I would like to know deeper how much shady are shady alternatives
There are some other free alternatives, but they aren't very reliable, and it's generally been a bit frustrating because the elephant in the room is that image hosting doesn't make money unless the user pays. So, I figured I might as well address it head-on.
The Craigslist model comes to mind. Looks the same, works the same, and cheap to run compared to their traffic volumes.
https://www.developerfusion.com/media/76730/how-craigslist-w...
I don't know if you can blame them (then again, that hasn't stopped my IMGZ character from doing it), nobody's going to pay to upload memes and they have to make money somehow, and social was one alternative. There aren't many ways to monetize serving an image...
They hide the upload from the mobile views but if you go directly to https://imgur.com/upload you can upload from there even on mobile.
I agree that Imgur has become quite terrible though, and I think it’s a consequence of offering the service for free as they do. They have a lot of users and serve a lot of traffic, and they need to cover their bills and make a living somehow.
I hope to see your paid service thrive and be able to offer a good service and user experience to those of us who are willing to pay. I think your service has a good chance of being able to succeed.
<side rant>Personally I can't stand mobile versions of pages, anyway. I use "view desktop version" for everything, and pan and zoom as needed</side rant>