I think the author commented on this view in their FAQ:
> Listen, this is half service, half art project. I made it in two days because I needed one and Imgur is an embarrassing husk of its former self, and I had nothing better to do. If you're expecting professionalism, call Oracle and ask for a quote of Oracle Advanced Image Sharing for Hadoop or whatever crap they sell, IMGZ is awesome but what you see is what you get.
Because the customers know that "free" has a cost. That's the reason for this site's creation -- because if you're not the customer, you're the product. Free isn't the alternative that it might seem to be.
You know, this is an interesting question. The site makes it, I think, abundantly clear that I don't really care whether you use the site or not, I made it for me and you can use it if you pay for your resources. It's even open source and you can self-host if you want!
Yet people in the comments seem a bit offended at the perceived breaking of the unspoken assumption that a service can't exist without a need for customers. Merely asking the question "why should I trust you?" implies that I want you to trust me, which I don't.
I think it's very interesting how deeply culturally embedded the notion that a service wants customers is. It's so ingrained that we even don't believe that something can just exist without wanting us to use it.
To me, this kind of feels like you coming to my house, asking me whether you have some of my dinner, and when I say "yes but you need to pay me for the materials" you ask "why should I trust you with my money?".
> I think it's very interesting how deeply culturally embedded the notion that a service wants customers is.
By definition, a “service” is to serve. Even if you are the only “customer”, it’s still serving someone. And most people have this notion because most services do, in fact, serve other customers, and that’s their main purpose. Not sure why that’s surprising.
> I don't really care whether you use the site or not, I made it for me and you can use it if you pay for your resources.
Going through the effort to make this a publicly accessible service with copy explaining how to use it and what it costs, implies that you at least care enough to serve other customers to go through the effort to do that much.
That’s just one definition. According to Google and the Oxford dictionary, the first definition of a service is “the action of helping or doing work for someone”.
It does not need to involve customers or even be a business transaction.
Sure, but the OP is implying that this “service” is intended for himself primarily, without regard to anyone else consuming it; that it’s odd for “service” to imply it should be used by multiple consumers. When, in fact, most services exist for the consumption of multiple consumers.
Because the author isn't hiding who they are (there's literally a link to their personal page in the footer), he's a well-known HNer with some street cred, and he operates in Europe. We happen to have laws here. He's set himself up so that if he screwed with your CC, he'd find himself in jail faster than your bank could process the chargeback.
If your credit card data is stolen, you can reverse the charges and in the worst case get a new card, canceling the old one. You will be made whole very quickly. If your data is stolen, you have very little recourse. Honestly of all the things to be worried about, stolen credit card details is probably one of the least of my concerns. Besides, he's using a payment service where he doesn't even see the credit card details, so you wouldn't be sharing your credit card details, just a token for charging. And if he fraudulently charges the card, you reverse it. Your credit card details are still safe.
My personal data is worth a lot more to me than credit card details.
> Listen, this is half service, half art project. I made it in two days because I needed one and Imgur is an embarrassing husk of its former self, and I had nothing better to do. If you're expecting professionalism, call Oracle and ask for a quote of Oracle Advanced Image Sharing for Hadoop or whatever crap they sell, IMGZ is awesome but what you see is what you get.