Mole people! Yeah, at some point the disconnect between the two populations resulted in losing track of history. I just remember browsing the drama and chuckling at the sheer indignation towards Redditors treating Imgur as their personal image hosting site. Redditors got to feel superior after discovering that Imgur existed to serve them, and Imgurians(?) got to experience the horror of learning that the world was not what they thought it was.
There was a surprising amount of confusion on both sides.
Huh I always wondered why the images I uploaded to imgur were always downvoted for some reason. Now it makes a lot more sense, because I was just using it as an image host for Reddit threads.
Should I feel bad about it?
Nah, that was it’s purpose. It’s like the pantry getting mad that you keep putting flour in it. That said there was more of a divergence once Reddit started hosting media directly and Imgur essentially gained its independence, so maybe they’re more aggressively anti-hosting content these days.
I guess you could always mark everything private so it only shows up by following the link, but I was already out of touch a decade ago when it came to the Imgur community, so I’m basically just a random bystander at this point.