I honestly don't see an issue. if you're sharing links to images on imgur, you're denying them ad revenue and just leaching bandwidth. I'm all for adblockers, but complaining you can't direct link images is kinda...
Imgur was founded as a reddit-friendly image host. "The new site for reddit images, written by a redditor. None of the slow ad-laden crap of imageshack!"
Now, it is slow ad-laden crap, to the point that I just hit Back button after hitting a link and seeing the page frame load before the image.
It has been fascinating to watch the common startup pattern of "I am one of us, making our life awesome" messaging covering a standard 2-year bait-and-switch free product flip.
Imgur will be dumped as fast as all the image hosting sites it replaced on reddit.
But isn't it incredibly naive to think you can get something for nothing? I don't really see this as a bait and switch, a site like that needs ads so that they can keep it free for users. Imgur tried a donation based model early on but it just didn't work (costs exceeded donations because donations don't scale linearly with bandwidth costs). I'm not really satisfied with the status quo of giant data silos profiting off of user submitted content but the extreme opposite (always directly linking to images) isn't sustainable either.
I'm working on an ad-based image site [1] that I hope will be perceived as a little friendlier to users but your disdain for ads is not uncommon. Do you have an alternative to ads for making high traffic image hosting sustainable?
Back in 2012 Sarah basically said try DnD when the simple choose a file to upload /?noFlash page went away. The flash uploader didn't work on FreeBSD any more and DnD on FF would upload the file and then return an error. She nor anyone else never replied again after I tried to follow-up with that. Imgur had changed.
The creator of imgur (MrGrim on Reddit) has said on multiple occasions that hotlinking is acceptable way to use imgur:
Four years ago - "I created imgur because the other image hosting sites forced you to see their ad-ridden pages (TinyPIC). I would never do the same to you. If you want to direct link to the image, then by all means do so."[1]
Three years ago - "People linking to the page rather than the image is what keeps imgur going. If everyone linked to the direct image then imgur would have no source of revenue. However, I want people to use the service however they want, and by no means would I ever force anyone to do it one certain way. So, I like it when people link to the page because that's how imgur makes money, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to. I'm just happy that you like the service."[2]
One year ago - "No, I don't think [restricting hotlinking] will ever happen. At least not that I can foresee."[3]
It was already stated, but Imgur was created by a redditor, for reddit. Facebook already is an image host, twitter is too.
I get free access to a usenet server for being inside my ISPs network. Others have to pay to use the same server if their outside the network. It's the same deal.
IMHO, "hotlinking" isn't the same as directing people from social media directly to an image url. You can still put <img src="http://imgur.com/..."> on your web page and it will still work. The context of doing that is different from pointing someone directly to an image with the intent of showing it to them.
And how will that continue to work when if it goes beyond Twitter, G+, and FB? Most browsers send a referrer in HTTP GET for the img tag. It works now for those because google and facebook grok the html, pull out the image, and cache it.
In an <img> context, your browser should send an appropriate Accept header[1]; this can be switched upon in the backend to select the appropriate representation (e.g., to serve an image rather than HTML). So hotlinked images should continue to work, while normal links will redirect to the HTML wrapper.
And '640K is more memory than anyone will ever need.' Business models change and in reality there are no free lunches. Just because they say something in the past doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't change.
One of the problems is the comments on imgur. If you thought youtube was bad. Now imagine posting a picture of a sunset or a cute dog or whatever, your mom or 8 year old nephew or whoever clicks it and it's full of "look at the fucking sun!" or similar.
You can only comment on images that are explicitly uploaded to the gallery. This is an extra step after uploading an image. There are no commentable images on imgur that are not intended to be (reposting unsubmitted content aside).
I don't think anyone would complain if it hadn't been advertising those links as officially supported direct links for years before sneakily changing them to deliver the ad page instead.
