to it
being created in the first place

~~~
bostik
While I agree with Imgur being obnoxious and a far cry from their early days,
they are not as awful as the previous de-facto image sharing site - whatever
it was with the green frog as their mascot.

~~~
rplnt
Do you mean imageshack? It's exactly like that.

Though imageshack's biggest crime was delete everything (maybe except stuff
from paid accounts) at one point in time.

~~~
bostik
Yup, that was it. Thanks for the name reminder.

And I still stand by my earlier statement: Imgur has declined, but they have
not yet stooped to the level of end-user abuse shack did. (Granted, hijacking
direct image URLs is sleezy as hell.)

Imageshack made even uploads a chore. Sure, picking the image from _your_
drive was easy - but then they made every attempt possible to force their
inline branding into all inbound links.

Getting a hot-linkable image from shack uploads required extra effort. _And_
they tried to trick you into using their quality-degraded downscaled versions
everywhere. It was dreadful. I even remember couple of cases where after the
upload there was _no_ way of getting the image link out. At all. All you got
was a 80x80 thumbnail and a link to their shitty pages where you could, MAYBE,
view the image. (Which was, of course, downscaled and further compressed. The
original was gone.)

So no, as far as I am concerned, Imgur has not yet reached the imageshack
abusement park level.

------
boyce
Spotted this was happening nearly two months ago - surprised it's taken the
tech blogs a while to cotton on

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11453224)

~~~
6stringmerc
Nicely put; cool to read the tea leaves, so to speak, and see the outcome
unfold. Good call.

------
clw8
I bet Reddit will finally be blocked in China because of this. Imgur has been
blocked for years but Reddit's never been blocked.

~~~
bnastic
s/China/<every large company on earth>/

------
Keyframe
It was inevitable. Not because of imgur going bad (did they? They did take
some questionable moves regarding direct image links, but can't blame them
considering volume). It's because of ye olde adage here on HN. If you your
business relies on someone else, be prepared for their moves (to not use
harsher words). Large volume of popular reddit-submitted content is imgur
based. They have to get (back) that under control. Smarter move would be to
outright buy or merge with imgur, considering their content and user base, but
that probably have been considered.

------
wassago
I think it'll be the same when StackOverflow introduced snippers and everyone
thought JSFiddle would fade away because of it... In reality there was zero
impact on the traffic from SO.

I'm pretty sure the same will be for Imgur.

------
jasonm23
The community on Reddit can get pretty salty at times, but the open ugliness
of Imgur comments gives "vintage YouTube" a run for its money.

~~~
DanBC
It's a shame because there was a few months where Imgur was brilliant.

------
visarga
Can reddit clone the pics previously uploaded on imgur or does it have its
eggs in someone else's carriage?

~~~
nacs
The announcement Reddit thread contained a Reddit employee mentioning that
they already have a cache of the majority of Imgur images because they've been
using it to create thumbnails Reddit displays alongside the headlines.

Apparently they've been storing the full size images too and not throwing it
away after creating thumbnails (wise move).

------
alttab
Turns out a S3 bucket in itself isn't a website.

~~~
shawn-butler
Fairly easy to serve a static website from a S3 bucket...

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/HowDoIWebsite...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/HowDoIWebsiteConfiguration.html)

~~~
alttab
My point was supplying an S3 bucket as a service, and putting lipstick on it
to make it look like a website isn't valuable in the long term, on its own.

------
kinkdr
Bad news for Imgur...

~~~
static_noise
Bad news for the current shareholders of imgur.

All we want is an easy and reliable image hoster. You upload an image, they
host it, you can link it, fin.

Perfect plan!

Except for the plot hole of not generating any money this way. That's where
the suits creep in. First they finance you to grow and grow quickly you must.
Imgur did it. Then you experiment with some methods of generating ad views or
other revenue. People realize they hit on a gold mine and business starts to
grow like cancer. Then there are some minor changes to optimize revenue. Then
some founders start to cash out and jump the ship. Then the suits, loudmouths
and ginas slowly but surely take over the company and due process replaces the
dictatorship of the personal union of owner and leader. There's guitars and
barbecue as the corporate drones dance around the firepit of burning money as
they hurry to please the gods of corporate capitalism. A spiral is forming
like a siphon circling around itself pulling everything in like a black hole.
And it's great.

