We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.

[MJ]

Pictures hosted on Imgur do not work anymore on our NodeBB because we break their TOS. But their are many plugins that break the TOS of Imgur.

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source: https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003264766-FAQ-for-Forum-Users-

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What can't I use Imgur for?
You're welcome to use Imgur to host your images, as long as they do not break our Terms of Service. This prohibits using Imgur in the following ways.

• As a content delivery network (CDN). This includes web objects like logos, avatars, icons, banners, and more.
• For hotlinking adult or illegal images
• For torrents
• Image hosting for commercial purposes
• Selling things
• Sites which copy Imgur's own functionality.

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Now we want to host everything ourself but some plugins are written to use imgur. Like trophies. Is it possible to use this plugin without the use of imgur?

Am I btw the only one who has been blocked by imgur?

[yariplus]

Hmm, that plugin doesn't violate any of those TOS. Sounds like you got screwed for no reason. Unless someone posted something illegal.

[MJ]

@yariplus said in We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.:

Hmm, that plugin doesn't violate any of those TOS. Sounds like you got screwed for no reason. Unless someone posted something illegal.

Maybe because we use(d) imgur for our sitelogo, forum avatars, and some icons.
Or can't that be the reason?

[yariplus]

@mj I'm not sure. It clearly says when used as a CDN. If the logo is only used on your one site, then that doesn't make you a CDN in my opinion.

[julian]

Hmm... well it's best to err on the side of caution, right? In the end it's up to Imgur's discretion to allow you to use them or not.

Perhaps they'll give you an export of the uploaded media, but it seems that perhaps you may be better off just hosting the uploads locally, as NodeBB does support that quite well now.

[Brophy]

We had this issue with our gaming community, we hosted our own files but our community members used imgur, we contacted imgur, made them aware that our community members used it to host their own data and we were not using it as a cdn.

The came back pretty quick after reviewing our site and then whitelisted us.

I would suggest trying to contact them after you move your own stuff local.

[MJ]

@brophy said in We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.:

We had this issue with our gaming community, we hosted our own files but our community members used imgur, we contacted imgur, made them aware that our community members used it to host their own data and we were not using it as a cdn.

The came back pretty quick after reviewing our site and then whitelisted us.

I would suggest trying to contact them after you move your own stuff local.

Yes we contacted them and are also whitelisted

But the problem now is that the content we can use imgur for. But not the avatars and profile covers. I can't find a setting that the profile stuff is hosting by us and the other images by imgur.

[julian]

Yes, unfortunately that's a little harder to do because right now the imgur plugin takes over all uploads, avatars and such included, as it all hooks into the same upload system in NodeBB.

[MJ]

@julian said in We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.:

Yes, unfortunately that's a little harder to do because right now the imgur plugin takes over all uploads, avatars and such included, as it all hooks into the same upload system in NodeBB.

Can this be changed maybe somehow?

[Neko Neko]

We are also banned by imgur.

@MJ @julian What can we do about this? How did you find a solution for this problem?

[julian]

Is local storage of uploaded files not feasible for your installs?

[MJ]

@Neko-Neko said in We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.:

We are also banned by imgur.

@MJ @julian What can we do about this? How did you find a solution for this problem?

We send E-mail to imgur and removed all the avatars and cover images. Sadly it's the only wayt to get back whitelisted again.

[MJ]

@julian said in We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.:

Is local storage of uploaded files not feasible for your installs?

not for me.

We have tried it for a few days but in 13 days our members uploaded for 492 MB images.

So it would be 1 GB every month (and a little bit more every month because we are growing) and we do not have adds or some income and have only 50 GB storage to use (and we use total of 11.6 GB now) so for us it's not possible to do.

Or is there some way to resize photo's so we can save space. When making a picture with phone most of the time its 7 to 12 MB p/photo, if there is a way to resize it to a 500 kb jpg file or something we can store all the images ourself.

[baris]

@MJ We do have resizing of images but it keeps the original and uses the smaller version in the post to save bandwidth on page load. Maybe there should be an option to permanently scale down images.

[julian]

@MJ said in We've got banned from Imgur breaking their TOS.:

Or is there some way to resize photo's so we can save space. When making a picture with phone most of the time its 7 to 12 MB p/photo, if there is a way to resize it to a 500 kb jpg file or something we can store all the images ourself.

By writing shell scripts, you can, yes.

For example, you can set up a cronjob to delete all images older than 30/60 days from the public/uploads/ folder.

Or perhaps you can run convert -resize 640x on all images after 60 days' age to reduce size.

Alternatively, you can set up a DigitalOcean volume (or something equivalent) and save your stuff there for less cost.