I have never understood the recent trend toward pushing people to host images and videos on third-party sites. While it definitely saves the site owner on storage space, it also exposes a site such as this one to loss of an accurate historical record.
When so many posts rely on images and/or video as a substantial part of their content, having that possible "drop out" because an external hosting site closes up shop makes archival content anything from compromised to useless.
TH is certainly not the only site to do this. The cost of storage has done nothing but go down and down over time, yet most sites used to self-host this content, and now many don't.
I remember when one of the former major picture hosting sites decided that they were going to start charging all their users who had been putting stuff out there for years with them hosting for free. On several tech forums I'm on it was like an instant "historical black out" as those images were ripped out of all the posts in which they were used.
Not that I think I'll get it, but I do think that owners of sites such as this one really need to consider how pivotal both images and video are (and they already seem to know that) and that not having control over same by hosting it means that it can come and go at the will of others, which isn't good.
It would be nice if users could attach photos and/or video directly to messages rather than having to host them externally. Then having the option to display same inline in a message, if desired, would be helpful, too.
When so many posts rely on images and/or video as a substantial part of their content, having that possible "drop out" because an external hosting site closes up shop makes archival content anything from compromised to useless.
TH is certainly not the only site to do this. The cost of storage has done nothing but go down and down over time, yet most sites used to self-host this content, and now many don't.
I remember when one of the former major picture hosting sites decided that they were going to start charging all their users who had been putting stuff out there for years with them hosting for free. On several tech forums I'm on it was like an instant "historical black out" as those images were ripped out of all the posts in which they were used.
Not that I think I'll get it, but I do think that owners of sites such as this one really need to consider how pivotal both images and video are (and they already seem to know that) and that not having control over same by hosting it means that it can come and go at the will of others, which isn't good.
It would be nice if users could attach photos and/or video directly to messages rather than having to host them externally. Then having the option to display same inline in a message, if desired, would be helpful, too.