The above image is all us folks in the UK see when you do, and if we try to use a VPN + incognito, we get this:
403 means forbidden, so the message is disingenuous.
They must have put some effort into block lists for VPN servers. Even if it works for some of us, it’s not worth it.
For more information on this, see this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo
Connected to my VPN in Amsterdam, I get this message on Firefox but not Edge. And I could swear Edge was erroring not long ago. Don’t know long that’s been going on, I noticed a few months back.
so what you say is, we have a means to post things in such a way the british can’t see them… 🧐 /j
wait it doesn’t work for me either
"both the ICO and Ofcom - the media regulator enforcing the Online Safety Act - said Imgur suspending access for UK users had been its own “commercial decision”
They’re just trying to avoid getting fined by the UK.
People in the UK should vote for non-insane representatives, that would be more helpful
Still waiting on that option 😟
Actually… If every voted libdem that might work
Ah yes, more power to the rich, that ought to fix it
You got Better option?
I love the Greens and their current direction, but they’re at the point where they’re saying unworkable things to get left wing support, knowing they’ll never have to follow through because they won’t win enough power.
I’m not familiar with UK parties to be honest, outside of Labour, the two make-rich-people-richer parties and the insanity party I don’t even know which parties there are. If I were British I’d vote for the leftmost and most environmentally friendly party I could find. If that is the Greens then that sounds good to me
Well, me too.
Sadly they’re a long long way from any real power.
That’s probably keeping many likeminded people from voting for them. A result of the deeply unfair FPTP voting system. In my country we long ago had a similar system, it resulted in a single party state, until it was reformed to a proportional system.
That would definitely increase both voting and representation for the Greens, yes.
Tactical voting is a big thing in the UK to mitigate some of the imbalance of the FPTP system, along with informal electoral pacts between parties.
As a brazilian, I’ve been having all sorts of issues with media being geolocked on Lemmy. I feel like the platform is becoming increasingly hostile to me.
should be: 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons
It’s not due to legal reasons though. They just decided to exit UK, because they’re trying to avoid paying fines for previous infringements.
It’s not due to legal reasons though. They just decided to exit UK, because they’re trying to avoid paying fines for previous infringements.
What previous infringements?
“The ICO launched its investigation into Imgur in March - saying it would probe whether the companies were complying with both the UK’s data protection laws, and the children’s code.”.
Just do some research dude
it would probe whether the companies were complying with both the UK’s data protection laws, and the children’s code
So it was for legal reasons. Wow, such surprise.
Just do some research dude
Could you not tell that I wasn’t seriously questioning what the infringements were, and was poking fun at your comment that it wasn’t for legal reasons?
Nobody forced them to quit the UK, there are no laws saying they can’t operate in the UK. So what legal reasons?
- Imgur leaves the UK because they’re allegedly uncompliant with data protection laws
- “Legal: Of, relating to, or concerned with law” - wordnik.com
Good job Imgur, kick the brits off your site until they stop being wankers.
Imgur has been shitty for years at this point. They kept fucking with the UI when all I wanted to do was upload images and share the link. They should have stayed in their lane, not try to reinvent their platform as social media. Then their wholesale blocking of VPN traffic? Tired of that nonsense. I use imgbb now.
And it’s not just known IPs from commercial providers. I rolled my own OpenVPN server on a Digital Ocean droplet. BLOCKED.
They kicked me to the new layout which I abhor, rather not use the site at all. Took me 10-minutes to find the non-obvious place they hid the option to roll it back.
I will say I don’t like the direction imgur went, but to play devil’s advocate, I don’t think there was any way around it.
The problem is that being an image host used by millions of users is incredibly expensive, and between needing to pay for the infrastructure, content moderators, and (in this case) regulatory compliance, it all adds up.
The only income model they have is ads, which is why they needed to re-tool the UI to hinder users’ ability to direct share images, and converting it to a more social media type of format keeps users on the site so they can cycle in more ads for more revenue.
An ideal internet would not need to rely on ad money to work, but I’m struggling to think of what else could be done at the scale imgur operates, as donation models can barely even keep Lemmy instances above water. If ad money wasn’t a thing, would sites like imgur be able to exist? Maybe they shouldn’t, I don’t know.
Always wondered how Imgur stayed afloat in the first place. As to people whining about ads, yeah I block everything I can, but I’m not about to bitch about Imgur providing me a free service and sending ads.
Like you, I don’t see a way around it. Sites like Imgur have to be provided by private enterprise, and that requires funding. Can’t see how a subscription model works, people simply wouldn’t pay.
God forbid the government fund any of it. Look how the Brit and American politicians are fucking up sites that aren’t even government! And don’t start me on what American government sites are deleting and displaying.
People still use imgur?
I do, that’s the only one I can remember which I can embed easily here.
What are the alternatives? I wish I could just upload images for comments in PieFed.
Catbox is basically what Imgur used to be before it went to absolute shit. You upload images, you can link to them. That’s it. You don’t need to create an account, but if you do, you can see everything you’ve uploaded. It’s free. Not really sure what more you can ask for in an image host.
Catbox is also nonfunctional on some VPNs.
Didn’t know that! I use an always-on VPN and I’ve never had issues with Catbox (but imgur blocks me), for what it’s worth.
Can you just browse other peoples uploads on there looking for funny pics and memes?
Nope! It’s an image host, not a social media platform, which in my opinion is the best thing about it.
Asking the important questions. I need the shitposting, not just the image hosting.
Wdym? Can’t you see this image I am just embedding on the fly rn?
I can see it, But in PieFed I can’t upload one.
Interesting, I am using the voyager mobile app. Does that mean the functionality is there but the PieFed frontend hasn’t integrated it?
