Drew DeVault wrote a blog post back in 2014 that kind of covers it. Imgur seems to have broke the cycle but that doesn’t mean they haven’t gone to shit. They’ve just somehow avoided collapsing underneath themselves as they continue the enshittification of Imgur.
I am fundamentally opposed to nearly all forms of advertising at an ideological level and go to great lengths to avoid it in as many of its insidious forms as possible. So that is where Drew and I differ. The only form of advertising I appreciate are extremely dry infomercials (no not the for-TV kind) and authentic word of mouth (not to be confused with “native” advertising or sponsors). Ads are a net negative on humanity and in too many ways to list but because the effects go through a layer of indirection - similar to how secondhand smoke is harmful for non-smokers. People are more OK with ads. It took making the public aware of secondhand smoke and the harm that smoking causes - even for non-smokers - before people took a privileged stance against smoking. That same level of awareness and condemnation will never happen with ads because people are OK with getting things “for free” that they otherwise would have to pay for. So they’ll willingly turn a blind eye to the harmful effects of advertisements and “put up with them”.
Fuck ads.
I run my own file host: kimiga.aishitei.ru. Files get uploaded from clipboard using ShareX. This allows me to have control over my own files, how long they last or if they should last forever, and I’m not dependent on a benevolent developer preventing my links from rotting 8 years from now when they close down their host due to it costing them too much or simply because they got bored of being a sysadmin/dealing with issues (or users) of their site.
I used to donate to pomf.se and used that as the image host because I was a supporter of the sysadmin - but it eventually grew too large and had to shut down. Then a bunch of pomf.se clones popped up and I used one of those - can’t remember which one but then that one shut down too after only a year. That’s when I decided to set up my own host.
I don’t allow other users on the site because I don’t feel like having to deal with what users upload, DMCA requests, morally gray areas, etc.
.rudomains are sometimes blocked so my backup is catbox.moe