They don't want people linking directly to the images, they want people linking to the app. They made it difficult to do otherwise on purpose.

> Image search site results are the same thing: I just want the raw image URL!

For what it's worth, Google removed direct links to images as part of a settlement.

https://9to5google.com/2018/02/09/google-images-features-get...

Because they can't make money off of direct image linking. Monetization is where all the image hosting platforms ended up going bad. Imgur is not too bad but they've added a few features that just make it harder. On desktop, I'm glad you can still just right-click and copy image URL.

I understand they need some ads, but even then it's really easy. The unnecessary ajax-loading and overcomplicated interface did it in. Why is ajax so bad on mobile anyway? Like how the new mobile reddit takes 30 seconds to load on my phone.