If you listen carefully in the storm of excitement you can hear a faint voice
who still remebers the core of the business: _Provide the service and don 't
fuck with the customer._

Or as some politicians said: You can fuck over some of your customers all the
time and you can fuck over all of your customers for some time. Both is a
great business plan. But you cannot fuck over all of your customers all of the
time. Especially not if you don't have a stranglehold on their necks like a
dictator or monopoly has.

The imgur we have today deserves to die.

It may redeem itself by remembering its roots and not wanting to become more
than it is. That would be great!

One thing that is more important over the whole debacle is to watch reddit
closely and be ready to jump ship quickly as they stumble deeper into the
corporate trap. Having a plan B "just in case" for everything important will
cost you resources but it pays out for itself in the long run.

~~~
Eerie
>If you listen carefully in the storm of excitement you can hear a faint voice
who still remebers the core of the business: Provide the service and don't
fuck with the customer.

The people looking at images for free are NOT THE CUSTOMER.

Hint: the customer pays for service.

------
Guest98123
I'm surprised one of the big companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon),
or one of the world's governments doesn't start up a simple image hosting site
with direct linking, and foot the bill in exchange for tracking everyone, and
having more of the world under their umbrella, visiting daily.

I'm assuming those companies also have the infrastructure to reduce bandwidth
expenses, and they could accept the loss in the short term, to have a well
established service and community for when imaging hosting becomes more
profitable in the future.

A simple image hosting service is relatively quick to develop, and it's almost
guaranteed to be one of the most used services on the internet. Why are these
companies wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on all sorts of failed
projects, when they could easily win this market?

~~~
pjc50
Hosting an image site means you're responsible for its content. That means you
need to have some policy for dealing with all the copyright infringement,
child porn, racial hatred, leaked celebrity nudes, shock images, etc. It's a
potential lightning rod for brand damage.

Note that all of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, & Amazon already allow you to
host your own photos but aren't used in this way.

(Everyone has more or less given up on copyright enforcement for images,
possibly because there's no central enforcement mafia, but that doesn't mean
it's not still the law)

------
jug
I think this is a good move. Imgur got used only because it was convenient and
that it didn't have any stuff brewing around the service. That it was created
by a redditor probably also helped. Now it is a service with a lot of stuff
going on around it, and a competitor to Reddit in a sense, being its own
community oriented around discussing trending topics or creating memes.

Since Reddit has their own service for this now, hopefully they can use their
revenue to keep it clean and at least reasonably ad free and focused on its
simple mission. If that can happen, I think this is a step forward from what
Imgur has become. Not anything bad per se if you want a different community,
but not optimal if you already are on one and just want to view the pictures.

------
tech-no-logical
and it uses cloudflare, so browsing for pics gives me another gazillion
captchas because I'm on a vpn. well thanks al lot...

at least imgur didn't use cloudflare.

~~~
teach
This is the life you have chosen.

------
ben_jones
No matter where your personal beliefs put you on the subject, Reddit has been
taking a lot more interest in the quality and nature of its content lately.
This means subreddit bans, shadow bans, and similar activity. I wonder if this
will see an increase once Reddit has complete control and monitoring over its
Image hosting. It also opens them up to DMCA and other complaints.

From an engineering perspective Reddit had frequent crashes and severe lag for
years. They've improved a lot in the past two, and seeing them confident
enough to launch a service like this says something about their progress in
that regard. However I could see it be a complete flop as well. Time will
tell.

------
rezashirazian
Viewing images on reddit has always been broken. Without RES (Reddit
Enhancement Suite) the UX on the site is horrendous. And even with RES, images
not hosted on imgur wouldn't work most of the time.

It was so bad I took on myself to aggregate images from /r/funny and put them
in a mobile friendly and fast website.
[http://www.pixpit.com](http://www.pixpit.com)

unfortunately every time I tried to talk about it on reddit, they deleted it.

