I remember reading a few days ago that their code was atrocious. Perhaps this is an extreme example of the costs of never refactoring? I can believe that the cost of spaghetti code compounds quickly.
I can believe that the company who named resources sequentially, enforced no security validation for viewing posts/media, and didn't strip metadata from media uploads also didn't have engineers especially skilled in optimization.
I agree that the other points indicate bad engineering. But not stripping metadata can be a intentional. E.g. some smaller image hosters do that to preserve files bit-identically. Some forums with heavy emphasis on minimal moderation take the position that opsec is the poster's responsibility.
