Imgur now removed from UK

[TimC340]

For those of us that used Imgur to host images - as I did for almost everything I posted in MAIW - the owners have now closed down UK access to the site as they don't agree with the implementation of the Online Safety Act. Ignoring the political factors, this does mean that to access Imgur from UK it's now necessary to use a VPN.

Images hosted on Imgur still exist, but access from a UK device will show an Error 400 (Cannot serve this region).

[John Young]

Oh dear - that's killed all my images posted here over many years. First the Microsoft Windows 11 wrecking ball and now this.

John

[shaggy22]

It's done all mine as well now, that's annoying.

However, as a replacement I'm using postimage now, I tested it yesterday & it seemed to work just fine

[TimC340]

Oh dear - that's killed all my images posted here over many years. First the Microsoft Windows 11 wrecking ball and now this.

John

It's more straws, isn't it? I hope that Imgur will resolve its differences with the UK Government, but I don't anticipate that happening quickly. I'm not going to re-upload several hundred images to another host - which may end up doing something similar. Shades of Photobucket from years ago.

[John Young]

Absolutely Tim, re-uploading all the past imagery after the Photobucket debacle was a nightmare and I won't be repeating it again after Imgur. In addition to uploading all the images to a new site, all the links in the MAIW posts have to be re-set to the new location. I wouldn't trust any site now to store my images safely into the future, particularly the free ones. I can't move forward because Microsoft have killed the FSX Gmax Gamepack with Windows 11 and I can't look backwards easily here at my previous work either. More importantly, neither can MAIW members, particularly new ones. It's the end of the road for me now unfortunately.

John

[TheFoufure]

Absolutely Tim, re-uploading all the past imagery after the Photobucket debacle was a nightmare and I won't be repeating it again after Imgur. In addition to uploading all the images to a new site, all the links in the MAIW posts have to be re-set to the new location. I wouldn't trust any site now to store my images safely into the future, particularly the free ones. I can't move forward because Microsoft have killed the FSX Gmax Gamepack with Windows 11 and I can't look backwards easily here at my previous work either. More importantly, neither can MAIW members, particularly new ones. It's the end of the road for me now unfortunately.

John

I completely understand the frustration of no longer being able to work the way you want, John. Fingers crossed that an update will be made for current and future versions of Windows.

It's very sad to hear you announce that this is the end for you. Your creations have delighted so many of us. They are true gems.

Once again, a BIG THANK YOU to you, John.

[TimC340]

I've now discovered that I can't even log in to delete the account, so I have lost all control over my Imgur account unless I can find a free trial of a VPN for long enough to get in - I have raised a ticket with Imgur, but their response was 'log in to cancel your account'!!

As for how to deal with past images for internet use, I really don't see any way round it, sadly. I agree, John, there's no way back now. I don't see any likelihood of MAIW being able to host images locally (I hate to think what the server costs would be!). For future contributions, I imagine it might be possible to host images on your own account (MS OneDrive, Apple iDrive, etc) which are unlikely to be disabled in future, but I'm not sure it's easy to have a forum-style link that simply displays the image to a reader rather than having them download it.

It would seem that the open Internet is disappearing piece by piece and content is going behind more and more gates. Despite the obvious shortcomings of open access, I think that's very sad.

[Firebird]

I have raised a ticket with Imgur, but their response was 'log in to cancel your account'!!

Wow! That is so helpful.

[TimC340]

I've discovered that the Opera browser (that I used to use years ago!) includes a free VPN. It works in that I can access Imgur that way - so I can delete my account - but it's not a viable way of seeing MAIW with Imgur-hosted images, as MAIW rejects the connection with the error ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED. I assume this is a security measure from the MAIW host.