More of the internet could disappear as load-bearing image host Imgur announces deletion of old content and NSFW images
Image host Imgur announced a change to its terms of service(opens in new tab) on April 19 that will ban NSFW content, as well commence the deleting of an unspecified number of older images «not tied to a user account.» The announced changes are set to take effect on May 15. Imgur did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Imgur was founded in 2009 as a way of hosting and sharing images intended for other social networks—for a long time, it was the default way to attach images to Reddit posts, for example, but also saw extensive use on other sites and forums. Though the site declined in relevance following Reddit's rollout of its own, internal image hosting service(opens in new tab), Imgur is still widely used. The company itself boasts of 300 million unique visitors and «billions» of pageviews a month, while a Fast Company(opens in new tab) story in 2013 stated that the site already had a library of over 650 million images just four years after its founding.
Imgur's explanation of its upcoming terms of service update primarily focuses on the banning of NSFW images, «Most notably, this would include explicit/pornographic content,» the post reads. In 2019, Imgur already effectively siloed off NSFW content(opens in new tab) related to pornographic Reddit communities—you could still upload and navigate to such posts via a direct link, but no longer access them through Imgur's own gallery navigation. At the time, Imgur argued that «Over the years, these pages have put Imgur’s user growth, mission, and business at risk.»
Regarding the upcoming change, Imgur says that the distinction between «Community Rules,» which applied to Imgur as a social network in itself where you could not access NSFW content,
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