Imgur's compression is awful, and especially on mobile, has a ton of dark patterns for logged-off users or anyone not using their app.

Personally I'm using Instagram for casual "here's my life" photos where I don't care about compression or any of that, Flickr for more curated public photos, and Google Drive as a secondary private backup.

Imgur requires you to provide a valid mobile number in order to create an account.

Christ. It's strange to recall Imgur's genesis on Reddit as a simple, lightweight replacement for all the obstacles and mess that came with Imageshack/Photobucket/other popular image galleries at the time. Shame it eventually bloated into the thing it was meant to remedy.

Well it happened in two easy steps: 1. They took VC money, 2. Reddit cut the middleman and offered direct photo sharing.

At that point imgur became less about easy photo sharing on reddit and others, and more about creating its own community.