Reddit Removes Reliance on Imgur With New Image Upload Tool

After years of an unwritten alliance with image sharing site Imgur, user-curated social news website Reddit is rolling out its own image uploading tool. It will initially be made available in 16 select communities, and 50 more next week, the company said on a thread on its website.

"For a long time, other image hosting services have been an integral part of how content is shared on Reddit - we're grateful to those teams, but are looking forward to bringing you a more seamless experience with this new feature," a member of Reddit's product team, Andy, wrote in the post.

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The new tool will allow users to upload any type of images up to 20MB in size, and animated gifs up to 100MB without having to submit a link. By comparison, Imgur allows 20MB images and 200MB gifs. People who see your image can click on it - either on the front page, in a subreddit or on anyone's profile - to be directly taken to the thread it was posted in. And if you use any of Reddit's official mobile apps, you will be able to see gifs without having to "leave the app", the post noted.

The new image upload tool is already supported in the following communities: GetMotivated, EarthPorn, Gaming, Space, OldSchoolCool, Sports, Art, Aww, Dataisbeautiful, Food, Funny, Gifs, mildlyinteresting, movies, photoshopbattles, and pics.

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Since the files will now be hosted directly on Reddit, the site's standard content policies will apply to it, which also means a lot more work. If what you're uploading is illegal, involuntary pornography, encourages or incites violence, threatens, harasses or bullies people, contains confidential information, impersonates someone in a misleading or deceptive fashion, or is spam, Reddit has the authority to remove it.

Reddit is currently the 28th most visited site in the world, according to Alexa metrics, and Imgur comes in at 47th. While the rollout will be slow, it will be interesting to see if the new tool affects traffic to Imgur.