Imgur Is About to Wipe a Ton of Porn From the Internet

Imgur, an image hosting site that’s known for hosting much of the adult content that’s posted to Reddit, will soon ban all nudity or sexually explicit content.

According to a post on Imgur’s site, the update to the Terms of Service banning adult content will go into effect on May 15, 2023. Imgur will not only stop users from uploading new adult content, but will also focus on removing years worth of nudity, pornography, and sexually explicit content from its site. 

“You will need to download/save any images that you wish to save if they no longer adhere to these Terms. Most notably, this would include explicit/pornographic content,” Imgur said in its post. 

The company added that it will scrub adult content from the site using automated tools as well as human moderators. 

“However, we will need to employ automated detection software to assist in identifying explicit content,” Imgur said. We are aware of the limitations and issues with using automated detection means exclusively, so we will continue to use human moderators alongside automated detection.”

Imgur is probably best known to most people online as the site where many Reddit users host images. These can be anything from memes, to DIY projects, and countless of pornographic images and gifs on Reddit’s many adult communities catering to an endless variety of fetishes. 

The policy change brings Imgur’s Terms of Service inline with its “Community Guidelines.” In 2019, Imgur stopped supporting NSFW subreddits, age gated adult content, and made it “hidden,” but did not remove any adult content or prevent people from posting it. 

The new terms of service explaining what specifically is no longer allowed on Reddit appear strict compared to other online platforms, and especially compared to Imgur’s previously lenient policy. Starting May 15, Imgur will no longer allow:

• the gratuitous or explicit display of breasts, butts, and sexual organs intended to stimulate erotic feelings
• full or partial nudity
• any depiction of sexual activity, explicit or implied (drawings, print, animated, human, or otherwise)
• any image taken of or from someone without their knowledge or consent for the purpose of sexualization
• solicitation (the uninvited act of directly requesting sexual content from another person, or selling/offering explicit content and/or adult services)

Reddit communities for adult content can easily transition to other image hosting sites moving forward (RedGifs.com is another popular service in those communities already), but the Imgur policy change will in theory erase years of adult content from the web. Much of that content is stolen from adult performers, but also includes images and gifs posted by creators themselves to promote their OnlyFans, ManyVids, and other monetizable channels.

Imgur is the latest of multiple platforms in recent years that are cracking down on pornographic content. Last year, popular link sharing service Linktree started banning links to sex work sites, and sex workers reported increasingly losing their accounts on Reddit—which is typically a sex-friendly social network. Tumblr had a thriving user base that sought out and interacted with adult content before banning it all in 2018; in 2022, it brought back nudity, but not pornography. Even porn sites are increasingly viewing porn as a risk, in a cultural climate where conservative and right-wing zealots demand they be debanked and shut down entirely; in 2021, Onlyfans announced that it would stop allowing explicit content because of the discrimination it faced from financial institutions as a business, but reversed the decision after public outcry. And in 2020, after losing Mastercard, Visa, and Discover as payment processors, Pornhub purged all unverified content from its platform.

In its announcement of the change, Imgur called porn bad for business. “Explicit and illegal content have historically posed a risk to Imgur's community and its business, disallowing explicit content will allow Imgur to address these risks and protect the future of the Imgur community,” it said.

“We understand that these changes may be disruptive to Imgurians who have used Imgur to store their images and artwork,” Imgur said. “These changes are an important step in Imgur’s continued efforts to remain a safe and fun space on the internet.”

The post ended with a gif of a happy puppy.