It has come to my attention ImageShack is replacing deleted images with advertisements without the knowledge of the person who originally posted the image, in some threads that date back to the start of the current forum in 2009. ImageShack used to be a popular option for many forumers here, but anonymous uploading ended on 7 November 2013, and switched to a subscription-only model on 17 January 2014. Since around August 2015, ImageShack quietly started replacing deleted embedded images with advertising. And example of the tactic that ImageShack is now using is shown below:
Examples of affected posts:
- viewtopic.php?p=12190947#p12190947
- viewtopic.php?p=12898990#p12898990
- viewtopic.php?p=19349414#p19349414
This issue has been raised at other websites, such as StackExchange (http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions ... dvertising), as well as MathOverflow (http://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/ ... ad-banners).
Just to clarify that ImageShack used to be a respectable destination for image uploading before this happened, with many users using the service without ever knowing that ImageShack would do this.
I was thinking about suggesting that ImageShack links be blocked, but the situation has been made complicated by the fact that there are around 100,000 posts in this forum with ImageShack links, embedded or not, and there are still new posts with ImageShack images, but if any forumer decides to delete their ImageShack account later, then the deleted images would be replaced by adverts like this.
How should we approach this?
I have good faith belief that Technical is the category of best fit because it may require techincal intervention if it is decided that ImageShack links should be blocked, or at least, not parsed.