Image hosting is a brutal, mostly thankless job that loses tons of money. I remember when Photobucket was the thing, then Imageshack, then tinypic, then imgur. Each one was meant to be simple photo hosting done right, but all eventually become the thing they were trying to replace - bloated websites with intrusive ads.

e: I just realized this is about i.reddit.com and not i.redd.it, but my point still stands.