Can’t say I’ve ever seen it as a stand alone platform with a “community”. To me it was always a utility that goes with Reddit or whatever as image host.
And when they opted to actively break large parts of Reddit by deleting nsfw images I kinda new the party is over even in its very tangential utility role
It definitely exists.
I use imgur to share stuff with friends, sometimes I forget to mark it private and users will vote and comment. I didn't notice until I got a dog and started posting pictures the community cared about.
This is heartwarming for some reason
It is, though the other side of the coin was always uploading an image for your niche hobby sub and being inundated by sneering imgur users who wanted to know why your keyboard looked "stupid." The site developed a reputation (among reddit users) for being full of thoroughly incurious people with very confident opinions on your niche interest.
It's actually an incredibly interesting but hostile community, though I'm sure they think otherwise. You either fit into that community, or you're going to be meet with an anger I have yet to see in many other places.
They community is also extremely naive about everything. I tried to follow their little revolt, and they are absolutely oblivious to the fact that running Imgur is probably crazy expensive and that they, as a community, is pretty much impossible to monetize. Almost regardless of how MediaLab was going to attempt to turn a profit, the community would act out in anger. I'm not suggesting that MediaLab handled everything correct, but I also believe that they are running out of options, you can't monetize Imgur without destroying the community.
This is correct. Once the cost to operate Imgur exceeds revenue from ads, all that content is likely to disappear.