Imgur blocked in the UK

The online safety act is ridiculous I am surprised people still think it will stop kids seeing porn!

The kids are still seeing porn. The kids in year 7 top set IT will have a vpn installed on a boys phone by the time morning registration has ended. So many parents don’t even check their kids text messages never mind stop them installing apps.

And some parents just don’t care if their kids use vapes or watch porn. Someone’s older brother will log in for them and the lads will share the imagery.

It is Doris and Dave who won’t be able to see what’s really happening in the U.K. on X and that was the point of the online safety act.

Not if you use a VPN.

"I've never heard of this website so it must be porn or something"

He was making rather a lot of assumptions. The literacy - internet and otherwise - is subject to the language barrier and the different cultural expectations between the UK and the US.

The internet literacy on this thread is indeed low

She was just explaining what happened. Not arguing for letting kids see porn.

Imgur aren't just blocking images of porn they are blocking all images. It's easier for them to just geoblock the whole of the UK than try to filter out the images that need to be age restricted in the UK (e.g. porn) versus those that are open in the UK (e.g. kittens).

So just let the kids see the porn? Is that your argument?

Wow the internet literacy is low on this thread.

Imgur aren't just blocking images of porn they are blocking all images. It's easier for them to just geoblock the whole of the UK than try to filter out the images that need to be age restricted in the UK (e.g. porn) versus those that are open in the UK (e.g. kittens).

As someone upthread said, a lot of sites use Imgur for image hosting so web browsing from the UK is going to have lots of black boxes instead of images. The rest of the world is not going to change how they host images just to make Ofcom happy.

What's next, will MN get blocked because of some of the photos on the health board? Or even the NHS website?

No.

Oh awesome. What's next, will MN get blocked because of some of the photos on the health board? Or even the NHS website? Some very reasonable websites were ISP blocked when childproof measures were introduced a few years ago to stop children accessing porn, eg STI information websites and about contraception iirc.

Several UK forums I use rely on Imgur for posting images as hosting them themselves is too expensive. It's going to make large parts of the internet considerably less functional.

It probably hasn't been blocked by the UK, but rather the site themselves will have geolocked the website; I suspect the reason will be that it is not cost effective for them to implement the security checks that the UK requires of it and not locking out UK users means that the website owner would be liable for hefty fines if UK users access the site without those checks in place.

😂

This imgur? Is it not just tit for tat?

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced it has launched three investigations looking into how TikTok, forum site Reddit and image-sharing site Imgur are protecting the privacy of child users in the UK.

www.lbc.co.uk/article/investigations-launched-into-tiktok-reddit-imgur-child-privacy-concerns-5HjczzC_2/

So some skeevy foreign company is making too much money peddling pornography to kids to take basic safeguarding measures, and apparently we're supposed to think this is the government's fault?

I've just come up against this on a Reddit thread with a screencapped gif showing how to do something on a bit of software. In this particular instance I was able to use https://archive.ph/ to recover the content, but it does add an annoying extra step. (And it may not work in every case).

Don't forget that on Mumsnet you can click on the 'add image' or 'add gif' buttons to upload pictures directly here.

• Original imgur link: https://imgur.com/65tkEVi
• Which comes from this Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Inkscape/comments/16eea94/comment/jzzr936/
• Archived imgur link: https://archive.ph/zP3Ww

Jo

Because it's expensive, likely to be hacked, and easy to bypass.

Wikipedia has also been impacted by this badly thought out act

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjr11qqvvwlo

The Tories made a massive mistake when writing it, and Starmer for not cancelling it.

Who cares? It's not true that most of the content of the Internet hosts pictures in that site. In fact, it's a blatant lie.

By blocked do you mean blocked subject to providing age verification? If so, why not just provide age verification?

This. Never heard of it.

Can't say I'm surprised though. It was predicted some sites would do this.

The only place I’ve seen it is Reddit.
The point is it must be showing porn which breaches the Online Safety Act and which it can’t be bothered to remove otherwise it wouldn’t have to withdraw from the UK. It’s not commonly used in the UK where none of us are “driving Lorries all over the US”.

Bugger! Didn’t know they were going to do that.

Imgur isn’t ’porn and kittens’, it’s a photo sharing site with long term users who have a huge following for their daily photos of Japan, or of their images while driving Lorries all over the US, or of their pet, or of their own weight loss or any other random topic. There are people asking for, and receiving support on there.

A bit like Mumsnet isn’t ’recipes and nappies’.

Well, I’m guessing but if Reddit is anything to go by Imgur must host a lot of porn some of which presumably falls foul of the UK’s Online Safety Act.

Why has it been blocked?

You have agency. Let the sender know you can’t see it and get them to send it another way. We’re not going to be “left behind” because an image hosting site doesn’t want to obey the law.