Imgur has been pretty shit at hosting images for other sites for about a decade because it’s trying very hard to keep people captive on its site. They added ways to prevent hotlinking and if I paste an imgur link in a chat, starting with i., supposedly a direct link to the image, the preview will not work and the page the link sends to will always open their whole site around that image. They really really want people to stay on there, and interact, or watch ads. AFAIK they have made that change about a decade ago as they wanted to monetize.