Imgur is banning porn and purging old anonymous uploads

Popular image hosting platform Imgur is done with hosting pornography. In a blog post published this week, the company says it has a new terms of service coming into effect on May 15th and that, as a result, it’ll be removing “nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content” from its platform as well as “old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account.”

“You will need to download/save any images that you wish to save if they no longer adhere to these Terms,” Imgur wrote in its blog post. “Most notably, this would include explicit/pornographic content.” 

The blog post doesn’t offer much detail about how Imgur is defining “old, unused, and inactive content.” Depending on the definition, this could cover a huge portion of non-pornographic imagery uploaded to the service over the years and whose removal could have a massive impact on forums and other online communities that have linked to and embedded it. We’ve reached out to Imgur for clarification on this point, but a spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Imgur has previously had something of a two-tiered approach when it comes to sexually explicit content on its platform. Its community rules, which govern the public content that appears while you browse Imgur directly, have long prohibited the uploading of “nudity or sexually explicit content.” But NSFW content has continued to be allowed under Imgur’s terms of service more broadly, meaning users have been able to upload it on an unlisted basis and link to it directly via its URL.

According to the company’s blog post, this approach “caused frustration with users who received content violations for the content they have seen posted elsewhere off-site.” It hopes that bringing its terms of service into line with its community rules can simplify things. “The Community Rules will now apply to all uploads, both public and hidden,” Imgur wrote in an email to its users. “This means the following content is not permitted anywhere on Imgur: Nudity or sexually explicit content.”

Imgur also says that explicit images (as well as content that’s illegal) “have historically posed a risk to Imgur’s community and its business.” Imgur’s blog post doesn’t explicitly say what these risks are, but modern web platforms rely on an extensive network of partners to operate, and everyone from payment processors to app stores has historically been wary of working with services that offer direct access to adult content. See also Tumblr’s 2018 pornography ban, which has persisted despite vocal complaints from the site’s community.

A combination of automatic systems and human moderators will be used to identify explicit content on Imgur, the company says, adding that “artistic nudity” will continue to be allowed. In a tacit admission that drawing the line between these two groupings can be tricky, Imgur is inviting users to get in touch if they’re prevented from “uploading content that is falsely flagged as explicit content.”

It’s interesting, in retrospect, to go back and read Imgur’s 2019 announcement from when it decided to stop displaying subsections associated with NSFW subreddits. At the time, it was at pains to emphasize that no content would be deleted or moved, that URLs would not break, and that legal NSFW content could still be uploaded so long as it was hidden from Imgur’s public gallery. What a difference three and a half years make.