Topic: Imgur images suddenly became invalid? (Read 1299 times)

Try this script that was made by TryNinja. Maybe it can help with this migration job from one service to another.
[Script] Imgur to TalkImg - automatically fix your broken images

All my post using imgur link uploading image in Bitcointalk forum have been invalid link and image can't show well again, right now move from imgur with imgbb and choose with this option Don't autodeleted if want our image keep existing until for the long term. I don't know how to recovery with several my post upload image trough imgur because some of image have been deleted in my computer and not any file save on mobile phone.

Maybe sometimes network problem can cause this kind of problem or if network is slow then sometimes this kind of problem occurs. I think this is a technical problem of imgur entirely.

We always come back to the same problem with uploading images to external servers, thanks that we have now TalkImg and the problem will be reduced from now on. I don't use Imgur personally but the disappearance of many pictures in the forum is obvious. If there is a way to load them all at once it would be great, even if it supposes editing the url: I think that the motivation to share the image will be the same regardless the exact url used to do it, and no violation can be blamed on fixing them all.

At least, we have the choice.

Wow well done LoyceV at least we have the images now, later we can think what to do next

So it's almost 182kb / image  that's not bad.

I can't easily do that, and many images are posted more than once (including quotes). The total reduction of users who updated their links so far will be <1%, so I don't think it's worth the effort (for now).

I don't know.

That works for active users, but not for the majority of posts.

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Update: I can easily sort files by upload date: all files come with a timestamp.

I think so!

This number might be able to be reduced if we could find out which ones users have already changed.
Can you filter this by post/upload date?

Another thing I was thinking about: changing the link to the images, without the users' authorization, wouldn't that be considered a violation of privacy?
I think it was preferable, at an early stage, for the process to be done via a TryNinja script, rather than doing everything via BD editing.

I'm pretty sure TryNinja can do it, but I still hope theymos will work his magic to replace all imgur-links at once. If users have to do it on their own, the large majority of images will remain missing.

I've finished my download. Can I bore you with 146 GB and 801,000 images?

Will TryNinja later (when I have everything updated) be able to make a script to upload the images from your server to TalkImg?
Thus, each user would have to update this information.

It could be a way to initially manage all this information. What do you think?

I didn't name them, imgur.com did. So the name can be found in each post.

It's only useful if you know which file(name) you're looking for.

I wasn't planning to do that, the list will be too long anyway.

I can't know who uploaded an image, but I'm planning to make a .zip for all imgur-images posted by a user. That will include quoted images.

First, how did you name the images ? Because when we upload the image, its original name is not uploaded anywhere  

Secondly, if the final database will look like this https://loyce.club/other/, I don't know how it is any benefit except that we are satisfied that we have all the images saved but we can't find any of our interests.

Is it possible, that you can filter the images to bitcointalk threads like all the images under the WO thread may appear in the WO folder or something like that?
Also if it can also filter the image based on who uploaded it. For example, if want to see all the images that I uploaded I can just filter on my username. Don't know if such things are even possible or not  

That's the plan, with a few limitations: I can't just "parse the forum", that would take months. I have to rely on what I have already (so images added by editing a post won't be included). If the rest works, depends on theymos.

@LoyceV and @joker_josue
Is it possible to do something like this? Listen:
This is an image: https://i.imgur.com/bk8XuD2.png
You can parse the whole forum and download all the images. If you download an image and save it with the name that I have made bold and underlined and upload images that way on talkimg, then theymos should be able to change absolutely every url https://i.imgur.com/ with any url we wish, for example with: https://talkimg.com/imgdb/ and then all the images on this forum will be restored. If you two are capable to do so, of course.

Just to clarify, TalkImg is actually a service that's quite similar to Imgur or Imgbb. It's not actually connected to Bitcointalk, and you can't use it to upload images directly to the forum like you suggested. Instead, you'll still need to use bbcode to display your images in your posts. I think what might have happened is that you got a bit confused, as TalkImg was actually created by a member of this forum specifically for use on Bitcointalk. But again, it's not directly linked to the forum itself.

