Image host Imgur announced on April 19 that it will change its terms of service (opens in new tab) to ban NSFW content and begin removing unspecified old images "not tied to a user account." The announced changes will go into effect on May 15; Imgur did not respond to a request for comment before the announcement.

Imgur was founded in 2009 as a way to host and share images for other social networks and has long been the default way to attach images to posts on Reddit, for example, but was also widely used on other sites and forums Reddit site's relevance declined after it rolled out its own internal image hosting service (opens in new tab), Imgur is still widely used; according to a 2013 Fast Company (opens in new tab) article, just four years after its founding, it already has a library of over 650 million images in its library.

Imgur's description of its upcoming Terms of Use update focuses primarily on the banning of NSFW images, posting that "most notably, this includes explicit/pornographic content."

In 2019, Imgur has already banned pornographic Reddit community-related NSFW content (opens in new tab) was effectively blocked - such posts could be uploaded and navigated to via direct links, but could no longer be accessed through Imgur's own gallery navigation. At the time, Imgur claimed that "over the years, these pages have jeopardized Imgur's user growth, mission, and business."

With regard to the upcoming changes, Imgur has clarified that the "community rules" that apply to Imgur itself as a social network with no access to NSFW content and the "terms of use" that cover all content posted on the site, including marooned NSFW posts, are The distinction "has caused some confusion among Imgurians, and we hope this change will make the policy clearer and more consistent across Imgur." That said, the company still acknowledges liability and monetization issues: "Explicit and illegal content has historically posed a risk to Imgur's community and its business. By banning explicit content, Imgur can address these risks and protect the future of the Imgur community.

Imgur's announcement rhymes with similar moderation shifts in other social networks, particularly Tumblr and OnlyFans. Advertisers and credit card payment companies are notoriously timid when it comes to pornographic content, and their desire to avoid hosting or even monetizing illegal content is certainly a legitimate concern. However, Tumblr's outright ban on pornography was widely reported (opens in new tab). The site's value and user base plummeted, in part because of the removal of pornography itself, but also because of the inaccurate, opaque, and often automated moderation that accompanied it, which negatively impacted the overall user experience. OnlyFans, a user-driven, primarily pornographic website, attempted to ban pornography. This change did not last long (opens in new tab).

On Imgur's part, "Artistic nudity will continue to be allowed, as it was allowed under the previous rules." However, due to early adjustments to automatic detection, content previously allowed under the "artistic exception" may not apply here; Imgur seems to acknowledge the inherent awkwardness of this type of moderation, but mitigates the impact on user accounts and appeals leaving an open channel for: "With respect to these automatic flags, we will not issue warnings, account suspensions, or bans, but they may affect the content that is allowed to be posted or uploaded. "

While there is ample concern and uncertainty about this change, one sentence in the announcement raises an entirely different issue: "We will focus on removing old, unused, inactive content from the platform that is not tied to a user account." Essentially, this seems to jeopardize countless numbers of images hosted on secondary sites and forums. It is not clear how extensive or rigorous the cleanup will be.

While deleting completely forgotten, never-before-seen images to save storage space and money does not sound so unreasonable, at least when judging Imgur as a business, it is possible that this new policy could be used to remove useful or valuable content with The possibility remains that the criteria will be strict enough to remove it. One can imagine the dark path of broken links, broken images, old forum threads, and useful Reddit how-tos becoming incomprehensible. Previously, ImageShack was criticized for not only removing old images to free up space, but also for linking ads where they were previously embedded (opens in new tab).

The post-2007 Internet is ephemeral, and that extends to games as well-you can still call up the server browser for GoldSrc mods like "The Specialist," but the Xbox 360 generation of match-made multiplayer shooters and I swear to God, if you want access to secondary live-service games released within the past few years, you're in luck (opens in new tab).

This is new evidence of the claim that "the Internet is like the Library of Alexandria burning up every day," just weeks after the devastating blow to the preservation and distribution of free information, although the Internet Archive is appealing the ruling, A U.S. federal judge ruled in favor of the publishers regarding the site's e-book lending (opens in new tab). Gamers may want to consider investing in a home server to keep their physical media safe and secure.

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