So far Reddit seems to have avoided getting into a lot of trouble by not really hosting images itself much (this is changing, as is imgur’s policies) and by being mostly NOT for it so it doesn’t get noticed. Making an instance for the purpose invites a ton of scrutiny and liability that few people want to deal with. That said nothing’s stopping anyone from spinning up their own instance.
So far Reddit seems to have avoided getting into a lot of trouble by not really hosting images itself much (this is changing, as is imgur’s policies) and by being mostly NOT for it so it doesn’t get noticed. Making an instance for the purpose invites a ton of scrutiny and liability that few people want to deal with. That said nothing’s stopping anyone from spinning up their own instance.