Imgur's Big Cleanup of Site will remove nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content
The popular image hosting destination Imgur plans to change its Terms of Service on May 15, 2023. The big cleanup of content on the site will remove nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content, as well as "old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account2.
The company that operates the platform asks users to download any images that they wish to save that do not adhere to the new terms of service.
Imgur users can upload explicit pictures and videos to the site, but not directly. The content was allowed if posted as a comment or if its visibility was not set to public. Public uploads of explicit content was prohibited since the October 2019 decision to discontinue support for Not Safe For Work (NSFW) subsections associated with Reddit.
Back then, Imgur stated that its users were still allowed to upload explicit content to the site, but only with the hidden status setting attached. Explicit content uploaded to the site prior to the announced change in 2019 would remain on the site, but Imgur implemented an adult check for adult content.
Imgur changed its attitude towards explicit content this week. The new terms of service of the company prohibit the uploading of explicit content and could lead to "not found" issues on third-party sites that used embeds to display Imgur content.
They now match the Community Rules, which forbid the uploading of "nudity or sexually explicit content". One exception to the rule is artistic nudity, which continues to be permitted according to a support page: "Artistic, scientific or educational nude images shared with educational context may be okay here. We don’t try to define art or judge the artistic merit of particular content."
Automated systems will be implemented that help employees identify explicit content. Imgur hopes that its mix of "automated detection and human review" will minimize the negative impact of these changes to the community.
Imgur explains that it is making the change to "make policies more clear and more consistent across Imgur". One issue that users of the site ran into regularly was that they received content violations for "the content that they seen posted elsewhere off-site", another that explicit and illegal content was always a risk for Imgur's business.
Flagged content will be removed automatically, and this will lead to direct links no longer working and that it won't be visible anymore in posts. Flagged content that is part of a post with other content that is not flagged, will only have the flagged content removed.
Closing Words
Veteran Internet users may be reminded of Tumblr, a site that disallowed explicit content in 2018 and has seen a drop in traffic ever since. Imgur's main motivation appears business-related, as advertisers often avoid platforms that allow explicit content.
So that photo of ‘David By Michelangelo’ has to go but, all those .nfo’s for pirated content can stay.
@Tachy, near the same as I thought! :]
I’m shocked.
Shocked to hear that there’s still enough market-style-communists, market socialists, and market-oriented left-libertarians uploading 48 megapixel HEIC/HEIF formatted cat pictures off their $1100 iphones for that site to still be alive.
+1, interesting thoughts, imho.
This is good.
I wonder if they are going to deal with Lolicon pro-pedo material as well, which is an even worst threat for most kids, because now it is being included in what people would call ‘normal’ animes and mangas. More and more you find that material of disgusting sexualization of children, and of course, there are people who get angry and justify that material by saying “they are not real” or “they are 25 years in the anime” yet, they look like 12 years olds.
There are even forums that talk about lolicon as a way to cope for the pedos, as a “legal way to cope with it”, because it is a sick material that should be treated as such and removed because it is only making things worst.
Explicit is explicit and we all know about it, so, what about non-explicit pro-pedo material?
Humans are weird creatures for sure and they are trying to normalize all their perversions one way or the other, and they also include those lolicon material because there is a sick audience to target that material.
@Anti-Anti, I am certainly concerned that your comment has not been censored at all.
Why do you know so much about that topic? Should we worry about you?
Is the word “woke” forbidden here? The left wing of Soros flies again!
I thought you were against the fact of evoking politics on technological sites.
@Tom, I have seen now that my comment has finally fortunately approved. It was about some ideas about the too excessive control of everything with some strange morality (more or less the same opinion that @Tachy’s one, here at the end of these comments). The extreme deviated control is affecting in how those digital media imposes a harsh criterion, and Imgurs is becoming a nice example of it. Bad times for near almost “non consensual thinking”.
@Tom Hawack
FWIW I think there is more than one John G. Atleast it looka that way with contradictory comments. The fact that I’ve paid attention to this shows I need to reduce time spent on this website lol.
@Yash, I don’t know if registered nicknames are allowed here, however it’s probably that someone would use the nicknames of some people in order to disturb. I didn’t noticed it, but anyway I don’t read all comments and due the large number of articles it’s very difficult for me to follow the threads opened here. Thanks for the advice!
Just use comment feed url to read comments. It doesn’t load every comment but it is useful. That way you can still feel some human presence there, unlike here where most articles look auto-generated by AI.
@Yash, thanks for the recommendation about to use comment feed url to read comments!
Probably they will erase the sculptures from ancient greek and roman cultures and of course the David of Michelangelo. All too modern and probably not good for nothing but woke media.
@Johh G. Nice to see you again :) Woke is a new religion, so yes, probably their theologians will forbid it. That tiny little thing, Love your neighbor as yourself, oh well.
@Sebas, it’s good to see you again too! I am glad to read your comments, especially in these days where silence is the best friend to avoid censorship, criticism and ostracism due to not thinking as fashion dictates. Modern digital warfare is inside of our own brains, they all want to maintain us in silence while swallowing everything that they want for money and power.
Imgur has passed away. RIP! Since being sold off, they have been terrible. Last night, I downloaded my entire account, and plan on reuploading all my photos to another host.
Imgur, once a good image host until it got overrun by woke ex Tumblr users. Now all you see is politics and more politics against a certain orange man.
What an absolute mental disease while ruining everyone for everyone else.
*everything
apropos advertisers avoiding sites with explicit content … ah yea, thats why so many advertisers avoided twitter in the pre-manchilds era .. oh wait..
considerd that always as totally bloated bs imagehoster. at least for just hosting an image.
there are way better alternatives.
visit imgur and open umatrix -> wall of shit
visit eg. https://postimages.org/ and compare.
I’ve been redirecting all Imgur links with Firefox’s REDIRECTOR* extension to rimgo [https://codeberg.org/video-prize-ranch/rimgo] ever since I discovered what a mess Imgur was. The redirection won’t avoid Imgur’s content (which doesn’t bother me as a senior) but at least the site’s heavy code, and “heavy” is putting it mild.
* REDIRECTOR code : [https://codeberg.org/video-prize-ranch/rimgo#user-content-redirector].
personally I use the [https://rimgo.pussthecat.org] Rimgo instance, flawless, fast, clean.
Imgur can go on with its spring cleaning but they should clean their own code as well.
This service has largely gone downhill over the years anyway.
This does have ramifications for the rest of the internet though. I’m still witnessing the upheaval of the entire Photobucket disaster and that happened many years ago now.
It sucks when stuff like this happens.
Seems like this is a really bad year for Reddit as a whole.
I am glad this will happen, not because I am a bigot who hates pr0n, but because it teaches people about online services being untrustworthy with their data. You all know it already and I am preaching the choir: “The cloud is just someone else’s computer.”
I will lose a fair share of images myself that are non-pr0nographic but uploaded there without an account and will be purged under the disguise of “stale content”.