Instead of copying BBcode from Imgur, you can try using TalkImg to upload and post images directly on the forum. This might help avoid any issues with invalid code and make the process smoother for you.

Here is the original post link of @joker_josue. He wants to help BitcoinTalk.org's users.
Regarding your concern to get the link to read. TalkImg.Com
Here is another promotional post for TalkImg.Com

Really, it must be really troublesome because I have to recycle all those invalid images and post them with another hosting service. But maybe, I'll try to maintain some important images that should be featured in my post. But anyway, great advice.

Right now I need to spend some time editing it manually. Really, I regret it.

Thanks for this advice too, it's the same as @acroman08 explain to me in the previous post.  

I'm sure. I took the links from my posts archive.

That's why I don't want to host it I wouldn't know how to handle this.

I took the links from the (unedited) posts, so I know which ones are the most recent. But that includes quotes (there are many duplicate links). For now, I'm just downloading whatever I can (581k files, 112 GB). Sorting out what to do with it comes later
I could even sort them based on who posted them, so if imgur is gone, users can still download their own images and upload them elsewhere.

Imgur is starting to purge all unregistered images not just NSFW images, but don't worry - that's why Talkimg exists

I also thought there was something wrong with my region's internet network causing problems with posting pictures.
I tried to look at the uploaded image posts on several topics, the same display appears that says invalid image.

Like it or not, all important image posts that I have uploaded to remain visible must start editing using other services without the need to care about the imgur service, which may no longer want bitcointalk users to use their services.
ImgBB, postimages is a good service for uploading images, but I will try to use TalkImg initiated by @joker_josue

Honestly there is not a big danger for BD. There are specific commands to do this in databases.

Would it work in 100% of cases? No. Furthermore, it will only be possible if part of the path remains the same. Which honestly, I think it will be difficult to do, based on the information I have so far.




Are you sure that all this is what was on the forum and there is no image coming from elsewhere?
That will be the first thing to evaluate. In addition, there are copyright issues, copying from one server to another may not be that simple.

Do you happen to be able to identify the images temporally? The ones that were posted the longest in the forum and the ones that are more recent?

You can try https://picsur.org/

You can find their GitHub repository at https://github.com/caramelfur/picsur. It's an open source script but I'm not sure if it's in PHP or JavaScript (or both). It might be worth checking out.

Is there anything we could do to help you achieve this faster. If all of us work together on this we can download all the images in a day or may be less.
Unity is the key. We would just need a way to connect our device to the internet so that we can increase the processing power to download more images in parallel.
If not if we can contribute by sharing our computation power like how miners use a mining pool then may be can download all those images faster.

Does anyone have a link to a PHP script that functions in a way similar to Imgur?

I mean something that I could drop an image on and it will do the resizing and the link creation and everything else automatically. I'm sure there are dozens out there, I've just never looked for one. I figure if there's a recommendation here I could throw it up on my own personal website.

Although I do appreciate what others are doing to help the community in creating their own sites to do this. At this point, I think I am just going to host my images myself. I could probably set something else up for the community, but with other people already doing it it's

1)not going to be worth my time since it's going to be 1 of many
and more importantly
2) be another thing I'm going to have to worry about not working / crashing and having to deal with everyone asking what happened and when will it be back.

Heck, I'm hosting an explorer for a just about abandoned shitcoin and when it went down overnight last week I got about 15 messages asking about it. Can't imagine what would happen if everyone's images went offline when I was sleeping.


-Dave
 

Forum settings usually have an option of replacing one exact text with another exact text. So for replacing the url theymos doesn't need to change anything in database, just to create another line for that option. Another option is to do it in the code manually, it doesn't need database changes as well, but is less recommended.

The only sure fix is editing all your posts with images, and uploading them elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure Admin can work some of his magic if he wants to. I'm not sure though if there will be legal consequences for changing the link, especially when it comes to copyright.
"Doing nothing" means we lose the images for sure.

Personal websites are more likely to be abandonded than large image hosts, so long-term, that means all links will be dead.

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Progress: I have 170k JPG, 271k PNG, 2k JPEG and 9k GIF downloaded so far 89 GB

The sad reality is that you cannot trust any centralized service:
As someone said on the Italian board:

“not your servers, not your images”.

