Presumably this is a response to the Online Safety Act.
However it doesn’t make much sense, because Imgur no longer hosts sexually-explicit content due to pressure from advertisers, and there has been no communication from them to suggest that they have had any trouble due to of the content that people warned may get caught up in the OSA (which, while a real risk, would be a lengthy court battle)
For me this is an inevitable result of the OSA but Imgur also likely bears some responsibility. If 4chan is still available in the UK, there was no need for Imgur to go dark, at least not at this stage.
A few weeks back they went on a mass banning spree too after a mass protest from users. I ‘could’ still access it as I use a VPN and have for the last 12-13yrs… the OSA affected me for 2 seconds, as I switched from a server in one country to another… But imgur went to shit a long time ago, bowing to chinese investors and censoring shit, then being bought by a toxic company known for degrading services and running them into the ground whilst pocketing as much cash as they get their hands on.
So imgur has been dying for many years, and this is just finishing it off.
Don’t fret, there are alternatives and they’re not corpo controlled by wankers.
Make sure you read the link in the other comment - seems it’s not to do with the OSA necessarily, but due to a likely fine.
The only VPNs I have access to atm are not suitable for this kind of thing, unfortunately. Looks like I’m going to need to pay for something different.
I haven’t found anything similar to Imgur (i.e. a good mixture of shitposts and cats with a high level of community engagement). There’s plenty of room for improvement (better filtering out of US politics, ability to manage whether and to what level I am seeing hornyposting) even then.
Yeah, they think they can avoid the fine by blocking the UK… but that won;t have any effect on their past failings to follow the UK laws.
All I can say is… good, imgur can fuck off and hopefully die.