Seeking Image Host Recs

[soc_puppet]

Let's face it: I love Dreamwidth, but it's going to be a long time before it has image hosting interface that a lot of former Tumblr users, or new web users in general, are going to find intuitive. I've got a tutorial for it on my to-do list, but in the mean time, we have another problem:

Free accounts only get 500 MB of storage; regular paid accounts get 1.5 GB, and premium paid accounts get 3 GB, but there are artists out there who will absolutely blow right through that amount of storage in short order. On top of that, it doesn't allow hotlinking of images anywhere.

Dreamwidth happily hosts and defends NSFW content, and has a history of stability to boot, but for a lot of artists out there, that's not enough to go on.

So what are the other options out there? tesscodes goes over some in a fair amount of detail here, and elyusion summarizes some not in the previous post here; meanwhile, a Tumblr user suggested Amazon's s3 as a hosting option, pointing out that, since a lot of businesses use it for legal stuff, it's unlikely to be scraped for AI, but, like Google Docs, doesn't really do hotlinking. (Separately, I'm also going to add that Neocities allows hotlinking with a paid account, but doesn't encourage it.)

Do you know of any others? Can you recommend one in particular, either from the posts linked above or that you know of otherwise? Please share in the comments so we can get some solid recommendations!

Comments

[22degreehalo]

I don't know much about image hosting but I've seen a few NSFW artists using Imgchest!

[mxroboto]

I've been using squidge, as I dig their mission statement of preserving fandom -- including NSFW. :) They've also made a commitment to prevent AI scrapers.

[22degreehalo]

On the other hand, they also ban *all* AI-generated art and text, which I personally find extremely concerning. For an archive which claims to host *all* kinds of fandom-related objectionable content, censorship of any kind is a huge red flag to me.

[soc_puppet]

I'm going to cut in here really quick and say: I am not prepared to host a debate on the relative merits of fanworks generated by ChatGPT and other LLMs in this post. The fact that Squidge doesn't allow such works is important information that deserved to be shared so that people can make an informed decision about whether or not to use it as a host: Whether it's a point in favor, a point against, or simply a complicating factor is up to each individual to decide for themself.

If someone wants to start their own post on their own journal or on a different fandom community about generative AI, I welcome them to do so, but I'm not going to deal with it here and now. Any attempts to discuss the morals of the situation will be frozen and/or deleted, and attempts to get around a comment freeze or deletion will result in said account being blocked from responding to any of my posts.

Sorry to bring things down all of a sudden, but I wanted to get ahead of any potential wank here. It's a serious subject that a lot of people have very strong opinions about, and I'd rather keep this post focused on the pros and cons of various image hosts in general, not a debate about Gen AI.

[22degreehalo]

Understandable. As it was a reply to a comment of mine, and as I've seen Squidge recommended a few times on DW, I just didn't feel comfortable not at least bringing up.

[soc_puppet]

Completely fair! As I said, it's still important information, whatever side of the Gen AI debate you fall on. The thought of accidentally ending up hosting another round of said debate in one of my own posts about a completely different topic just made imaginary sirens go off in my head 😅

[zavodilaterrarium]

Can't particularly speak to whether it's a good choice, but I've been using Notion to host my images (5MB limit per file on free plan). They do have AI features but claim to not use any of your data for training unless you opt in/actively use the AI. You can host the images by publishing the pages you create. You can upload, as far as I can tell, pretty much infinite files as long as the "workspace" only has you as "admin/member", or you pay (I would not recommend a paid plan unless you take full advantage of the other features).

As for hosting NSFW:

Graphic and harmful content. Content that is graphically violent, obscene, sexually explicit, promoting self-harm, terrorist activity, misinformation, or posing a threat to the public is not allowed. This restriction applies to both private and public content.

[soc_puppet]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that NSFW hosting is going to be the make-or-break for a lot of users. I can imagine some users would be willing to host all of their NSFW stuff on Dreamwidth only and rely on a separate site for their SFW stuff, but it would also make things a bit more complicated for them. (Also, I love Dreamwidth, but their image hosting is. Not great. I'm pretty sure a lot of users would prefer to just host everything somewhere that isn't Dreamwidth over hosting just some on Dreamwidth and some elsewhere.)

Still, it's good to have another option for the list! Thanks 👍