Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Imgur is Covertly Redirecting Image Links on Facebook and Twitter

minimaxir.com

121 pointsminimaxir70 comments

@judk's comment should be higher... it is the unfortunate cycle of ad-supported startups.

imgur grew out of the garden that is reddit; it was suppose to replace all those other crappy hosting services. It's been known for a while that directly navigating to a i.com/direct-link.jpg link costs imgur because they get no ad impressions from those loads.

While I think this is the eventual trend of every imgur page load, they are saving reddit for the last as that is the last community they can afford to piss off.

I feel for them though... it is really hard to stomach how expensive bandwidth and storage can get for a "free" media startup like this -- I am guessing they are slowly shifting scope and "growing" though as they hire more people, like every other startup in history... at some point they grow out of that sweet spot they supported (easy/fast image hosting) and into a realm no one really wanted or needed them (but makes them money).

Oh well. Every time a company does this, it leaves the door open for another company to come up behind them and re-solve that problem in another interesting way. It is the way of growth and change.

Semi-OT, but: Considering how much reddit seems to depend on imgur and image hosting in general, how long will it be until reddit handles the image hosting themselves?

Sure it would add a ton of new costs and headaches (takedowns, etc), but don't you have to have a plan for this if you're Yishan? Imgur hasn't exactly been subtle about adding reddit-like features (comments, comment ranking, categories, etc)..

Why would Reddit spend money they don't have to?

New free image hosting services pop up every few months to try to take imgur down as the king of Reddit. So far, they've been unable to maintain any leads gained, but if imgur screws with Reddit they will be replaced in a heartbeat.

> Why would Reddit spend money they don't have to?

To keep traffic "on premises", ie thwart competition. Just look at imgur: now it's sort of a micro reddit, with its own commenting system, categories, and so on.

Yep, I find myself clicking an imgur link on reddit then hanging out there for a while. It's a tenuous relationship they have.

If the start location and end location for a user are reddit, why go through the trouble to capture some portion of the middle traffic as well? That's the beauty of an aggregator, you prosper through other people's content by providing additional value, not by competing with it. Also, I don't think there's an expectation from reddit users to be able to store images on reddit so you wouldn't be adding much perceived value in the first place.

The problem I see is reddit isn't an aggregator in the strict sense. Look at the front page, it's riddled with imgur links. How many of them (advice animals, original content, etc) were posted there just for reddit? I'll just say unscientifically, a lot. (After all, that's why imgur was born.)

So you're a site with a major feature that (a) drives publishers to another site, and (b) drives viewers to the same site, even though (c) the content was created for your site. And now (d) that site is adding some of your core features. I guess I can't see how that isn't a blindingly obvious concern if you're running reddit.

What I don't understand is what you gain by adding the ability to store images? Is the point to reduce the need to use imgur? Yes, imgur is adding the ability to add comments to images, but their functionality is a far cry from that of reddit. Let's assume they add for w/e crazy reason the ability to have nested comments and groups with admins and other similar things. Only at that point are they really encroaching on reddit's ground, except, they've just manage to make a rather limited imitation as it's only for images. And even then, how does it hurt reddit? Reddit is an aggregator of largely varied content. Imgur simply isn't and can't be.

imgur becoming a credible threat to reddit's eyeballs (and ad dollars) does not require them to have feature parity. See: Facebook vs Instagram.

By not hosting the images reddit gets double special safe harbor status wrt copyright and dmca complaints.

Reddit gets the traffic, imgur pays for the bandwidth and compliance.

I've actually wondered this for years - why reddit let imgur take that lead and run with it, but to some of the other replies I guess it does come down to cost. Reddit doesn't have a big budget and until last year I think it was just 3 or 4 of them (now I still think it is < 10) -- the moment they get a huge influx of money though, the moment they take over media hosting, cripple third party mobile apps and start punching babies - it seems to be the way of the startup world.

For what little (nothing?) it is worth, it upsets me that this pattern is repeated over and over and over... for once I'd like to see a startup grow organically over time, never forgetting their roots, not being worth $4 billion after a year of being in business and just acting like a good, solid, mature company that grows into something valuable over a decade.

