Every time when a YouTube video is embedded in Lemmy, a bot appears, suggesting to use Front-end Piped (or another) instead of YT, which is certainly recommended, due to YouTube’s inherent privacy concerns.
However, then it is not understandable, why in the case of images Imgur links are happily allowed, which is infinitely worse in terms of privacy, which shares user and usage data with the worst existing advertising companies, which makes it in little less than spyware.
As a suggestion I present 2 alternatives, which in addition to, as EU products, strictly adhere to the GDPR standard and even more.
As the main FileCoffee service, this, apart from images, supports ALL types of files, whether multimedia, video, documents, presentations or texts. Supports 15 MB/file and with optional registration to also use it as a personal host (100% free with mail, password) up to 30 MB/file, encrypted. Inclusions script one click for ShareX on Windows or MagicCap on Linux or Mac
The second is vgy.me, also privacy oriented, but supports only images, encryption, 20 MB/image, EXIF Data are removed, API for web pages.
I think it shouldn’t be managed on lemmy side but on the users’ side, e.g. on your device/browser. Libredirect can automatically redirect to those sites, not on just lemmy, but everywhere on the internet: https://libredirect.github.io/
Another problem is these alternative frontends relatively frequently disappear. If you post a link to a random instance, it’s quite possible that 5 years later the instance will be down, and the link won’t work at all. Libredirect addon updates the urls of working instances, so it will work later. There is even a button in the addon to switch to another instance, so you can find the best available site.
Edit: I misunderstood what are these sites, they are not imgur frontends but separate image host websites, so this comment is just about the first paragraph.
while I like and personal use frontends, it happens quite often that instances disappear after a while, especially those from non-popular domains. One benign scenario in 5 years is that they just don’t work, eg domains expire or abandoned.
But another possible scenario in 5 years of these invalid links is that they can be hijacked by malicious actors, to use as honeypots and what-not. For example, random person searching for a review in 5 years time may stump upon them.
Are there ways to safeguard against this? Or is this not a concern at all?
Plus, front-ends or alternatives, these instances (eg lemmy itself) many times have weird names. It is often off-putting to see new weird ones and to ponder whether they are trustworthy, especially if there keeps to be new ones every few months.
I think we’re told to be wary of weird-looking links as a general internet starter pack, in our jobs, … And the frontends/alternatives links can often be at odds with this mentality. Whenever I share an invidious link, eg yewtube, to my friends, they are usually worried and uneasy, even after I try to explain.
FileCoffee and vgy.me are not frontends, they are independent European cloudservices since several years, FileCoffee since 2018, nothing to do with imgur. But yes, I think that this also should be managed by the Lemmy admins. Anyway its also an advice to all users with this alternatives to avoid this imgurcrap
Ah, ok, I misunderstood, because you started with the piped bot, and that’s totally different from this services. So you are not writing about imgur frontends, but for uploaders to upload their images elsewhere. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I just don’t like that bot.
But for embedding images, your privacy scan is not relevant, it’s just the home page of imgur you scanned. If you share the direct link to the image, no tracker downloaded, only the image. Just rightclick on the image and ‘Copy image link’. If you paste this link to this privacy inspector it says no trackers, as it’s not a webpage, just an image. They will know your ip and useragent, but that’s all, no extra tracking:
Of course it’s better to support more privacy respecting services, and thank you for the recommendations, but it’s not as big issue as it sounds. It doesn’t affect the viewers of the images just the uploaders.
Vgy delete the EXIF data, Imgur dont and know in any moment where its images are. It’s not only the homepage of Imgur, it’s among others the tracking pixel from facebook and the keylogging of TowerData which came with the sharelink which they know and the image. See the complete list of the companies which receive data from Imgur. It’s one of the worst list I’ve ever seen. Thanks, even better GDrive. Blacklight can only scan websites, not files, for these you need other tools to analyze it.
Thanks, I’ve been looking for an imgur altenative. I’ll try those suggestions.
You will love it, above all FileCoffee. With the integration in ShareX Desktop and the ShareX complement extension for Browsers, it’s pure magic, with this you can capture, upload and share anything with a mouse click, giving you the FileCoffee link
Yes ShareX is the best and most complete screenshot and screencast tool out there, the only lack is it’s Windows only.
FileCoffee just refused this picture, citing file type, that shows all the javas it uses. Carbonads; cloudflareinsights; google-analytics. How about pixeldrain.com@lemmy.fornaxian.tech ?
Pixeldrain is also a good alternative, but it don’t show this 1.jxl image too. maybe it isn’t an image.
The image isn’t shown in any of my browsers, screenshot is made in the Vivaldi browser, in Firefox I see only the name 1.jxl without the broken image icon, in Otter only a black screen where i’ve to go to the homepage URL to see the Pixeldrain page, same in EDGE. Seems more that it is something wrong with the image and not a browser problem. Apart of this, I never had problems to view any kind of images in the browser.
The description of the Firefox plug-in explains why. Want a pic of the pic??
Edit: Next you’ll be telling me your browser cannot open a simple jpg when, if you download it, decent graphics software will open it just fine. 😏
In your first post of Pixeldrain ther wasent an 1.avif file, but one with the extension jxl and a broken image icon. Now you say it’s a simple jpg, which naturally can be opened even with the obsolete paint. Anyway, I don’t want to download an image or file to see it, here we speak about image sharing with embed code to insert in Lemmy or other sites, like I do it with the screenshots I make, the direct link of files from File Coffee open the file/image in a new tab, where you can see it there, without the UI fom the FileCoffee or VGY https://file.coffee/u/rLLXM247jRr4mIuzQwavr.webm
Would rather a bot link to the image itself not an album containing a single image, but I do like the sound of the 2 alternatives.
Links of Vgy and FileCoffee only point to the image or file you want to share, the albums you create in these with an account are private and are usefull as backup. Shareable only images/files which you select.
Do you know if it’s possible to upload a picture from a URL? I didn’t find the option in any of them.
