News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps. Parent comment

Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by everdrive on Saturday June 03, 2023 @08:37PM (#36181891)
>If you're seeing this message, that means JavaScript has been disabled on your browser, please enable JS to make Imgur work.

But why would I need javascript to view a JPG?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by arcanemachiner on Saturday June 03, 2023 @08:49PM (#36181952)
1. Because their design is bad.

2. Because the number of people who disable JavaScript is a rounding error.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by superkuh on Saturday June 03, 2023 @08:55PM (#36181976)
Reddit's image hosting implemented blocking direct linking to image files and started substituting an HTML-ish page like imgur does a few months back. After much complaint they actually fixed it so that the image in the hijacked URL's HTML is a real image tag (<img src="ht..) with a real URL to the image file. For a while it had been a javascript defined custom html element (web components) instead of an <img>.

So at least they did that right. imgur has been failing hard at this for ~5+ years.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by sublinear on Saturday June 03, 2023 @09:00PM (#36182009)
Their design is to control how the uploaded images are accessed and minimize the load on the backend.

They don't want hotlinking so the image data doesn't have a permanent url. They only want the backend to be responsible for sending image data. This then requires an image viewer written in javascript. This is not a bad design. This is fulfilling business requirements successfully and efficiently.

EDIT: efficient for the business not for your browser

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by Amezarak on Saturday June 03, 2023 @09:19PM (#36182094)
It doesn't just require Javascript to load the image, it requires Javascript from 13 different domains (thanks, NoScript.)

- imgur.com

- btloader.com

- ccgateway.net

- cloudflare

- facebook

- google analytics

- media-lab.ai

- sascdn.com

- scorecardresearch

- stretchsquirrel

- amazon adsystem

- assembly exchange

- run.app

3 of these, imgur, cloudflare, and medialab appear to be the minimum to load the image, and also seems to make everything on the page work (upvoting, commenting, etc.)

I don't think it's efficiency even on their end they're looking for, its tracking and revenue maximization. Which is the reason I block Javascript.

EDIT: actually it seems like you just need imgur and medialab unblocked, so just 2 of the 13.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by sublinear on Saturday June 03, 2023 @09:37PM (#36182188)
> I don't think it's efficiency even on their end they're looking for, its tracking and revenue maximization.

These are not mutually exclusive. In fact both these things are the whole point.

> EDIT: actually it seems like you just need imgur and medialab unblocked, so just 2 of the 13.

Yeah exactly.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't let Reddit kill 3rd party apps by 3np on Sunday June 04, 2023 @12:13AM (#36183030)
You don't.

https://rimgo.pussthecat.org/3yEJ4oX.jpg

https://codeberg.org/video-prize-ranch/rimgo

[ Parent | on HN ]