Reddit this week announced its own image-uploading tool, marking a shift away from its informal partnership with Imgur. A member of Reddit's product team announced the beta feature in a post to the website on Wednesday, saying it will roll out to "select communities" this week.

The tool allows users to upload images (up to 20MB in size) and GIFs (100MB) directly to Reddit, and to access threads about any image by clicking on it from any listing. Imgur, which has long been the de facto image uploading service for Reddit, supports images up to 20MB and GIFs up to 200MB.

"This isn’t a surprise."

"For a long time, other image hosting services have been an integral part of how content is shared on Reddit — we’re grateful to those teams, but are looking forward to bringing you a more seamless experience with this new feature," a member of the Reddit product team, named Andy, wrote in a post announcing the feature yesterday.

Reddit users will still be able to host photos on Imgur or other services, though the new in-house platform could divert traffic away from Imgur and toward Reddit. According to TechCrunch, the same content policy will apply for the new tool, placing more responsibility on Reddit to police offensive or illegal material — something that the site has struggled with in the past.

"This isn’t a surprise. Tools for uploading images are an expected part of any platform these days," Imgur said in a statement to TechCrunch. "That said, nothing will change for Reddit users who would like to use Imgur to share their images on Reddit," the company added.