These overnight-billion-dollar dice rolls are getting exhausting and while really addictive and interesting, they just suck the air out of the room.

They list more than 30 people:

http://www.reddit.com/about/team/

Not sure if those are all full time roles though.

Craigslist?

I thought of that, and to some degree, yes.

But they are always shooting down anyone who dares to use their data and present it in a more useful manner.

In particular they're totally screwing up some areas and ignoring complaints.

The Denver/Boulder area of Colorado has multiple overlapping sites that cover an area smaller than that of the Bay Area, which has one all-encompassing site. The result is that it's really hard to figure out where to look for listings -- or where to post listings.

What we need is combined area site like the Bay Area has, that lets you restrict to certain sub-regions for some searches (apartments, say) and broader regions for others (antiques?).

They're redirecting first-timers from sites like Facebook and Twiter who have many users who don't know an Imgur link from a Facebook CDN link. Reddit users all know what Imgur is already. There are many people on Facebook and Twitter who would likely browse through the types of stuff Imgur hosts on their homepage, not so much an issue for Reddit users. Imgur basically is just a more visual reddit with less reading...

I just can't get upset about this. Perhaps as the article suggests this is the canary in the coal mine that portends the imminent downfall of imgur as a non spammy image host. Perhaps. But I don't think so.

First of all, imgur needs to make money somehow. So far they've exercised extreme restraint and made no short term or short sightef optimizations that I'm aware of.

Second, what legitimate reasons could they have for this behavior?

* get people to re-share the images, as the destination page has share buttons

* ensure search engines follwing the links pick up the canonical page instead of the raw image page.

* get better analytics or tracking data by being able to run JavaScript. -- they are a free service that needs this data to sell ads, if you don't like being tracked, invest the minimal effort to install an anonymizer.

* it could be a workaround from something that fb/twitter is doing that inadvertently grabs the raw link when users intend to share the canonical page.

I'm sure there are a dozen other reasons, and right now we don't have enough information to know why they are doing this.

Given their history of restraint, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I tried linking to a photo I'm hosting in a Pro account: https://twitter.com/mahemoff/status/431487389866139648

Even for a Pro account, the image redirects from Twitter. It doesn't redirect me, but it redirects everyone else (I tested from Incognito mode). Which seems not quite what I thought I was paying for.

Also as a paid user, if I click on anyone else's images, they still redirect like they would for a guest/free user.

EDIT:

Thanks to Haywain for spotting it changes on 2nd load. Can be replicated:

* Open fresh incognito window

* Visit Twitter link and click on imgur

* It redirects

* Go back to Twitter window and click on imgur link

* No redirect - it links straight to the image

I verified this with a random imgur link too, so it seems there's no difference between Pro and free.

Doesn't happen for me. Mac OS X, Firefox 27. Or chrome.

You may be interested: The first time I clicked the link, it redirected. All subsequent clicks went directly to the image only.

(OSX, Firefox Nightly)

Same thing happened for me (Windows, FireFox 26).

Because the resource has been cached, and so a request was not even made. Try clearing your cache and see what happens.

I am not seeing a re-direct at all ...

The first time that I clicked it, I was redirected. The second time I wasn't.

I'm getting no redirect.

Firefox Beta with adblock

Not logged in to imgur

In my testing, NoScript blocks the redirect.

What did you think you were paying for? I mean, it mentions the perks here:

https://imgur.com/register/upgrade

What else do you think you get with Imgur pro that isn't listed?

I honestly don't see an issue. if you're sharing links to images on imgur, you're denying them ad revenue and just leaching bandwidth. I'm all for adblockers, but complaining you can't direct link images is kinda...

One of the problems is the comments on imgur. If you thought youtube was bad. Now imagine posting a picture of a sunset or a cute dog or whatever, your mom or 8 year old nephew or whoever clicks it and it's full of "look at the fucking sun!" or similar.

You can only comment on images that are explicitly uploaded to the gallery. This is an extra step after uploading an image. There are no commentable images on imgur that are not intended to be (reposting unsubmitted content aside).