I just upload directly to the instance, at least that’s what I think I’m doing. My app lets me do that (Boost).
It sounds like the platform of choice for talking shit about the UK these days.
Until this I used it as my daily meme scroller
Yeah I’ve had this issue when using Mullvad. Definitely a VPN specific issue.
My VPN is custom and they block me. How can they tell the traffic is being routed via VPN? I should know this, can’t quite remember how that works.
Not really a shit post.
Sucks for the UK.
Works fine with a VPN for me.
I put it on here because it’s one of the communities that posts the most photos and I’ve seen a few Imgur embeds posted here in the last day or two. Feel free to forward to any other channel.
As for it working for you, yeah I suspect they have some IP ban lists, and it definitely won’t cover every VPN, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask someone to use a different VPN to see your post. Not that you were necessarily implying that.
I just don’t see why we should boycott imgur because of something the UK government did to them.
I’m not calling us to not use it as a boycott measure. It’s more of a practical consideration for other users like myself who won’t get to see your posts at all.
There are alternative approaches that don’t cause these problems so I’d like people to use them.
You’re not being asked to, the UK govt hasn’t done anything to them… they did this to themselves by failing to do anything about age verification long before the online safety act came in recently. This is about their failings over the prior years to do basic age checks that have been common on the internet for decades now… going dark in the UK doesn’t affect the ongoing investigations or the fines that will be imposed… they’re basically throwing their toys out of the pram and shouting LALALALALALALALA we can’t hear you anymore.
Imgur had gone to dogshit anyway, it’s no real loss and the new owners keep making it worse and after the last round of protests from users, went on a mass banning and censorship campaign to further alienate and anger the users they desperately need to shove an ever increasing amount of ads too.
Blame the right people… the greedy, ignorant techbros who want to extract every ounce of ad revenue they can to line their own pockets at the expense of killing the product they bought.
they did this to themselves by failing to do anything about age verification long before the online safety act came in recently
Good. They shouldn’t. Online age verification is an authoritarian scam.
What they are being fined for (potentially) is not asking for users’ age during account creation. Not whatever you think (in spite of op being clear)
Good for them.
Why is that good?
You’ve failed to understand the problem entirely… the entire internet asks users to confirm they are above a certain age when creating accounts… and that happened because the USA demanded it. There’s nothing authoritarian about it… it’s a simple ‘Are you over 13yrs of age’ and you tick yes… that was it.
Funny how it doesn’t seem to be a problem in any other country.
I’ve been wondering about this for a while, what do people recommend for FOSS imgur alternatives (or just simple image hosting)? 🤔
(Of course the UK should just allow free access to information, but I would still prefer to be able to use something FOSS anyway)
For Lemmy I think you can just upload directly, which is what I do. More generally I’m not sure.
There are a million services like this but I doubt many are FOSS as there are significant coats involved in large-scale image hosting.
Loading directly on lemmy sucks for me. When someone does that in a comment, I’m stuck with whatever resolution the thing is, can’t make it big enough to see or read.
I don’t want to use the feature because I have to download then upload the pic I want. Not seeing a way around that.
What kind of coats? I like coats
I think a significant coat would have to be either a trenchcoat or one with a huge fur collar.
I don’t believe it’s FOSS, but Catbox is very simple and allows you to link directly to images/videos that you upload, with no ads and no login required.
This site looks cool, but don’t spread it around too much, because if it gets popular, we all know what will happen.
I also see this and I’m not in the UK.
American here. I have my own OpenVPN server, not commercial, and I get this error on Firefox but was not seeing it in Edge until I closed the browser and reopened. It’s how I know I forgot and left the VPN running.
Interesting. Where are you based?
USA 🤠
Oh, is it because some states have the same sort of age verification laws?
Probably because I’m using a VPN. Mullvad specifically. I guess I should have mentioned that
Ah, I use Mullvad and have found their IPs are blocked.
Is this because of the UK age verification thing?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_in_the_UK
No, it’s because imgur has refused to conduct the simple ‘are you over the age of XX’ when people create accounts, which is required by law… there’s no verification of anything involved. Just a tick the box exercise… they couldn’t even be bothered to do that and that’s why they’re being investigated and are facing massive fines for years of refusal to do what every other site has done for probably 2 decades now… It’s got nothing to do with the draconian online safety act that was recently brought in… it’s imgur throwing their toys out of the pram and screaming ‘LALALALALALALA’ we can’t hear you now. it will have zero effect on the investigation and fines for their previous failings to follow the law… it’s literally cutting of their nose to spite their face.
Probably not directly, but we don’t know because Imgur has unprofessionally decided to return an incorrect raw JSON error message instead of explaining the block.
There is a message from the ICO noting the block and that it was considering fining them for failing to take user reported age as part of account creation. This is different from the OSA age verification
See the attached article, but yeah pretty much.
It’s been dying for a long time, the vpn blocking started ages ago and the UK block entirely was recent as they’re facing massive fines in the UK… nothing to do with the online safety act that recently came into effect… but due to an ongoing investigation over imgurs failure to do basic age checks at all… and blocking the UK is tantamount to them throwing their toys out of the pram and going LALALALALALALA we can’t hear you now. It won’t affect the investigations and fines over the years of failings prior to that.
After the last wave of protests over the shitty new owners and their repeated firings of staff and the degredation of the service… they went on a mass banning and censorship spree and further alienated the users. I can’t imagine there are that many left there now.
Not worth the effort trying to get around it… there are alternatives that are actually better.
remember when imgur was built because all the other image hosts were bloated and slow? when imgur was good? Pepperidge farm remembers.
