Catbox is a robust looking option that I've experimented with. I'm a bit concerned that they're blocked in a few countries, though.
Blocked countries, sourced from above FAQ
- Australia: DNS block. "Decided that Catbox was a terrorist propaganda spreading website." Explicitly defining DNS serves to a public server is required to access site and files.
- Ireland/UK: IP block. "Clips of [football] games being uploaded to Catbox." VPN required to access site and files.
- Iran: IP block. "Uknown, but I'm sure you can probably make some pretty accurate guesses." VPN required.
- Afghanistan: Ditto above.
I'm not sure if that would be a massive issue for most Beehaw users, but personally I'm not a fan of having content potentially inaccessible or at least requiring additional tools to access.
Otherwise I couldn't recommend Catbox enough, which is what really bums me out. Massive uncompressed file sizes, indefinite file retention, wide file support, direct file linking, the place has the works. If Catbox wasn't already blocked to a mild degree in the mentioned countries, I would be all in on recommending them.
Related: If anyone is in one of the listed countries above, I'd appreciate it if you tried to access the site and some direct file links and reporting back if a VPN or public DNS is indeed required. There's the catbox test Millions has below and I have a file of my own for good measure.
Yep, I'm gradually shifting to S3 for my public direct file sharing as a bit of an exercise in learning AWS. It's not free, but 99.99% of the time it's remarkably cheap. If you're willing to put up with learning AWS (or any other general-purpose platform really, cloud or self-hosted,) there's a nice feeling that comes with having more leniency to do things your way and on your terms.
Now whether it works properly, however, let alone work at all, is an entirely different story. But that's the double-edged sword with going out on your own: it's more likely to be your fault, not someone else's.
id be pretty psyched if my video embedding starts working one of these days 👨💻