TIL non-paying members don't know imgur exists.

What are you going on about?

I find that disturbing

This reason makes sense and is logical.

Particularly since the boob's name is "Bob".  

Literally every other forum let's you post pictures whether you have a membership or not... It's a cash grab and you damn well know it

First rule in boob club....

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Conveniences are there to encourage people to become paying members and add value to those who do.

We are better than you.

@BabaYaga777

Again, respectfully: Brownell's is a business and has a moral obligation to provide the highest financial return on their investment as possible, not only for investors, but also for their employees.

Can you define what you mean by "cash grab?"

By definition, if the financial cost of membership or your cost in time sunk viewing ads weren't deemed by both of us to be a fair trade for entertainment, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

What am I missing?

You can but it's alot more work.

It's the same reason why you can't tag threads or see the recent threads you posted in with the green taggy thing:

They make using the site more difficult so you pay.
Bad model IMO.

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That's like saying automakers don't include cruise control and power windows in base model cars to deliberately make their vehicles less comfortable to use.
It's a service, and like any tiered service, different levels come at different prices with more or less convenience or performance depending on how much you feel like paying.  I started out as a non-paying member, moved up to bronze, and then eventually up to gold because I liked the added features and they were worth the extra $ for me.  Nobody twisted my arm (in fact I believe that's discouraged) to buy or bump up my membership.  Actually I think it's kinda nice that you can choose a level that fits your own budget - even if your budget is $0.

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That’s because you storing the photo on the website.

Gotta pay to have your own slice of the web server for image storing.

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Many other website give these features away for free to make the site more friendly to use.

This site doesn't.

They make that up in donations or ads.

I've never understood why people on here think non-paying members couldn't post images. I did it many times before I became a paying member. Maybe you can't upload images, but you can surely post them. All you need is a link and to click the Image icon in the menu at the top of the message box when you reply.

It's not rocket surgery.

You are a hero to the poors.

I am on another forum that i don't pay to be on. I have an avatar, there are no ads, the forum hosts pics for me, I can follow threads, and I can say code words and post memes in their "GD".

I never see any ads here. Never had a membership.

Waste of sight resources.

Site resources, leech.

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To deprive the paying members?
They can host my ass.

They don't have enough bandwidth for that.

So, let's say a person participated in a forum as a non-paying member and wanted to post pics of a how-to project that was useful and of interest to others.  So, they host the images on their own, create a post that generates traffic to the site and let's say becomes popular.  Could be a how to for a mod for a gun, a how to on fixing the suspension on a vehicle, a how to on making something, whatever.  Then a few months or a year later, that person is participating in another forum and goes in and clears photos from their free hosting site to make room for something else and then all the photos from their original post are gone.  Then, people searching for the topic still hit on the post, but it is pretty much useless because the pics are all just red x's.

It happens on a lot of forums as people come and go and it can be a real bummer for a person that was looking for the info only to find a useless post with no photos.  It may not be a huge issue here, but it is at other forums and makes the experience rather poor if it happens a lot.

Although it is easy enough to work around it, some people will just choose not to jump that hurdle and may not post something of interest also.  I am pretty sure a big part of revenues are ad revenues and if you don't keep users engaged and aren't increasing users or at least maintaining them, ad revenues will eventually suffer, so I guess there is that aspect.  I don't care either way what a site does, but the big picture part of it isn't all that hard to see (unless it was hosted on a third party site and subsequently deleted).