Imgur was founded as a reddit-friendly image host. "The new site for reddit images, written by a redditor. None of the slow ad-laden crap of imageshack!"

Now, it is slow ad-laden crap, to the point that I just hit Back button after hitting a link and seeing the page frame load before the image.

It has been fascinating to watch the common startup pattern of "I am one of us, making our life awesome" messaging covering a standard 2-year bait-and-switch free product flip.

Imgur will be dumped as fast as all the image hosting sites it replaced on reddit.

>reddit-friendly

Exactly. Not Facebook-friendly. Not Twitter-friendly. Not Google-Plus-friendly Those can host images themselves.

Back in 2012 Sarah basically said try DnD when the simple choose a file to upload /?noFlash page went away. The flash uploader didn't work on FreeBSD any more and DnD on FF would upload the file and then return an error. She nor anyone else never replied again after I tried to follow-up with that. Imgur had changed.

But isn't it incredibly naive to think you can get something for nothing? I don't really see this as a bait and switch, a site like that needs ads so that they can keep it free for users. Imgur tried a donation based model early on but it just didn't work (costs exceeded donations because donations don't scale linearly with bandwidth costs). I'm not really satisfied with the status quo of giant data silos profiting off of user submitted content but the extreme opposite (always directly linking to images) isn't sustainable either.

I'm working on an ad-based image site [1] that I hope will be perceived as a little friendlier to users but your disdain for ads is not uncommon. Do you have an alternative to ads for making high traffic image hosting sustainable?

[1]: https://surfer.io/

imgur was basically founded on the principle that it will allow hotlinking.

The creator of imgur (MrGrim on Reddit) has said on multiple occasions that hotlinking is acceptable way to use imgur:

Four years ago - "I created imgur because the other image hosting sites forced you to see their ad-ridden pages (TinyPIC). I would never do the same to you. If you want to direct link to the image, then by all means do so."[1]

Three years ago - "People linking to the page rather than the image is what keeps imgur going. If everyone linked to the direct image then imgur would have no source of revenue. However, I want people to use the service however they want, and by no means would I ever force anyone to do it one certain way. So, I like it when people link to the page because that's how imgur makes money, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to. I'm just happy that you like the service."[2]

One year ago - "No, I don't think [restricting hotlinking] will ever happen. At least not that I can foresee."[3]

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9tlwi/im_the_imgur_guy...

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eicjf/im_the_imgur_guy...

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/y81ju/i_created_imgur_...

It was already stated, but Imgur was created by a redditor, for reddit. Facebook already is an image host, twitter is too.

I get free access to a usenet server for being inside my ISPs network. Others have to pay to use the same server if their outside the network. It's the same deal.

imgur was created by someone for reddit and digg on the same day.

And '640K is more memory than anyone will ever need.' Business models change and in reality there are no free lunches. Just because they say something in the past doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't change.

IMHO, "hotlinking" isn't the same as directing people from social media directly to an image url. You can still put <img src="http://imgur.com/..."> on your web page and it will still work. The context of doing that is different from pointing someone directly to an image with the intent of showing it to them.

And how will that continue to work when if it goes beyond Twitter, G+, and FB? Most browsers send a referrer in HTTP GET for the img tag. It works now for those because google and facebook grok the html, pull out the image, and cache it.

In an <img> context, your browser should send an appropriate Accept header[1]; this can be switched upon in the backend to select the appropriate representation (e.g., to serve an image rather than HTML). So hotlinked images should continue to work, while normal links will redirect to the HTML wrapper.

[1] Though, rather unfortunately, most browsers do not seem to send reasonable Accept headers. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTTP/Content_negoti..., "Default Values" and "Values for an image".

Uh, well if it went beyond direct links from social media then it probably would break hotlinking. Hasn't done that though -- not yet, anyway.

In your estimation, when did the definition of hotlinking change to what you portray?

I don't think anyone would complain if it hadn't been advertising those links as officially supported direct links for years before sneakily changing them to deliver the ad page instead.

This pattern is inevitable. How is Imgur going to survive if it just serves up naked image links to all comers?

