During the days when cloud hosting wasn't yet a thing, and social media platforms weren't as popular as they are, Imgur was there.
What began in 2009 as a side project by its founder, Alan Schaaf, Imgur was created as a response to the usability problems and lack of file retention encountered in similar services. When online forums were popular, and during the early days of Reddit, Imgur was the solution for them.
As a result, Imgur was experiencing thousands upon thousands of hits per day, and in the first months being founded, it was seeing more than a million page views.
The things that made Imgur a popular destination for image hosting, is that it allows people to upload any kind of images, and NSFW is welcome. It also allows anyone to upload images to its website without having to sign up.
These made Imgur so popular, but this time, it had enough of that.
Imgur said in a dedicated help page, that it is now purging porn, and also all content that isn't tied to anyone's account.
It all began back in 2021, when Imgur was acquired by MediaLab AI, Inc., a holding company of internet brands, and shortly after that, Alan Schaaf left the company.
On April 19, 2023, Imgur changed its terms of service, and said that it plans to delete "old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" and "nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content".
The updated terms of service that should go into effect on May 15th, is changing Imgur into something it's never known to be.
In the days where gigabytes of cloud storage could be obtained freely from many providers, Image hosting services are getting hit pretty badly.
Photobucket, for example, 'blackmailed' its own users by stop allowing hotlinking, and that all images users have uploaded were no longer showing up on third-party web pages.
Many users accused Photobucket of extortion, and users have taken the matter to both Facebook and Twitter, as well as numerous online forums to unleash their fury.
And Imgur is just another image hosting service that simply cannot keep up.
Imgur has been in business for years, playing its role as the place where users can easily upload files.
During that long years, Imgur has cemented itself amongst the most popular places for users to upload images, and because of that, Imgur has been part of the early days of the internet, helping power many websites and their content.
With the revised policy, Imgur has the potential to erase that many years of internet history.
Because people have been sharing raunchy and nudity since online pornography wasn't a thing yet, purging NSFW images and images that are uploaded anonymously means that plenty of images posted on many websites could disappear overnight.
What's more, Imgur has long been the go-to service for people uploading explicit content meant for sharing on NSFW subreddits, simply because Reddit itself prohibits direct uploads of explicit images.
So of course, the policy change has drawn significant criticism.
It's worth noting that back in 2019, Imgur has stopped displaying NSFW Imgur subsections associated with subreddits. However, the website didn't delete any of those images, and still allowed users to upload pornographic content, as long as they choose the "hidden" privacy status.
This caused some confusion among users, and also frustration about what is and isn't allowed on the hosting service.
This time however, is when Imgur is making it straight.
By banning explicit images altogether, Imgur said it could address the risks they pose to its business and protect the company's future.
To purge what it has, which is too many to count, Imgur said that it's utilizing both human moderators and automated system to find content to be deleted under the revised rule.
It's also worth noting that "artistic nudity" is still allowed under the new rules.