Image Problems - “Content not Viewable In Your Region’

[Rob]

Hi Folks,

UK Users of the forum may have noticed that some of the images in the forum are currently not showing and have been replaced by a blue/purple square saying “Content Not Viewable In Your Region”.

Basically what’s happened is that Imgur, an image hosting company used by many people on the forum, have stopped users in the UK accessing images hosted on their platform because they are having a massive stroppy fit! The UK Information Commissioner is investigating Imgur because they have some concerns about how Imgur is protecting or not protecting the data of its young users, so they are investigating Imgur to ensure that they comply with UK Data Protection Laws. Rather than simply ensuring their young users are protected to the standard required by the UK Data Protection Laws, Imgur has instead blocked access to their service for all UK users, a somewhat childish move in my opinion for a global internet service.

You can read Imgur’s take on this here - https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/article ... ed-Kingdom

If you want to see the images, and you are based in the UK, the easy workaround is to use a VPN and set the server to a non-UK country.

If your posts have been affected and you want to fix the problem, you’ll need to change your image host to a company other than Imgur, and that will sort the issue straightaway.

Personally, I will never use Imgur again because I think this is incredibly petulant and childish behaviour on their behalf and I will never trust them to host my images again after this episode, plus I now question their morals and ethics if they’re not actually protecting their young users’ data to the highest level possible. Child safety is an incredibly important responsibility for any Internet service and they should comply with every country’s data protection laws regarding this, at the very least. In my opinion Imgur should be going above and beyond any legal requirements, and their recent actions have raised serious doubts on whether they are doing so.

[Rob]

Some alternative image hosting sites are:

https://lensdump.com/
https://postimage.io/
https://cubeupload.com/
https://flickr.com

There is a subreddit on Reddit specifically for discussing alternatives to Imgur, you can find it here - https://www.reddit.com/r/imguralternatives/s/axlNwH5E5D