The best way around this situation is to develop ways for web users to have their own hosting space for the images they wish to share. So long as we depend on other companies to do it for us for free, this is the pattern we'll keep seeing.

I think they are doing that. Stackexchange has their own imgur subdomain, for example. Here's a blog post about it - I've lost the exact url to the subdomain.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/new-image-upload-suppo...

Imgur Gold wouldn't hurt them either.

I think they do this because the "i" subdomain is meant for embedding (<img> tag), not linking (<a> tag).

Facebook, Twitter, etc. don't embed the image (incorrect behavior), but Reddit does (correct behavior).

Other than text self-posts, Reddit submission titles are all links to external URLs. There's no special case for imgur. They're links, not embeds.

Unless you use RES (Reddit Enhancement Suite)

This could easily be because the redirected domain allows them to provide og:image meta data specifically tailored for the sites.

I thought that at first too, but for some reason, the Open Graph and Twitter cards don't render on their respective services. (although the meta information is present, which makes it weird. I believe Facebook/Twitter can still get meta info through redirects.)

I noticed when I uploaded an image a few days ago, the "direct link to image" field was missing entirely. I figured it was meant to curb direct hotlinking.

> Error Code 302

It's a status code. 3XX is redirection.

4XX is client error and 5XX is server error.

Look at you all the drama queens.

Hotlinking makes sense if you intend embedding inline an image to your site/forum/blog. Imgur still offers you this feature.

There is no (obvious) reason doing that when you are sharing a link to the image. Facebook/twitter dont allow you embedding images from external servers, imgur knows you are just linking to it, and redirects you to the image's page, as a well behavioured netizen should have done by themselves.

An even worse issue for imgur recently (IMO) is the fact that the site is dog slow unless you hit the img. subdomain.

I don't know if they are throttling it themselves or it has something to do with the cloud traffic reprioritization people have been talking about lately, but I've basically been avoiding clicking any imgur links on reddit because I know they are going to load so slow that I'll just close the tab before the image loads.

There's a huge contradiction in this article. It gets close to saying that this behavior is unethical, then makes a point of saying that it won't say that it is. Of course it is. When a website offers me a direct link, I expect a direct link. If they can't make money offering direct links, they should stop offering them or find a new business model!

Direct links were also recently removed from the right sidebar after uploading an image. The ".png" link used to be either the first or second link in this list: http://i.imgur.com/CrKe6pLl.png

Now it's missing from the convenience links, and the top option is to link to the imgur page.

Facebook and twitter do their own image hosting. I think the slippery slope people are wrong about the slippery slope. Maybe I'll eat crow someday but until then if you want to share images on facebook upload them to facebook like facebook wants you to do anyway.

Web dev here; just wanted to say that those are status codes in the header, not error codes.

Any reason Reddit isn't exploring peer-to-peer image caching? Given how much time folks stay on Reddit and the disproportionate amount of traffic going to front page posts, when an image gets to the top, there should be tons of user connections open to allow for peer-based caching.

I tried this out using the Twitter search link provided in the article and was not redirected a single time when clicking Imgur links in the search results. Either Imgur is only redirecting some folks or this was just some temporary thing. I'm also not logged in to Imgur currently.

Another case of user-hostile behavior enabled by browsers betraying what site the user is on to third-party services. Down with referer headers~

Everybody seems to be ignoring the fact that there is a huge community ON imgur alongside people using imgur with platforms like Facebook or Reddit.

That's interesting.

I do not think it is particularly honest either, but they are much nicer about it than places like funny junk when it comes to direct links.

Try linking to "img.imgur.com" instead.

Another way of checking to see what's really going is to use something like Live HTTP Headers in Chrome or Firefox.

Does Cloudfront support anything like this?

Not sure why today is the first day I'm hearing about imgur. Are they somehow superior to dropbox for image linking? Do they have a desktop syncing application with quick access to hotlinking url's from a context menu?

What is imgur's selling point?

Imgur and Dropbox are for two totally different purposes. Typically you would use imgur when you quickly want to share an image (no need for an account), post images on reddit or on a forum (no limit on bandwidth and direct linking).

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