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Done.

I have been using imgur too because I felt it is most reliable and less annoying then any other image hosting site. Plus they have a mobile app which gives big advantage to upload images more conveniently. But it seems it was bad choice after all :p

I agree with theymos there is no use of playing games here with imgur even if he finds a temporary solution to current problem another issue will rise again sooner or later. So we have to find alternatives.

One potential alternative is TalkImg.com, specifically designed for use with bitcointalk. Not only can we place trust in the administrators, who are part of our own community, but we can also easily reach out to them for any concerns or queries.

I do not believe that LoyceV's approach is a viable solution. For instance, let's assume we collectively decide to migrate all images to another hosting platform like TalkImg while retaining the same filenames and extensions. Running a database query to replace all imgur links with links to the new hosting service poses a significant risk. I will never ever recommend  such an approach, and I am sure that theymos would not approve of it either.

One potential solution could involve utilizing a bitcointalk image proxy. This would allow us to keep the image links in posts as they are, while the proxy itself would deduct imgur links and call upon the new hosting service, such as TalkImg or even LoyceV's current hosting. However, it is important to acknowledge that this solution may not be optimal. Again not a clever solution.

Ultimately, this serves as a valuable lesson for all of us to never solely rely on third-party services for online data storage. Whether it is a large organization like Google, Apple, or imgur, these services can cease operations at any given time. It is crucial to explore and utilize alternatives for personal data storage, while maintaining backups in different locations.

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Submit a Request to imgur to allow image linking from bitcointalk.org:

There's no straight forward solution unless imgur allows it again. Or may be if we request imgur personally to allow image linking from https://bitcointalk.org/.

It seems that the most viable solution lies in imgur's willingness to allow this functionality once again. By personally reaching out to imgur and collectively expressing our desire for image linking from bitcointalk.org, there is a possibility that they may grant our request.

I'm sure if certain number of people request the same thing they might allow it

Here's the request form select "I have suggestion" or "My topic isn't listed here"
https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Sample request:



You can copy paste below


Keep the subject "Allow images linking from https://bitcointalk.org/"

https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

right now you can still view the images on Imgur if you use the URL of the image(for example, this image on your thread that has become invalid https://i.imgur.com/rHTpE2A.jpg). you can save the image on your PC or phone and upload it to another image hosting service. joker_josue recently created TalkImg.com - Image hosting for BitcoinTalk, you can try using it to upload your image again and replace the broken images on your threads.

All of my images for the threads and topics I made came and uploaded from imgur. I'll have to go through each of them and have it edited with a new image came from those image upload websites that have been suggested. Since most are talking about talkimg, that shall be my top choice when I've gone through each of them.

They should remove the tag on their URL as the "The magic of the Internet". That's no longer magical. And there seem to be nothing on their Blog and no updates at all informing their users and guests.

This is really disappointing, I lost so many image in one of my stats threads on local board. I didn't realize what was happen until suddenly I had to get invalid views on all the images I posted through imgur. Unfortunately I didn't save all the image and will probably lose them forever.

Any solution? I am really waiting how this can be resolved.

Topic: [CHART] Tampilan Bulanan Aktivitas Lokal Board Bahasa Indonesia

That's one hell of a timing!

I was just wondering, what kind of bribe did it take for Imgur to block direct linking from bitcointalk.org IP addresses? Asking for a friend. 

I use my own domain name for hosting: loyce.club/other/.

I can't do any of this, but I'm hoping Admin will jump in once we have an image mirror sorted.

If changing the links on the forum doesn't work out, at least I'll have the images. You could find them back from the file name in the post. But I doubt even 1% of the images will be updated manually, which still leaves about a million dead links.

I myself faced this problem several times and I tried many times and also with different net connections but every time I saw the connection fail then an idea came to my mind when I try with VPN on I succeeded in linking the photo from Imgur.  If you are facing this problem then you can connect any VPN and try from a different Regions, hope your problem can be solved.

Everything will depend on how the images were organized and how the links were generated. However, it may be possible to change the image link via DB, but this is only possible with some parameters that the original links had.

