submitted 1 year ago by atomicpoet@kbin.social to c/fediverse@kbin.social

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Most Fediverse software supports image uploads, so there's no reason to use Imgur for image hosting. Hell, even on my small single-user server (atomicpoet.org), image hosting is easy peasy. Not only is Imgur not needed, they're an annoyance for those of us who are used to seeing images natively on the Fediverse.

I know habits are hard to break, but just remember: this isn't Reddit 🙂

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] IntlLawGnome@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

I will add that many of us who work remotely using publicly accessible wifi also use VPNs, and Imgur actively blocks IPs from multiple commercial VPN providers. If you want those users to see the image you're sharing, Imgur is not the way to go.

Pixelfed works well with other Fediverse services like Kbin and Lemmy. Try hosting there!

[-] amio@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

I'm usually on kbin, and here, imgur links are broken. Embeds and thumbnails, neither works for any imgur link.

[-] GrossGhost@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I've taken to just ignoring anything with an imgur link. Hopefully with so many better alternatives imgur will die out soon on the fediverse.

[-] dill@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

Fuck imgur for blocking Mullvad

[-] Wander@yiffit.net 3 points 1 year ago

I remember when imgur used to be good.

[-] iliketrains@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

imgur has more recently blocked access from numerous VPS, VPN and Tor.

[-] vimb@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Wait, why? What's the incentive?

[-] Saganastic@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

Collect more user data and sell it for $$$ probably.

[-] dismalnow@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

That and to prevent megaleeching by scraping. It's easier and cheaper to purchase curated lists of IPs than it is to bootstrap a tool to ban them based upon bandwidth.

[-] Brustadnrift@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

Reduce attack surface/abuse. There are plenty of services that maintains lists of “bad IPs” or “VPN IPs”. You can subscribe to them and get the list and block it. Most bots, spammers, attackers etc always run behind some type of VPN or Tor depending on what you’re doing and how much you’re trying to hide your trail.

Most services don’t go out of their way to block VPN IPs because it’s just a support headache/nightmare. Some services like Netflix are legally obligated to block well know VPN IPs

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

There are plenty of services that maintains lists of “bad IPs” or “VPN IPs”.

Yeah and they're dicks for doing so.

VPNs are a very basic privacy tool, everyone should be using a VPN at all times.

[-] steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Was wondering why Imgur wasn’t working for me

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, that would explain why I kept getting errors viewing images on Reddit with Safari on Mac (which uses a VPN-like privacy system

[-] elscallr@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Image hosting is always easy, it's never cheap. That's the difference between an instance with tens of thousands of users and your server with 1.

[-] OctoFloofy@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah even for large Media uploads I'll probably not use my own instances server and instead use something like YouTube or streamable. Since many instances don't even support displaying large Media at all i noticed. Like i uploaded a multiple hundreds MB video on my instance and on all Mastodon based instances it showed the file not being available.

[-] wutanc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

How does images work with federation? If 1m users on a big server look at my images that I posted on a small server, is that small server hit with that traffic? Or is all servers caching the image?

[-] OctoFloofy@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Depend on how it's setup. Some servers are setup to cache images, some don't. Mine for example doesn't and streams directly from source instead so i don't waste storage.

[-] imaBEES@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

IIRC all text and posts are cached on each server that is federated with one another, while images are just referenced and loaded from the server they were posted on, so if you had an image post on your server, anytime someone wants to load that image it would hit your server

[-] VerifiablyMrWonka@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Not strictly true. Mastodon, pixelfed, KBin all cache images.

[-] CannedTuna@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I use Imgur because Memmy has uploading photos direct to Imgur built in, like Apollo did. If the devs swapped to using PixelFed, I’d be using that. It’s just a matter of convenience.

If I was uploading and sharing photos to my own account, yeah I’d use PixelFed. I don’t have an Imgur account.

So yeah, I agree. It would be good to get away from that service.

[-] VerifiablyMrWonka@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

Does Lemmy not let you just attach them to your post?

