Imgur is going to be less strict about memes with adult humor

Memes on the image-hosting service Imgur "containing references to adult humor" will no longer be considered mature, the company announced in a post addressing changes to its content moderation policies.

Imgur has been an important part of meme history, with its creator making the service in 2009 as a "gift to Reddit." At that time, most platforms didn't host their own images, so you had to upload them instead on third-party platforms. I remember seeing Imgur a lot on the Something Awful forums back in the day, too, though following other policy changes last year that led to the removal of inactive content and pornography, users scrambled to save old images.

The changes announced this week could mean that you see spicier memes on the platform more easily. Under the previous rules, memes that were tagged as mature may not have been seen as often because users have to opt in to see mature content on Imgur.

Imgur is making the changes after it collected feedback about its content moderation over the course of this year, including that its policies, "especially surrounding mature content, feel inconsistently applied, too subjective, or just rather confusing as a whole," according to a post from Imgur product manager Martyn O'Neill. Now, mature content consists "solely of sexualised or 'lewd'" content.

Following the adjustments, O'Neill says that "warnings / post removals" are down nearly 35 percent month over month. Far fewer posts are being marked as mature as well; that stat has declined by almost 50 percent.