Imgur's NSFW policy

Let me just start off by saying I've been using Imgur for almost 6 full years now. I freaking love(ed) this website. So simple, and the best part is you guys as a community. Compared to other sites of similar nature, you guys have to have some of the best users ever. People I feel like I can connect to very easily. We have so many inside jokes, so many creative (and not so creative) people at our hands. And although there's always going to be assholes on the internet, it feels like we band together much more than others.

Now if I may continue on with my focus here, Imgur is an INTERNET website. As in, the same league as 9gag, Facebook, Tubmlr, 4Chan, Reddit, and many many other websites. Regulations are low on the internet as a whole, so companies of websites create their own regulations to make people happy. But guess what? These regulations are fine on most of these websites.
Wanna post a picture of your tits and vag, with a buttplug in your hole? Reddit will allow it right there, extremely easily. Just go to one of their subreddits that ONLY people who have requested access to, get access to, and have agreed that they are 18 and over. No one sees it unless they want to. You have to seek it out to turn it on and it is not accessible defaultly.

This level of content management controlled by the user is one of the reasons that websites like this are so popular. You subscribe only to what you want to see, and that's all you'll see.

"Mature" filter.

Imgur has a strict "no-nudity" policy on their website. And we get that. But as consumers of their website, users were upset at the control they had (or didn't have).

Front Page (especially User Submitted) had/has a lot of content on there that could have, and probably has, offended people in many ways. Whether you're at work, at school, maybe your kid is watching you scroll through Imgur, maybe you're underage so you know you shouldn't be looking at "mature" content.

So Imgur created this filter where, if you go into your settings and turn it off, via USER'S DISCRETION you will see content marked as "mature" by submitters.

So they listened to us. Sort of. Not really.

So you would think now; "Finally they listened to us! We can post 'MATURE' content without worrying about people seeing it if they don't want to!"

Wrong.

When I heard about this change in the settings, I immediately turned it on. I did not want my content filtered out because of any reason.

At first everything was ok, but then things started to turn. People would post pictures of nude women, and although to the AVERAGE HUMAN BEING, that would be considered "MATURE", Imgur was deleting these posts and BANNING the users who posted them. Although somewhat reasonable to their unreasonable policy, it doesn't stop there.

Let's go back a bit more. For as long as I've had an account on Imgur, I have had no qualms with posting a source to, for example, a girl *about* to pull her top off, but it cuts right before then. Humans are curious creatures, even if it's just a pair of boobs, the unknown is just something we want to know, so I like to satisfy people's curiosity. Upon doing so, I always make sure to give information of what the content is, if it isn't clearly laid out. At some point in the past, Imgur implemented this system;

NSFW.

Imgur added in a "NSFW link" notification. After implementing one of the best ideas in Imgur history, hover previews for links; they soon after made it possible to mark these links as "NSFW". You simply had to say "nsfw" in you comment, and whatever link you post, will be marked as nsfw, and the popup will be disabled and replaced by a notification saying "nsfw link". The tag was so sensitive, that even if a person had a *username* with the letters "nsfw" in it, and responded to a comment with a link, it'd mark that link as "nsfw".

Back when I used Imgur a lot more, I would use the hell out of this feature, to let people know what they're getting into. You can't lay it out any more straightforward than that. Flash forward to now, things started changing even more than they already were.

Now people who post comments, DEEP within a chain of people talking about porn and porn actresses, and butt plugs, and Two-Tone-Malone, someone will post a link to a picture of a pornstar, and mark it as "NSFW". These comments, which you have to go onto a "MATURE" post, go through a chain of "MATURE" comments to get to this single little NSFW link, would be removed by Imgur, and if "repeated" could get the user banned.

Imgur.

Just like fans of a car company, or fans of say, PewDiePie, or Justin Bieber, we love this friggin website. But not all of us can take shit and sit around and do nothing about it.

