Images possibly being deleted by imgur on 5/15/2023

[Eric Rechlin]

Something that came up in the news a couple weeks ago was that imgur is planning to be "removing old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account" on May 15. What exactly this means hasn't been clarified, but the assumption is that any images that were anonymously uploaded to the site will be deleted.

A lot of us here have been using imgur for image hosting due to the limitations of the HP Musem image hosting. I'm sure some are uploading them with an account, but many (myself included) have not. This presumably means that a few dozen of the images I have put on my posts here over the last 6 years or so will be deleted.

I have gone through and backed up images hosted by imgur that were in posts on this forum (at least those that I could find). I encourage anyone here who is using imgur for image hosting to verify that they uploaded their images to their account, and if not, look into backing up the images they posted so they can be reuploaded if they are lost, and the posts edited to use the new images. I will be editing my posts after 5/15 if the images disappear, to restore them at new locations. And going forward, make sure you are signed into imgur when uploading images so they will be tied to your account and not deleted.

Source:

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/14415587638029

Also, a news article:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/04/...ext-month/