It’s not a very informative article, it barely hints at why this is happening. Presumably Snapchat wants to shut it down, and rebuild it themselves?

Popular animated gifs hosting service gfycat.com is shutting down on September 1, 2023 and all hosted content will no longer be accessible at that point.

The service is one of many that is used by Internet users to upload and share animated gifs on the Internet. Founded more than eight years ago, Gfycat has risen to popularity and is widely used in some Internet communities.

The official website of the service informs users about the shutdown. There, the company writes: “The Gfycat service is being discontinued. Please save or delete your Gfycat content by visiting https://www.gfycat.com and logging in to your account. After September 1, 2023, all Gfycat content and data will be deleted from gfycat.com” Existing users have time until September 1, 2023 to save their uploaded animated gifs for safekeeping. On September 2, 2023, all data will be deleted from the company’s servers and will no longer be accessible.

Any image embedded on third-party sites will no longer display either and show an error instead. Uploaders may download their animated gifs from the service and upload it to another, and then change the embed codes of their posts to keep the images visible.

Gyfcat banned adult content in 2019 in the app and created a new service, called redgifs, for that. This service was later sold to another company.

The service was acquired last year by Snap, makers of Snapchat. Gfycat is not the only animated gif service that has been acquired recently. Meta, owner of Facebook, tried to acquire the popular service Giphy but was blocked to go forward by regulators. Meta had to sell Giphy at a $260 million loss to Shutterstock as a consequence.

Snap has not made an official announcement regarding the shutdown of Gfycat.

Here are some Gfycat alternatives

• Giphy – While now part of Shutterstock, Giphy remains available at the moment on the Internet.

• Imgur – One of the oldest standing sites that allows users to upload animated gifs and images.

• Kikliko – Animated Gifs with sounds support is what sets this site apart from many others.

• Tenor – Another site that allows users to upload animated gifs and embed them into third-party sites.

Now You: do you use another site for hosting animated gifs?”