Enshittification

Apr 17, 2026 4:29 PM

Used to be I could just search the bar at the top of the homepage to find memes and images, now it will only show specific posts, tags and users and supports no form of generalized search.

tl;dr: I used to be able to find memes easily here, now I have to upload my own copy of everything, this blows.

FUBD

bad_ui

fubd

imgur

"now" ?

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Imgur has a search bar?

5 months ago | Likes 10 Dislikes 0

What's even funnier: the "GIF search" in the comments doesn't even search their own database! It searches the shitty GIPHY one! https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1NDFjZWx1cm53bHNxd3ZiMDV3OThncGc5ZXVpeXlsNmw4dTZnODd6byZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/pZjopwPkisHbG/200w.webp

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

You gotta love when enshitification hits a point where people will reminisce about a previous version that was also complete shit.

5 months ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

5 months ago | Likes 23 Dislikes 0

TIL people have actually been using the search bar at all. I've been here 10 years and it's never been worth using.

5 months ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

I legit forgot it even existed. I just use Google with "site:imgur.com"

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Now?

5 months ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

NOW?

No, it's been fucked up for years.

You have to search on tags. It won't let you search openly on titles. So guess what? If an image or video wasn't tagged... can't find it. But wait. It gets WORSE! Even if it's tagged, results show older, irrelevant posts first. You can't even qualify it by user. Like... YOUR OWN POSTS. It's so broken. Ridiculous. Even Google searches on Imgur are lousy. Terrible internal indexing.

5 months ago | Likes 13 Dislikes 1

The search bar works better on old imgur on desktop.

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Yes they somehow found a way to make it even worse than before.

5 months ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

I assume now the search bar just replies with "Go fuck your self."

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Now?..

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Now? I've literally have never found an image I was looking for with the search function. If I really want something I need to use google to search imgur which is mostly successful.

5 months ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Always did.

5 months ago | Likes 42 Dislikes 0

But it's even worse than before! A new feature!

5 months ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

It won't let me add the tags I want either

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Enshittification

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Mixed it for business daddy

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

5 months ago | Likes 32 Dislikes 1

where erf?

5 months ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Round wet rock, single moon, overpopulated w tribal primates who always have nukes pointed at eacnothet? Yeah, I've heard of it.

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

That's really cool! If you made it, you should incorporate the raised gun from the GIF above (arm up, arm down, repeat).

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

There is a search bar?

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I switch back to classic Imgur on my laptop whenever I want to do a real search. It simply doesn’t work in Beta, but search still functions in old Imgur.

5 months ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

How do you switch back?

5 months ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

click on your about, posts, or comments page and the "use old design" option will show up on the lower right corner of the screen

5 months ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0

Got it. Thanks!

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Always has

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Stop using the app. You can't block ads on it, the search sucks, it constantly resets to the latest post.

Stop. Using. The. App.

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I'm on desktop. You're still right, but I'm on desktop.

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

In my 10 years on this website I dont think I have EVER used it lol

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

All search functions seem to suck right now. Ebay, youtube, Facebook Market. Can't find a damn thing.

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

[Mitch Hedberg voice] It also sucked before, but it sucks now ... too.

5 months ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

It has always sucked. Don't expect to find anything you've seen before unless you favorited it.

5 months ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 1

which of a image site is crazy. how many dupes exist because someone reuploaded something they could not find.

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

It’s probably at least a third of their storage space, I’d estimate.

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

You'll generally have better luck prefixing a google image search with "site:imgur.com"

5 months ago | Likes 33 Dislikes 0

And when that doesn't work, copy paste " site:imgur.com" several times so google gets the hint.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Yep it's not like they haven't enshittified Google too.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

That's all I've ever done. I don't think I've ever used to look anything up other than tags or the number of users with "elbowdeep" in their username

5 months ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

And even then it sucks ass. You click thoguh to imgur from the search results and it serves a different page.

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Did it EVER work?

5 months ago | Likes 243 Dislikes 3

I haven't used it in years. Bc, if you searched something in 1 tab, all other tabs would change to showing results,instead of usersub-rising

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

For a long time it did this weird thing where no matter what I searched for on imgur it would show me a picture of Lady Gaga with a gimbal on her head.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Yeah like maybe a year or so ago I’ve been having these issues since late 2024

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

No!

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

You can sorta kinda maybe find something you are looking for if it is real popular.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

THIS!!

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Ive used it twice. Both times the results were like a chimp shit in its hand, wiped it on a tesla, and lit it on fire. Nothing remotely close to what a normal site search should return.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

So while we're talking about things on site not working... is it weird to anyone that in a browser, if you search a tag you don't get all the things in that tag sometimes but you do on mobile?

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Exactly!

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

It didn't always suck this bad, there was a change made about 1+ years ago that made it nearly useless. I've been turning to search engines with "site: imgur.com" to turn up Imgur content instead of using the site's search bar. I can't figure out what site dev are fucking doing, they must know that it's broken AF but haven't either fixed it or restored the last verison.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Old version is... Betterish. I always switch to do a search and get a functional image link. I'm just gonna say it- new version is only good for long comments, and that's it.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Well yes and no, it was bad before, but they also managed to make it far worse.

5 months ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

5 months ago | Likes 41 Dislikes 2

In windows 7

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

It sucks now. But it sucked in the past too, just less.

5 months ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

It worked better up until 2021.

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Nope, it really didn't. At least looking back as far as 2016, it never worked well. Unless you searched for something by its EXACT tags, you would not find it, ever. It is admittedly way worse now, but it was never anything approaching 'good'.

5 months ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

From what I remember, it used to be better a _long_ time ago. That said, I'm a web user. I don't have the app, so I'm missing all kinds of fuckery that happens there.

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

5 months ago | Likes 10 Dislikes 1

For your collection:

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

It used to suck too

5 months ago | Likes 23 Dislikes 1

Hi, Mitch

5 months ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

Flattery will get you everywhere

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Yes. Looong ago it had a search results page that included several more fields you could fill in that would exclude words, match all words, match any word, etc... It was still only able to search titles and tags, but it worked WAY better than the current one.

5 months ago | Likes 11 Dislikes 0

I have always had better results going to google and searching " site:imgur.com"

5 months ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

You could specify jpegs or GIFs and you could edit the bar up top to get it to do MP4s.

5 months ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

Probably removed those features to “streamline” or in other words, dumb it down.

Just like forums back in the day often had WYSIWYG editors for your posts. Now we get absolutely nothing. It’s still possible to format text to some degree but you gotta know the secret ways of ASCII rather than just click a button from the interface to appease the “many buttons scawwyy…” crowd.

5 months ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Not in my experience. Imgur and giphy searches suck ass almost always. I have to type imgur searches into Google to find what I'm looking for.

5 months ago | Likes 73 Dislikes 1

Okay phew im not the only one.

5 months ago | Likes 16 Dislikes 0

Dozensofus.gif. I couldn’t find the actual gif /s

5 months ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Giphy has gone to absolute shit. You used to be able to find gifs that were somewhat relatable to the text. Now it looks like "let's search every gif with every word"

5 months ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 0

That’s what happens when you’re bought by Meta. 🤷‍♂️

5 months ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Unfortunately google is only marginally better. Even using the "site:imgur" tag google's image search will yield mostly results from other websites.

5 months ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

Not only that, but a lot of them are dead Yarn links.

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

I haven’t experienced that when I use “site:imgur.com”. It returns far too few, but it’s usually from here.

5 months ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0