Imgur: Funny Memes & GIF Maker 12+

For several years now, the app has been progressively getting wide and worse. It’s too the point bias that regardless of the device I’m on, I have maybe 5 minutes before the app stutters and crashes. That entire time it’s making my devices burning hot and draining battery like nothing else I’ve ever used. That’s when I’m not getting punted to external sites or the App Store by increasing intrusive ads. The app is simply unusable, and over the course of YEARS it’s clear Imgur is either incapable or unwilling to provide its users (and their ad revenue) with a usable app experience. Even using their website, it’s nothing but crashes and hangs and failures to load, when ad loading doesn’t jerk the page location around almost continually. I’m not sure what Imgur’s aversion is to not tormenting their monetary base, but it’s ridiculous and a wholly broken model. And now they want us to buy paid subscriptions? Why should anyone pay a single penny for something you can’t even access without hours of frustration and a dead battery in an hour? This is simply a complete failure of an app, and a complete failure of a company to provide any kind of reasonable user experience.

I look at imgur for images not for comments. If I want comments I’ll look at reddit. The problem with the mobile app is that each post is cluttered with other annoying and unwanted information such as comments, links, and tags and there is an unwanted toolbar persistent at the bottom of the screen. The result is that only 50% of the screen is dedicated to the actual image. Also, on the website, if you click the ‘view more’ button, it expands the the additional posts inline. The app takes you to a different page, requiring going back and forth a lot. Personally I hate this and much prefer the contiguous browsing experience of the website.
All in the app provides an very unpleasant image viewing experience.

As an aside, that you can no longer hide the ‘view in app’ button on the mobile website is pretty effing obnoxious. How bout this- make the app better than the website, catering to my and I assume others desire to view images more fluidly.

Let’s just start off by saying it’s no longer what it used to be. I joined imgur in 2014 after a year or so of lurking. Imgur was in its prime, constant newly shared content, memes, etc. The point based system was addicting and trying to share new and funny things to connect with the community was exciting. Eventually though, it strayed away from being an exciting, open and accepting community to one of a single purpose, “you’re either with us or against us, you either agree with us, or we’re going to erase you from the platform.” I’m not talking about the developers and creators, I’m talking about the community. The community has essentially destroyed what imgur once was. These days imgur is strictly about politics and making sure you’re on their side and you agree with their policies more so than about connecting people and sharing content. If you join imgur I suggest staying off the front page as it is full of anger, hatred and vitriol, if you disagree with someone they will make sure others attack you for what you believe in. Imgur is no longer an accepting community, but a haven for rude and insensitive people looking to tear down whatever it is you believe in.