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I always use apps to browse things, and imgur links work exactly the same as native hosted embedded images, with the bonus of also working with animated gifs and mp4s. What actually is the suck about imgur?

[-] VerifiablyMrWonka@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Imgur doesn't work with vpns. To view your meme post I have to got through steps to disable either my work or private VPNs. At this point the end result is I just don't bother.

[-] Pandantic@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I use kbin web app and they don’t show up for me.

[-] VerifiablyMrWonka@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Imgur block commercial IP ranges so KBin is unable to fetch, process and cache the thumbnail.

[-] ThatGirlKylie@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

What do you suggest when uploading a photo when commenting through an app? Most apps I have tried in the past including the one I’m on right now just upload to Imgur and paste a link in for you.

What is your suggestion for mobile users then?

[-] g8phcon2@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

use a web browser....even on your phone....

[-] ThatGirlKylie@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No? That defeats the whole purpose of not wanting to use the browser app(s) on my phone.

That’s like saying “just browse Reddit on your safari browser on your phone forehead and you won’t have to worry about Apollo shutting down or any other 3rd party app”

Such short-sightedness.

[-] g8phcon2@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Thers's plenty of other good reasons not to use non-free closed source "SaaS" like reddit.

[-] g8phcon2@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

then again, if your phone has "safari browser" you probably are unable to be reasoned with anyway.

[-] dismalnow@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Stop your Apple bad elitist bullshit. No one wants that and it isn’t at all helpful to the conversation about what apps achieve the solution OP looking for

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I like it lol

Apple users need to be taken down a peg.

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

It’s not a competition, users of anything are just people looking for a product that works best for them

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I disagree, I think Apple users are elitist picks who care about brand recognition way more than is healthy. Text bubble color, seriously? The level of peer pressure that young people face to use apple products is unhealthy for society.

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

You’ve been online far too much if you think anyone actually cares about color bubbles other than teenagers who don’t matter because they know nothing yet. Most people who have apple device have it because they were free/on sale with their phone plan or through work. I know dozens of people at my work who have cell phones solely because the company gives them one for work and that’s all they’ve had the past 10 years and it’s of course an iPhone for ease of support and management

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

young people

me, in the comment you replied to

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

The opinions of children don’t matter

[-] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

They absolutely matter, how could you think otherwise? What an absurd statement

[-] YMS@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Not wanting to use the browser is its own purpose? Of course I understand if you want to use a specialized app that offers more features, better usability, nicer layouts than the original websites of the services they are for. But using a specialized app just because it's not the browser (which, by the way, it often really is anyway), why that?

[-] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Kbin doesn't support pasting images from the clipboard, so it's kind of a useless feature for me most of the time.

[-] Madbrad200@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You have to be careful with image hosts though. Who knows how long Lemmy images will last? at least Imgur has been around for a decade+.

[-] g8phcon2@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

on a related note, hosting images on your server for users on other servers, eats up a lot of resources too. I know some instances have stopped allowing saving of images.

[-] anonymoose@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I suppose if you wanted to be really certain your uploaded images would remain under your control, you could post them to a PixelFed instance and point it to your own domain like images.mydomain.com. That way you could always redirect them if your PixelFed instance goes down.

[-] Helldiver_M@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Its been brought to my attention on a previous thread that if you're attaching images to comments on Kbin, Lemmy users cannot see them.

I still very much dislike imgur though, so I wouldn't suggest that as a solution. But embedding images into hyperlinks seems to be the best way to ensure your comment containing an image is viewed correctly by the wider fediverse.

[-] ferociousfloof@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Yep it is super annoying atm. Getting to where Reddit + RES was for any Fediverse frontend would be my ideal, but I know that is likely a bit away yet.

However currently Imgur links require me do multiple click/page loads to see anything with Kbin and right now that sucks because there are a fair amount of posts that link to them. And saying, well people should just use X/Y/Z to host it instead is a bad solution. The solution should always be to make X/Y/Z a better/easier hosting option while still supporting other hosts.

load more comments

this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023

13 points (100.0% liked)

Fediverse

17 readers

2 users here now

This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

founded 1 year ago