Your MAIN contender is Reddit. You're pretty much injected into Reddit, you were originally just some crappy slow image host service for some people on Reddit to use. But you've grown into a contender of Reddit. I made a Reddit account years ago, and did NOT like my time there. The community is so so so toxic, and the layout of the website was too complicated for me to wrap my head around. So I stayed here with these awesome members of the community.
But the time is coming and going. These restrictions that are pretty much controlled by a minority-opinion are really starting to aggravate your loving users.

Over the past few months, I've watched people complain how they are so restricted on what they can do here, and the end all solution is usually to go to Reddit and do their business there, since it more tailors to us as single people, instead of us generalized.

We are on the internet. If any single person who can access this website and Google, they have the same access to porn in the world. It could take me a quarter of a second to google image search "boobs" and get bare naked breasts. Yet while still on this website, we're all treated like we're all the same age.

People will go deep into comments and seek out links of "mature" content, and report them. And Imgur (smells a lot like YouTube's "copyright" solutions) just deletes them without a blink. I've been doing this for years and years, and have never felt fear of getting banned for posting a single link. Now I am scared some ridiculous person coming over and getting my COMMENT deleted, and getting me banned for doing something I've been doing on this website for years and years.

You put in a "mature" filter. Let us people who are actually mature post "mature" content on it. Not everyone on here is 10 years old. Other websites work fine with an actual "mature" section on it, with no issues at all.

We don't want to leave, but if our experience isn't good on our terms, then we have no reason to stay anymore. We're growing up. Maybe it's time for you to grow up, Imgur.

FP EDIT (1:38PM EST): Well. That's not exactly what I thought would happen but thank you all for reading! This has been on my mind for quite some time. Glad to get it off my chest and get a lot of others to see it. I'd like to clear up a few things while I make this edit here;
"Mature" does NOT only equal porn. I know that, I said it in one of my comments that got buried. Although "Mature" DOES include nudity. If you ask the average person what consists of "Mature" nudity most definitely be one of the examples they give.
A MAJOR issue in this whole ordeal is that people posting COMMENTS are getting banned. Simple comments that ALREADY have a warning before you click them, are still getting people banned.
Another MAJOR issue is the rules are being bent by the users. A LOT of NON-NUDE posts are being marked as mature, but are still being taken down, and getting people banned.
Again, this is an issue that is causing a lot of problems with a lot of your users. Again, thank you all for reading.
I'll try and see what happens after I get back today after my second job. Thank you all for the comments! Please try not to overlook anything. Look at all the points with an open mind, and please do not simply go "oh he just wants porn". That is so far from the point that it hurts me to see people coming with that conclusion.

FP EDIT 2 (2:20PM EST): Welp. Looks like I've been banned for 24 hours. I was about to make a comment saying that if this happens to me, then I am done using this site. I'll let it slide for now, but this is still ridiculous. Can't even comment on my own post. What the actual hell...

FP EDIT 3 (8:43PM EST): Yeah I can't comment. So I'm sorry if I abruptly stopped responding, I can't help it. Ironic how my issue I'm talking about bites me in the ass as I'm trying to make a difference. My patience is running quite thin, Imgur. PM me if you want to discuss further!

FP EDIT 4 (9:18PM EST): I am EXTREMELY sorry for not explaining my ban. I made the edit quickly and I was still upset from the ban, and was trying to hurry up and get ready for work while still having access to a computer. I *DID NOT GET BANNED FROM THIS POST*. I simply did what I explained I do in my post; I posted a source to satisfy my fellow imgurians' curiosity. *MY ISSUE* with what happened there, is that I forgot to tag my links as "NSFW". I posted two links to two different people, which caused both of them to be deleted at the same time, causing the ban immediately. THAT BEING SAID. Even IF I DID mark my links as "NSFW", they would still be deleted. Which is a major issue in my opinion.
Thank you all, and I am so very sorry for not clarifying.