In turn, it can never be guaranteed that all images will work as they were. There are so many variables at play that we have to do a complete analysis to see what is and is not viable.

Getting the same issue, It's really a problem since almost all of my bb codes are uploaded on Imgur upon checking my post it's all getting the error which is disappointing.

I'm starting to find a new alternative but I don't think I can recover most of my posts, because it's still on my Imgur account but still an error, I might reupload some to other alternatives but it's going to be a lot of work.

even uploading new photos doesnt work anymore...

I really appreciate the efforts and concern shown by you on this matter. Maybe since you are most techy among most of us, only you can come up with such a good innovation.

Anyways I have a couple of questions in this regard

1- When you will upload all or most the the images and they are uploaded on any other site (talkimg in this case), the links for all the images will be changed, so how will they be replaced on the forum ? Will you make a database too that this was old imgur link and this is new talkimg link that needs to be replaced on the forum ? Also the image links are also embedded in quoted posts too.

2- If the automated image replacing process does not work, when you have downloaded thousand of images, how will we identify that this is that particular image unless we open every image and see what it contains  

I am really disappointed by this.
I have been an Imgur user since its inception, and basically, every image I upload on this forum are imgur based.

Having all the images deleted in three days means a lot of posts, or even whole threads, will become unintelligible.
This will cause damage to the forum as a whole, I am afraid.

I am pleased about @joker_josue's effort to provide a reliable alternative, and I am already using it, but I hardly see how we can recover the past pictures.

I have been trying to lure new users to the forum, and I even made some of them go past the very dated look and feel, but I guess having so many broken links would disrupt the browsing experience even more.
 

As I commented in another topic, so from one day to another 200GB can be more complicated, but not impossible. Complicated, because my plan was not to increase overnight, but progressively.

I might even be willing to deal with that, depending on how the images are organized, and how they are linked in the forum. Sometimes the way the link is presented can make it difficult to replicate the same path on another server.

Either way, it will be a subject to analyze. When you have all the information gathered it will be easier to analyze.

But to move forward with this, oh yes, I'm really going to have some support from the community in order to make a sudden increase in resources, which, as you can understand, was not in the initial plan. Now, I am available for us to follow this path.

What service are you using now for uploading and what do you suggest for other bitcointalk members?
I need something that dont need creating accounts and it should have the option to resize images easy when they are large, I remember one ex moderator didnt like my posts and he kept resizing all my images to minimum visibility.

I'll probably consider your image hosting service and hope it's one that gets a lot of attention once the other services come out. Some images need to be retained by the poster, so when it disappears suddenly or perhaps when the user is not aware of the announcement, then they will lose a lot of track about the image.

dansus021 has spread the word about this service to our local users, so I hope it will get a lot of attention when other services stop their services.

TalkImg.com - Hosting gambar untuk forum BitcoinTalk

Allow me to quote myself here:
Server #4 is downloading without a delay in between requests, and is currently downloading 9400 images per hour. I only have unedited imgur-links, and some are messed up (for now), but at this rate, I'll manage to preserve most images before they're deleted forever.
Restoring the images is beyond my powers, but at least it won't be gone.

Wow, I was taken by surprise this time. Thankfully I have been checking my threads today and noticed all the images have disappeared within 3 days left to recover everything important (at least the main images). If I didn't, I would have lost track of all my data regards Freebitco.in - FUN Token Investment Experiment. Almost one year of informations on the garbage.

Sadly many secondary images on other posts will be lost forever... But I can't go on each of them recovering the images manually.

This was the main reason for creating the TalkImg service - to stop images broken by third-party services.

I thank everyone who has recommended this service, and I hope it is useful for everyone. And the start of a service for the future of images on the forum.

I just saw my post history and was saddened to see that almost all of the images have disappeared. I know many people will not think it is a problem but there are many threads (even I have started some threads), where the main thread contains an image. Now all of sudden those threads look a bit outdated.  
Just check some signature campaigns, bounty and ANN threads which have images in place, now showing NO IMAGE


I checked this site but it gives you a simple link after the upload. It does not give you an embedded link to be posted in the forums, or maybe I am missing anything ?

