Imgur to remove "old, unused, and inactive" content on 5/15

Image Hosts and You: Imgur to remove "old, unused, and inactive" content starting on 15 May 2023

Hey gang,

TL;DR: Starting May 15, Imgur will begin removing "old, unused, and inactive content" not associated with any imgur user account. Be sure to download any images you've hosted on imgur so that you can re-host them going forward.

What's happening: Imgur has announced that they will be removing "old, unused, and inactive content" not associated with imgur user accounts starting May 15.

What to expect: Assume that images hosted on imgur will no longer be available starting on May 15, unless you know they were uploaded to your imgur user account. While it's possible that it will take awhile for old images to be deleted, and there is no guarantee that specific images will be deleted, it's better to err on the side of caution and take steps to preserve your images.

Presumably after images are deleted, they will return a static image similar to the default TinyPic "image not found" image.

How to bulk-save your imgur images:

One crude method for bulk-saving your images that have been posted to the site is to use the site search feature to find all of your posts with imgur links:

* Go to the site Search feature
* Search for the word "imgur" in posts made by you (i.e. input yourself for "by at least one of the members")
* Save each page of search results with Ctrl+S. Be sure to select "Web Page, complete" for the saved page format to ensure that images are downloaded.


Which other image hosts to use: Some other free image hosts for your consideration include:
* PostImages.org
* ImageBB.com

Lessons for the future: As we've seen with TinyPic and Photobucket before, deletion of hosted content will always be a problem (particularly under capitalism). It's a good idea to ensure images you want to keep are saved on a local drive and/or backed up to a second location.