~~~
dredmorbius
Quite this.

I use reddit more-or-less as a blog
([https://dredmorbius.reddit.com](https://dredmorbius.reddit.com)). What I
particularly like is the extended community, Markdown, mod tools, Wiki (though
it's underpowered), search (though it's posts-only, no comments), and, through
RES, some nice features for composing, and viewing images in posts.

But that last applies to a _very_ small subset of readers. And as I make a
fair bit of use of images (to illustrate and document points in my essays),
that's a considerable pain point.

Ello, whilst lacking many other features, and having broken Markdown (notably:
no blockquote support), _does_ have phenomenal image support.

Other options are fairly thin, though Medium might be worth another look.

------
corndoge
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kh1TZdtyX7UlRd55OBxf...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kh1TZdtyX7UlRd55OBxf7DB-
JGj2rsfWckI0FPQRYhE/edit#gid=0)

There are and have always been plenty of simpler alternatives with a variety
of features. I stopped using imgur when direct links stopped working.

Personal fav: [https://uguu.se/](https://uguu.se/)

------
ljk
doesn't reddit have a stake in imgur? [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/after-
five-years-of-bootstr...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/after-five-years-
of-bootstrapping-imgur-raises-40-million-from-andreessen-reddit/)

------
amelius
Of course Imgur could take revenge by breaking all images that are still
linked to from Reddit.

Did Reddit make backup copies?

~~~
whamlastxmas
This exact thing happened with Something Awful and some other image host.

------
yc-kraln
I posted a version of this comment seven years ago in the original reddit
launch thread for imgur: I have server resources and happy to host any
reasonable attempts to make a quality image host, that have a (to me) valid
business plan.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
How can I contact you?

------
zkhalique
This is what you get for relying on someone else's centralized platform.

------
baldfat
> I saw that multiple times here on HN now that people misuse the term. It's a
> pity, the original idea is something to be aware of, and diluting what dark
> pattern means hinders that awareness.

Sorry long post TL/DR Fighting people on word definitions is frustrating and
words change meaning when one aspect gets popular.

I have fought this war over and over again over the following words:

Troll - Everything is a troll now. It use to be just someone that tried to
ruin other people's fun. Now if anything that makes anyone laugh is a troll.

Hacker - This site is case in point. Hacker was a person who would make
inventions with pieces that didn't normally get take apart and put back
together into something different then its original intent. Then it became
criminals. Now it's start up coverage websites were if you use terms of
Hackers of long gone days (i.e. M$) you get down voted for being
unprofessional. :)

Humanism - Means Atheist? Humanism was founded by the leaders of the
Renaissance and the Reformation Movement Leaders would self-identify as
Humanist. I went on a 5 day Reddit AMA with the President of the American
Humanist Society (Secular Humanist) saying they can't hijack the word and
change its meaning.

Humanism and related terms are frequently applied to modern doctrines and
techniques that are based on the centrality of human experience. In the 20th
century, the pragmatic humanism of Ferdinand C.S. Schiller, the Christian
humanism of Jacques Maritain, and the movement known as secular humanism,
though differing from each other significantly in content, all show this
anthropocentric emphasis. [http://humanism.ws/featured/a-history-of-humanism-
robert-gru...](http://humanism.ws/featured/a-history-of-humanism-robert-
grudin/)

~~~
dang
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11776314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11776314)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
baldfat
Well maybe this is the wrong place for actual communication and talking. I
really see "Hacker" News as less hacker and more Start Ups trying to look
professional.

------
albedoa
> One last try. I'll stop then.

This is the least believable thing you've said.

~~~
dang
No nasty swipes on HN, please.

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778568)
and marked it off-topic.

------
kordless
Maybe I'll turn out to be right after all.

