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Advice needed: image host service (DMCA/abuse) + storage provider options
Hey all, been a while since I posted here.
So a bit of background, me and a few friends run resource stuff for Minecraft servers (configs, builds, plugins, that kind of thing), and we've needed a decent image host for screenshots/previews for ages. I've personally been using ShareX + Cloudflare for my own stuff, and a while back I vibe-coded a little control panel with Claude that hooks into my R2 bucket so uploads are easy for my friends as well.
Now I'm thinking of taking that panel and actually turning it into something I offer to other people in the same space, either free or paid, starting with friends and maybe opening it up a bit more later.
Before I go further with it I wanted to pick the brains of people here who've actually run something like this, specifically:
1. DMCA / abuse liability
If I let people sign up (or even just let my friends refer other people), what happens when someone inevitably uploads NSFW or otherwise reported content? I know I need some kind of ToS/AUP and a way to nuke content fast, but has anyone actually dealt with a real DMCA notice or abuse report for something like this? What did the process look like, and is there anything specific I should have in place before I open this up, even to a small circle?
Also curious how liability changes if it's not me uploading, but someone I gave access to, who then lets someone else use it. Where does that responsibility line usually get drawn in practice?
2. Storage / hosting choices
Right now it's just R2 for me personally, works fine at small scale. But if this grows even a little I'm trying to figure out what actually makes sense:
- Just scale up on R2/S3-compatible storage and call it a day
- Get an actual storage VPS/dedi and run something like Chevereto or a custom setup on it
- Some hybrid, storage on object storage, panel/app on a small VPS in front of it
I don't need this to be huge, just fast enough that images load quickly and doesn't fall over if a bunch of people start using it at once. Anyone running something similar for a niche community, what setup are you using and would you do it differently if you started over?
Appreciate any input, Thanks.
Comments
vps will be better option if too many uploads/downloads/fetch per hour. else go with S3 compatible service.
The abuse process (especially in the long run) highly depends on your provider.
Some (especially super cheap ones) would likely simply boot you after 1-2 reports (or even pretty much instantly) because dealing with that just doesn't fit into their razor thin margins while others will likely be ok-ish with it for a while as long as there's some kind of rapid response but will grow tired with it if it's obvious that it'll become a persistent thing.
You are probably best advised to bring that topic up during pre-sales and establish some kind of understanding. Might cost you a bit more but will save you headaches and work in the long run. If you want to simplify things (and your host is fine with it) you could give them some kind of API that would allow their staff handling reports to quarantine reported material until you can review it. This way you'd avoid delays that might cause grief to your host and you wouldn't at least be that much on the clock in regards to handling reports.
In the end it'll probably depend on the volume of reports you generate too though, which in turn will depend on the growth of your service. As long as you're virtually unknown chances of having a lot of reports come in will be rather low but that might change once you become more popular, so maybe it would be good to signal willingness to reevaluate arrangements if circumstances start changing drastically.
image hosting is never worth the trouble man.
What's not to love about being paged to moderate someone uploading goatse for the 10430984th time at 3:20am in the morning while making 0 dollar 0 cent cent due to not being able to place ads on hotlinked images? Seems very much like living the life to me.
Thank you, that's really insightful.
Oh it's just something I wish to give a try as there's many creators in my industry that heavily host images, either via imgur or something like ImgBB.
Catbox.moe is a decent alternative which is genuinely good and somewhat recommended as well.
Skill issue.
You can prioritize a clear AUP/DMCA process, abuse reporting workflow, content isolation, and off-site backups before opening it publicly. And for the architecture, object storage + a small VPS for the panel/API can be a cleaner starting point compared to putting everything on one server.
maybe something I can actually help with!
As you mentioned, you should have good terms in-place and be able to react fast to reports that come in (should be outlined in the terms anyway). We've had to put a lot of things in to block certain traffic over time due to abuse, but it's a lot better now. Just be aware that if you open an image host to the public, it will get abused quickly without any kind of moderation built-in.
For storage it depends how long you see yourself doing it, we started with just a small VPS and now we use Bunny storage for all of the data that gets uploaded and that seems to scale nicely.
If you want any other info, feel free to PM.
Store the content on dedicated server and run the website via reverse proxy like HAProxy. This way you can host all the images on hetzner storage server for example, but still receive the DMCA/Abuse on some cheap DMCA ignored VPS provider instead.