This is a good thread as well because we all know many forum members here in our community. Didn't Know yet wants happening to Imgur. Why this issues happen and if we are posting and image it's appear that proxy invalid image which there's something wrong about that. Anyway there are still have many options to post images here in bitcoin talk and one of that is in this thread
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/talkimgcom-image-hosting-for-bitcointalk-5450546
We can follow the guidelines and start using this site.

Previously I think this issue was with imgbb hosting site and there were lot of threads regarding it at that time also.The images hosted with them were showing proxy invalid image tag above the image and now this is with imgur.Later on I shifted to https://postimages.org/ and it gave comfort and ease of copying the BBcode on the forum without any issues.

But as @TryNinja has suggested above the new image hosting site by @joker_jouse seems really a good alternative for forum users so you can try it and we should encourage members who are really doing something good for the forum.

I've been using IMgur for a long time, it's unfortunate that we can't use it anymore here in Bitcointalk
One of the alternatives that I can think of and a good one is










Some Frequently Asked Questions

The errors of this service do appear regularly on the forum. I found a couple of threads with the same problem.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54278788
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.55590719

But people continue to use it, and in the same way, they lose their images from time to time.
The forum has excellent service that is much faster and more convenient; in addition to that, you can use it. https://imgbb.com/
I've been using it for a long time, and fortunately, there were no problems.

I learned that lesson years ago, when Tinypic stopped their service.

So that leaves just 3 days to download all broken images, or lose them forever.

Challenge accepted!

The problem is not in the new images that will be hosted, but in the old images, reading old threads becomes impossible and a lot of information will be lost due to these restrictions.
Is there any solution for old hosted images?

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Im using ShareX so it is easy to move to any other hosting service with a simple edit.

Ironically, I hardly used imgur to upload my images and post it in forum(s). If somebody is interested, I would recommend to use this site instead: https://img.doerig.dev/
Its simple, plain, easy to use with no ads or whatsoever. Using it since 8months. The website gives you an imgur link for img posting after you upload the images on it though.

I think that what it is is that imgur added a new very restrictive per-IP limit on image downloads. So all ip.bitcointalk.org requests are blocked, but even many Tor exit nodes are being blocked, for example.

I'm not going to attempt to play some cat-and-mouse game with imgur, so people will just have to use a different service such as TalkImg.

Can you point out some of the image links from imgur that are showing well in the forum?
Because I just checked my post history and from the few that I have seen, I believe all images that are hosted on Imgur are having the image proxy error. I have been uploading mine on Imgur this entire time, and it hurts if they are going to delete everything.

Images hosted on other sites like imgbb are OK.

Well no too stable online today that read across the forum, this evening I tried viewing some thread I noticed their images weren't displaying as well so I have to turned on my device think my 4G phone are not able to view those images. Actually wanted to raised alarm to know if actually is only from my ends here I noticed is from imgur entirely.

The thread is necessary and I believe all the forum users that usually upload images on Imgur online image hosting website have encountered the exact issue at some point but to prevent this from happening in the future why do you make use of the image hosting website which was designed for BitcoinTalk and the entire community by joker_josue.
I think just a suggestion though.

Edit**
I can see that user already say something about it.

I don't know about it but will check more.

It is a terrible rule update from imgur.com.

With this change, I guess in future they will force people to pay money for image hosting. It's all about money at the end.

Years ago, they allowed to upload images with Tor but changed it and now, more terrible changes. Time to move from imgur to other sites.

• https://vgy.me/
• TalkImg.com - Image hosting for BitcoinTalk

I could be speculating, but It looks like Imgur has changed their terms of service. This involves removal of explicit content and "old, unused, and inactive content that is not tied to a user account from their platform" according to a TechCrunch article.


The changes are going to take effect this Month on the 15th. That's just 3 days away, so I believe they started blocking proxies?


I think Theymos has to think about the forum being able to self-host images if it's possible, away from using third party image hosting sites that keep changing their terms of service every day

I don't know the real reason why this is happening but this is perfect time for everyone to make a switch and use TalkImg.com made by our forum member joker_josue.
This will be my main image uploader from now on and even Theymos liked joker_josue initiative for creating this website, another member already created script that works with this website.

