How to redirect a URL to another URL using /etc/hosts

Question

I want to block some sites on my ubuntu system.So, I added some lines to the /etc/hosts, which are

127.0.1.1       www.reddit.com
127.0.1.1       www.facebook.com

This now successfully blocks the website but I want to redirect to another URL when I go to one of the URL I mentioned above, I found that you need to change the 127.0.1.1 to IP of website to make it work but I can't convert URL such as https://i.imgur.com/6FxzzCT.png to IP address.

It would be really helpful if someone can let be convert any URL to IP address.

Solution

What you are trying to do is not possible. Well, at least not how you are trying to do it.

In your desired URL (https://i.imgur.com/6FxzzCT.png), only this part has a specific IP address: i.imgur.com.

$ dig +short i.imgur.com
151.101.16.193

In a simplified form, when you enter that whole link in your browser (https://i.imgur.com/6FxzzCT.png). You are sending a request to 151.101.16.193 asking for 6FxzzCT.png file using HTTPS protocol.

Using /etc/hosts you can only set predefined IP addresses per hosts but you can't handle HTTP requests.

What you might be able to do is to run a simple HTTP server on localhost serving a picture or a random picture at index.html or whatever predefined default page. Then redirect every site you like to 127.0.0.1 using /etc/hosts. Now your page is waiting there to bring up some random picture.