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Imgur has been enshittifying for multiple years. When I went on reddit a few years ago, its use was already discouraged by some subs.
They wanted to become their own site and more profitable, instead of just being an image hosting site for reddit. So they started to fight against hotlinking and tried to keep redditors captive on their site.
When people share a link to an image hosted on imgur, it finds ways to break hotlinking to show the whole site in an effort to show ads and keep users captive, on their site.
From what I can see their enshittification started around 2016.
Recently there’s also been people reporting that they apparently highjack the back button of a browser to make it even more difficult to escape.
AFAIK it’s also why reddit itself started to host images.
They really really really want people to stay on their site.
Imgur has been enshittifying for multiple years. When I went on reddit a few years ago, its use was already discouraged by some subs.
They wanted to become their own site and more profitable, instead of just being an image hosting site for reddit. So they started to fight against hotlinking and tried to keep redditors captive on their site.
When people share a link to an image hosted on imgur, it finds ways to break hotlinking to show the whole site in an effort to show ads and keep users captive, on their site.
From what I can see their enshittification started around 2016.
Recently there’s also been people reporting that they apparently highjack the back button of a browser to make it even more difficult to escape.
AFAIK it’s also why reddit itself started to host images.
They really really really want people to stay on their site.
EDIT: Here’s some evidence, from a reddit thread, obviously https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/awfckb/whats_the_deal_with_imgur_does_reddit_own_it_why/