TalkImg ANN:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/talkimgcom-image-hosting-for-bitcointalk-5450546

TalkImg Website:
https://www.talkimg.com/

Yeah, that reminds me. I tried uploading some image weeks ago and it was taking for ever to load. Just now to verify what's going on based on the information in OP, I couldn't even access my posted images. I get the message;


Literally, I seem to get an understanding to what it means but, is this the issue with the rest of you guys? What could account for this and is there a means to rectify what's going on here or is it about the imgur site itself having issues.

Other sites works just fine though and we got a forum dedicated image posting site by Joker_J.

To OP, check here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/talkimgcom-image-hosting-for-bitcointalk-5450546

It's a good time to start using the service, the best thing is that the user Joker created it mainly to not have the images broken after a certain time.


I was also using imgbb before talkimg.
I used to have problems using imgur that I never found out what it was, some topics that I created, at the moment I posted, the image wouldn't show up, and in imgbb I never had these problems.
It is also a great option.

I just saw this issue in gambling section but now I see whole forum is affected by this.
For some of my older topics I used Imgur for hosting images and they all work fine so maybe it is something to do with new uploads only.
Is there any way we can fix this or we have to upload all images again?

wtf?! They are idiots for doing this, I am going to stop using them and switch to some better image hosting.

Thank you Royse! The last time I used imgBB couple years ago, iirc there was no option for autodelete. I'll give a try then and hopefully imgur would fix the issue.



Uhm I have an account on imgur and my uploaded images aren't related to NSFW. Actually I was about to upload some image and found the error, then I went to Meta to see if it's only me who having the issue and found this thread. Imgur dont remove the old pics only, but also dont allow us to upload pics here. Seems seeking an alternative is the best way from now. Imgur has been acting weird since they renew its look and keep asking us to buy premium account.

Base on your question let me said your images was written invalid in the bitcointalk because the image has been removed from imgur website. This made me to do some research on the net and I found out that Imgur to ban explicit images and delete uploads not tied to an account, then if that is the case bitcointalk forum users should use alternative mean of uploading pictures here. Images here is needed to be permanent to be viewing whenever the thread has arrived.

By default the "Don't autodelete" is selected which means they will not delete it. I have been using it frequently without any problem from long time.

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talkimg.com looks nice!



Just hosted it :-D

Maybe, the check box about agreeing terms need to be removed and replace it without checking the box. One step less to work.

imgBB is a good alternative to imgur but they dont save your image permanently which it will disappear after few weeks. Well yeah referring to current situation, imgur ain't better though. If the issue stays same I might try talkimg.com then.

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/14/blob6c80a991112ef50e.png

On the browser the above link works fine. Try yourself.


This is on imgBB.

The whole things make me guess that imgur no longer wants bitcointalk users to host their images on the site. Forget about imgur from today.

are you perhaps using a smartphone? I searched imgur.com using a PC and it still brings me to imgur.com but when I use my smartphone and searched Imgur.com it brings me to imgur.io. also, if I use the URL from the BBCODE provided by Imgur on the address bar it still brings me to the image that was uploaded on their website.

Another reason in favor of @joker_josue's talkimg.com hosting... Pretty much all my images are broken since I used imgur for everything.

Maybe theymos can do some magic on his proxy backend so it automatically changes imgur.com to imgur.io before fetching the image?

The problem is probably from imgur. Their site now automatically redirects from the old domain imgur.com to imgur.io

Not sure why the did this but yes indeed the images with the imgur.com link are not showing in the forum.

I just have noticed that too. All of my previously uploaded images are showing as invalid. I can't even access any of the images through the direct link. That's a mess. I don't even have access to most of the images. Damn!
Well, you can use talkimg.com as this is a dedicated hosting by community member joker jossue. I have been using the site for the last few days.

is it just me or posted images that were uploaded on Imgur, copied the BBcode in order to post here suddenly became "invalid"? this might be a dumb question, but anyone has any idea what was the reason for it?

sorry if the thread is unnecessary.