Images not showing

[justforfun 7,813]

Since a week ago or so, when browsing the site, I've been seeing this message in place of many images:

This happens for examples with all the images posted by @Haljackey, @kschmidt, and @Dreadnought. Does anyone know if the bug is caused by specific image hosting services, or by a new firewall or something? Thanks.

[Haljackey 17,312]

Yes it's caused by a specific hosting site- Imgur. It's not a bug however, they're taking a stand against the UK's internet policies so if you are from the UK / affected areas, Imgur will block it on their side.

There are tons of stories on the net about it. One example:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo

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There's a thread for it:

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[justforfun 7,813]

Thank you, @Haljackey, that explains it. This shows you how out of the loop I am, haha. Oh well, at least we know who to blame! Hopefully I'll be able to see your pics again some time soon. 

[Haljackey 17,312]

3 hours ago, justforfun said:

Thank you, @Haljackey, that explains it. This shows you how out of the loop I am, haha. Oh well, at least we know who to blame! Hopefully I'll be able to see your pics again some time soon. 

You can always use a VPN or something similar to bypass the block if you wanted. I could also try another site- but I have found imgur to be a stable, reliable image hosting site- especially compared to other free alternatives.

[catty-cb 4,400]

I use simtropolis to host all my simtrop pictures, and should you start running out of space all you have to do is have a word with @Cyclone Boom to get your size limit increased

[rsc204 21,813]

Yeah just another great example of how we can’t rely on third party services to preserve images, I.e. the site’s history, ad-infinitum.

This is why ST is a better choice to host your images, but that requires us as users to take a bit of effort to optimise our pictures so they only take up as much space as absolutely required. It helps too that in this day and age, hosting costs aren’t really aligned with the overall storage needs.

Don’t mistake Imgur for heroes here either. Bottom line it would cost them money to comply and they just decided the UK wasn’t a big enough market to bother. Big tech never takes a stand on anything, they only do what makes them the most money.