Imgur not viewable in the UK

[Enjay]

For UK folks, or people who want to post images that people in the UK can see, there is now a problem - and speculation is that it might be a long-term.

If you are in the UK and see a post on here that has an image hosted on Imgur, you will now just see an image that says "Content not viewable in your region."
If you try to go to Imgur directly, you just get an error that says:

Code: Select all

error	"Content not available in your region."
success	false
status	400

The consensus seem to be that this is probably a result of the UK's new online safety legislation that pretty much needs you to verify that you are an adult for almost any website that might contain something even vaguely "spicey". Presumably Imgur will eventually put up an "I'm an adult" verification thing because they have lots of users in the UK, but lots of people will be reluctant to use that because it basically compels you to do things that could be personally identifiable (despite the promises of the security providers that they don't retain the information).

So, that's a thing. I just thought it was worth giving people a "heads up".

[MartinHowe]

Yeah, noticed this last night; it started around 7pm. The silly thing is, most images here are not sexy or whatever (though there is some NSFW stuff, I don't know where it's hosted). Worse, Imgur don't give you a chance to follow the age verification process; they just block you.

What a idiotic law; not because its aim is immoral, but because they just didn't think through the consequences on normal everyday life; once more, governments making laws about things they don't understand, just like the EU cookie law.

For me, it's a principle of personal freedom, so to show my contempt for this fascist, repressive, government and its ill-thought-out law, I installed Opera; this has a free VPN built in. I won't use if for general browsing, just for this fort of thing. Hard cheese, Mr Starmer, you stupid control-freak.

[Enjay]

Yes, it just "died". No ceremnony, no warning, no nothing. I was actually on here and on Imgur in a separate tab. I noticed a post here where I couldn't see the image (as it happens, it was an image that I posted). So, I went to the Imgur tab and when I refreshed the page I just got the "not available" message.

I also agree about the law. I understand the concerns that they are trying to address but what an idiotic, cack-handed, poorly thought through implementation - one that requires you to give up personal information and interact with websites in a way that runs counter to any cyber security advice that I have seen.

Apparently the law was a Tory govt. thing but Labour decided to implement it pretty much as it was under the Tories, rather than doing something more sane and workable. And now we have a government minister literally saying "if you don't agree with our law, then you are siding with the paedophiles". Talk about a false equivalence.

As for Opera's VPN - yes, it's great to get a free VPN (I used to use it occasionally) but it can sometimes be very slow. Using it for something image-heavy could well be painfully slow, or completely non-viable at times.

[Enjay]

There is now an information page: https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/article ... ed-Kingdom

If you can't see it, here's what it says:

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Imgur access in the United Kingdom

From September 30, 2025, access to Imgur from the United Kingdom is no longer available. UK users will not be able to log in, view content, or upload images. Imgur content embedded on third-party sites will not display for UK users.

You can exercise your data protection rights without logging in (for example, to request a copy of your data or deletion) using our Help Center request form.

I want to request a copy of my data [link]
I want to delete my account (GDPR/CCPA) [link]

We may request information to verify your identity and will respond within the time limits set by UK data protection law.

We may continue to process limited personal data where necessary and lawful, for example, to comply with legal obligations and to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. Information about how long we keep data and how we process it is available in our Privacy Policy[link].

If you have questions, please contact us via our Support request form[link].

So, no mention of why (though the law seems very likely) and no mention of a solution - merely that you can contact them to retrieve your data (presumably images that you have uploaded to your account or whatever). I wonder if they are even going to bother implementing something for UK users? Imgur has been a bit troubled of late.

[MartinHowe]

More on this here (BBC): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gzxv5gy3qo

[Enjay]

Thanks. So, as I read it, not the Online Safety Act (at least not directly) but MediaLab being investigated and found to not comply with UK standards for child protection and child data handling and facing a fine - so made the "commercial decision" to disallow UK users. Interesting.

From what (little) I know about MediaLab, they seem to be an "exploit them for as long as we can, make out money and run" organisation. So, not having robust policies in favour of making money out of any user who cares to use their site doesn't seem to be a particularly wild accusation.

MediaLab has certainly upset a lot of Imgur users for unrelated reasons of late.

[Jimmy]

So upset about this. I relied on Imgur entirely for my image hosting and all my project threads here and on Doomworld have hotlinked to my Imgur uploads for the last... decade-and-a-half, maybe?? So they're all kaput.

Apparently even getting a VPN might not circumvent this change.

MediaLab is up to some shady shit for sure. "Use of children's personal data" has never resulted in anything good happening. What possible need could these hosting companies have for kids' data? Are they so obsessed with collecting numbers for their precious browsing algorithm that they'd do so from users who can't give legal consent to use of their information? Like what was their big idea here.

[MartinHowe]

Apparently even getting a VPN might not circumvent this change.

Opera's built-in VPN works, at least for now.

[Jimmy]

Okay, I enabled Proton VPN and it seems like that might be a solution.

For now as you say.

[Enjay]

I have a VPN as part of my anti-virus package. It works just fine too.

Of course, it would be much better if it simply wasn't needed. Doesn't look like that will be happening any time soon.

As an aside, last month there was a big "internet drama" on Imgur in protest over Medialabs' policies. Lots of long-term users posted NSFW pictures and threatened to leave (very few did, of course). They were under the belief that the users keep the site alive and them posting stuff that advertisers wouldn't like their products to be seen alongside, and then them leaving would hurt the site and MediaLabs would listen.

MediaLabs, of course, just rode out the storm and now we see how much the impact of a few self-impotant users was. MediaLabs are prepared to cut off all of their UK users (and, it is one of the main countries that use (used) Imgur) for a "commercial decision". So, a few upset users threatening to leave was hardly going to make them change their policies.

[Cutmanmike]

Imgur is the only way to embed images here right? Outside of just not having fancy images on our project pages, is there anything else we can do?

All the roundabouts near my area already have the England flag painted on them, so I'm out of options personally

[Enjay]

IMG tags also work (maybe not enabled for everyone IIRC?) but they don't do the fancy thumbnailing effect that Imgur links do, so images have to be suitably sized etc.

It's amazing how many Imgur links there are on here. Some of the threads are just a wall of "you can't see this" placeholder images.

Very frustrating.

[camper]

Has your government's blocking of internet resources affected you? It's a global problem.
p.s.

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The BBC has a video tutorial in Russian about which free VPNs are available. https://www.bbc.com/russian/media-60626506

[Enjay]

In this case, it doesn't actually seem to be a case of the government blocking anything. It seems more like MediaLab were asked (admittedly by the UK government watchdog) to provide assurances that they were taking appropriate steps to ensure the safety of data, particularly data relating to the accounts of child users and, if they couldn't do that, MediaLab would face a fine. MediaLab's response was "Nah, were not doing that, we'll just block all UK users instead".