# Uploaded image in the Pluribus thread **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [December 29, 2025, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146 "2025-12-29T18:06:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/1 "2025-12-29T18:06:04Z")
Continuing the discussion from [Pluribus (New Vince Gilligan show on AppleTV)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pluribus-new-vince-gilligan-show-on-appletv/1024659/1031): It looks like that image “[https://boards.straightdope.com/uploads/short-url/6syxF52b7EjKny9emsRohg6cjLi.jpeg”](https://boards.straightdope.com/uploads/short-url/6syxF52b7EjKny9emsRohg6cjLi.jpeg%E2%80%9D) was somehow uploaded by the the user (@Biffster ) But uploading images is disabled (I tried in the test thread and received the usual message) So, may be a temporal glitch or misconfiguration? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/2 "2025-12-29T18:24:59Z")
[Uploaded image in the Pluribus thread - About This Message Board - Straight Dope Message Board - December 29 @ 10-23-35 AM@2x|690x293](https://boards.straightdope.com/uploads/short-url/a2dZuVuXpN6mKF9ecOtdOzG8oZd.jpeg) Whoa, weird! Turns out you actually _can_ upload here, you just can’t embed the upload… but if you paste the image into the text box, wait for it to finish, and then **remove the exclamation mark from the beginning** , it works. If the original upload is: ```markdown ![Uploaded image in the Pluribus thread - About This Message Board - Straight Dope Message Board - December 29 @ 10-23-35 AM@2x|690x293](upload://a2dZuVuXpN6mKF9ecOtdOzG8oZd.jpeg) ``` Just remove the `!` at the very beginning: ```markdown [Uploaded image in the Pluribus thread - About This Message Board - Straight Dope Message Board - December 29 @ 10-23-35 AM@2x|690x293](upload://a2dZuVuXpN6mKF9ecOtdOzG8oZd.jpeg) ``` And then it works… Did it always work like that, or was this a recent change/bug? How bizarre! Maybe it’s related to this Discourse issue: [Users not in Embedded media post allowed groups can bypass upload restriction by copying the uploaded image link - Bug - Discourse Meta](https://meta.discourse.org/t/users-not-in-embedded-media-post-allowed-groups-can-bypass-upload-restriction-by-copying-the-uploaded-image-link/387368) ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/3 "2025-12-29T18:29:23Z")
I think we better not exploit this, we don’t want to fill the server’s (possibly very small) storage space with pictures of cats… ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/4 "2025-12-29T18:31:54Z")
If this is an existing bug and not a new issue, I think this means that every _attempted_ upload over the years is already in our storage bucket — they would’ve gotten uploaded as soon as you added the image, even if the system subsequently denied the embedding. I agree that this is probably not something we should use or rely on. It’s probably not meant to be this way. I’ve reported it over at the Discourse meta forum too. ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/5 "2025-12-29T18:40:08Z")
[test pic](https://boards.straightdope.com/uploads/short-url/vkJiAyWnHP6DzkoL1CQyKql7JRo.jpeg) It does work. Doesn’t show the image, though, so seems to be of somewhat limited use ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/6 "2025-12-29T18:42:30Z")
It’s not embedded but it’s there, you can see it if you click on it. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/7 "2025-12-29T18:43:18Z")
And Google shows a bunch of (presumably failed) uploads to the SDMB, namely PDFs: > **[Google Search](https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:https:%2F%2Fcdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fstraightdope%2F&sxsrf=AE3TifOKkbQbNIMSEFevpHLoclHOIpc_GA:1767033541521&filter=0&dpr=3)** ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/8 "2025-12-29T18:44:35Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > It’s not embedded but it’s there, you can see it if you click on it. Or if you just take the URL and paste it without the Markdown code, Discourse will auto-display the linked image (technically this is subtly different from a real “embedding”, but the end result is the same): e.g. [![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/3X/d/b/db9b4d6883fb84d310054392b89889a22c8771fa.jpeg) ](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/3X/d/b/db9b4d6883fb84d310054392b89889a22c8771fa.jpeg) This is almost certainly not intentional. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/9 "2025-12-29T18:51:19Z")
Yep, with that 2 step dance we could upload images and embed them. But I repeat: we better not start doing this for all images or we may end up killing the SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/10 "2025-12-29T18:54:16Z")
Another data point - initially I got an error message saying there’s a 5 megapixel limit. I had to reduce the photo size to make it work. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/11 "2025-12-29T21:20:14Z")
**Moderator Note** User image uploads are supposed to be disabled here. If you have found a way to get around the software and do it anyways, please DO NOT DO IT. Host your images elsewhere. The SDMB is not intended to be an image hosting site. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2025, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/12 "2025-12-29T22:12:44Z")
I hope you lit the bat-signal to the administration tonhave them lock down that loophole. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2026, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/uploaded-image-in-the-pluribus-thread/1026146/13 "2026-01-03T08:17:38Z")
Yes I discovered the ! Workaround by accident it seems. I hope that doesn’t violate any laws. I saw the t-shirt posted shortly before my own.