The Ephemeric

Recent visitors to this website from the UK may have experienced ghastly images that look similar to the above. Those visitors may still encounter similar issues if they track back to older posts on this website, and no doubt will also have seen similar errors on other websites such as Steam and various social media. Let me explain what is happening and how it affects this website.

When you see an image on a website, that image is being hosted somewhere. Larger companies and websites will likely be doing their own hosting, but smaller websites and, in particular, social media and blog posts will often be using third party hosting services instead. Imgur.com is one of the most prominent of these third party platforms, among the top 20 most trafficked websites globally, hosting images for users all over the world.

On 30 September 2025, Imgur decided to block all users based in the United Kingdom from accessing their website, cutting off access to an estimated 8-10 million of users. As for this website, The Ephemeric has generally moved away from Imgur in recent years due to issues displaying images when articles are posted elsewhere on social media, but many older articles and, as you can see from the above image, background graphics were still using this site for hosting. Now, your initial reaction may be, "Well that's pretty shitty of Imgur." But in actual fact, they have good reason for doing this.

The issue here is in relation to a relatively new piece of UK legislation, The Online Safety Act, passed by the previous Conservative Government and implemented by the current Labour one. On the surface, this legislation attempts some things that sound worthwhile, such as giving the state the ability to find and suppress online content that could be harmful to children. In reality though, its implementation has drawn criticism from academics and industry experts for its impact on privacy, censorship, and questions over whether it actually accomplishes anything through all its new restrictions.

Most pertinent to the current situation is the fact that the legislation places onerous requirements on websites to verify and track user data. Suffice it to say, the ease of use and sharing of information is central to much of the Internet as we know it, and locking content behind onerous and oppressive registration requirements is bad for business, as well as the consumer experience. Imgur evidently looked at this requirement and decided they would rather lose the UK market than bother complying.

Personally, I don't blame them at all, and sadly I suspect this is only the beginning. People living in the UK are going to have to get used to losing access to online services and content in the coming years. Unless major changes are made to this legislation, I fully expect that many other businesses will reach the same conclusion as Imgur, that it simply isn't worth the trouble. 

And you know what is the worst thing about all of this? It's that Farage and Reform are the only politicians in the UK actually taking the correct position on this in calling out this stupid legislation. I hate that. I hate that Reform are the only people talking sense on this topic. I implore the other parties in Westminster to wake up and do better, lest we end up with a Government of far right nut jobs in 4 years' time.

As for what can be done about it? Right now not much, other than complaining to your MP and applying pressure to those in power. As for this website, I have updated all the background graphics to be hosted elsewhere, but frankly I am not going to bother going back through all the historic articles on this website in order to migrate those images over. I feel bad for my UK-based readers, but don't blame me, blame your Government.