Photobucket (outrageous charges)....

[BWR1953]

After 9 years, I finally deleted my PB account today. Too much nonsense.

 

[bruceb58]

I continue to use Dropbox even though the way you have to modify the link slightly to make it come up when you use the

 

[laurentide]

Man, this site just lost a ton of useful data because of third party hosting gone bad. That's pretty sad to me. I never used PB but I certainly benefitted from all the resto project photos that were hosted there. And all the inactive user threads in the archives just lost a lot of their research value. Huge bummer and a big hit to this forum.

I can't believe they want $400...it's like they're actively trying to kill their business.

I keep waving my arms about my positive experience with imgur.com. They've been hosting images for most reddit users for years now (which is the 4th largest site by visitor volume in the US) and all my old images that are hosted there still display here. But...they're third party (free) and could change their TOS at any time. But that's unlikely after they watch PB go down in flames with this ransom BS.

Pretty big hit to all the DIY/hobby forums out there that relied heavily on PB.

 

[Watermann]

I'm still have hope that the backlash will snap those at PB out of their greedy death spiral and all the photos of the hard work people have done here and elsewhere will return. I USED to buy prints from them too and like the metal ones especially, yeah that's not gonna happen again.

 

[GA_Boater]

Interesting snip from Wiki. Notice the what I bolded. Wonder if they saw a way to make tons of money through Twitter users after 6 years? We lost PB is the end result.

History

Photobucket was founded in 2003 by Alex Welch and Darren Crystal and received funding from Trinity Ventures.[SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP] It was acquired by Fox Interactive Media in 2007.
In December 2009, Fox's parent company, News Corp, sold Photobucket to Seattle mobile imaging startup Ontela. Ontela then renamed itself Photobucket Inc. and continues to operate as Photobucket.[SUP][8][/SUP]
In June 2010, Photobucket was named in the Lead411's Hottest Seattle Companies list.[SUP][9][/SUP]
On June 28 2017, Photobucket changed its Terms of Use regarding free accounts and 3rd party hosting(hosting on forums, ebay, etc). Only the most expensive plan, at $399.99 per year, now permits 3rd party hosting.[SUP][10][/SUP]
Twitter partnership

Twitter announced in June 2011 that Photobucket will become the default photo sharing platform for Twitter.[SUP][11][/SUP] According to a report by Sysomos, 2.25M images are shared on Twitter daily, which accounts for 1.25% of all Tweets posted.[SUP][12][/SUP] Just before the announcement, TwitPic and Yfrog were the leading photo-sharing services.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]

 

[someone11]

Thanks waterman for sending me the link here. I have been using photobucket since 2007 on many different forums. Now all of that is gone. Im gonna look into imgur and flickr and probably end up transferring everything to one of those. Ill try to go back through my pics on here and fix them. Im gonna give it a little time though in hopes that the retaliation on PB makes them regret their decision end revert back to allowing third party hosting.

Seems that clicking the meter pic on the forum shows the same pic on the PB account...frustrating.

 

[laurentide]

I don't think the execs at PB appreciate the damage they have inflicted on the WWW. They just nuked years of forum activity across the web. Remember all those broken angelfire and imageshack links years ago? That's what just happened to every niche forum and DIY site. And remember what happened to angelfire and imageshack when they implemented the same policy...all the users deleted their accounts and fled.

Bandwidth isn't cheap, but storage is incredibly cheap now. They were making ad money with our user content. This is a cash grab that will backfire spectacularly. Unfortunately, all our images and those of every other forum like this one are gone forever.

The only saving grace here is that a lot of the DIY community has moved to YouTube with the ubiquitousness of phone camera video. But PB just broke a lot of useful parts of the internet.

 

[sphelps]

Even Lukes SOTY pics are gone ... Hope they can be fixed somehow ... This really stinks .... Why are some pics still there and some not ?
400 bucks seams a bit unreasonable ...

 

[82rude]

I wonder if there might be a possible case for a class action suit?On a slightly different vein but also similar the crtc (canadian radio and telacom commission) made a ruling that cell phone providers cant hold us hostage by locking our phone and charging us for unlocking which ive always contended was illegal on their part and has been proven correct! When you honored you plan commitments that phone was yours and they have no right to charge you to unlock it and the govt agreed.Im sure lawyers will be looking at p.b,s policies and going ons.

 

[82rude]

Wow now all my photos on my 2 fav sites have the speedo of death.Will google photos work for here?So every photo ive ever posted is gone now im ticked off.They will be getting a very nasty letter from me and i will rot in hell before i ever go there again! Thankfully ive backed up all my photos on a few other sites and my comp.JERKS!!!!!!

 

[edgepa]

Photobucket photos gone?

It seems that Photobucket has change their policy on 3rd party hosting. Tons of project photos are being blocked.


https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photobucket-now-charges-399-for-third-party-hosted-images/

 

[82rude]

Just got finished telling p.b to take a flying f@@@ at a rolling cheerio in no uncertain terms and that it would be a cold day in heck before i ever go there ever again!

 

[Baylinerchuck]

Wow, whiskey tango foxtrot. For some reason PB is still allowing third party hosting for my stored images. It would appear some folks are blocked, others aren't. I wonder what the difference is. I know at this point I use around 6% of my free account. I guess I'll wait it out, but will look for another site. In the meantime, how do we modify old posts if PB blocks links? Do we need to get mod permission to edit or are old posted links lost?

 

[achris]

... In the meantime, how do we modify old posts if PB blocks links? Do we need to get mod permission to edit or are old posted links lost?

Very very good point. As a mod I can edit without restrictions, but because a few 'unfriendlies' a little while ago made life difficult for the rest of you, the hard decision was made to cut edit time to 1 hour... In view of PB being 'unfriendly', I shall suggest to the powers that be that we put a mortorium on the edit embargo, for a while...

And thank you Baylinerchuck for pointing that out.

Chris.........

 

[GA_Boater]

I second the motion. What a bucket of mullets.

 

[achris]

*******************IMPORTANT********************** ***

May I suggest the following....
If PB have dumped this on us, it's likely other image hosting sites will follow suit.
If you move your pictures from PB to another 'free' site, in a short while you'll be facing the same problem.

As anyone with internet access at home has to have an ISP (Internet Service Provider) account, and most of those come with 'free storage space', why not use your own space as the repository and just link the images in from there?

Don't know how? It's very easy. (I taught myself in about 10 minutes)
First, if you don't have copies of your pictures on your computer, download and save them from PB NOW!
Ok, you have all the photos on your own computer. You have your ISP account, with storage space.
Download and install a free FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. I use Filezilla, but there are plenty out there.
With the FTP program, log on to your ISP file space (all ISPs will be different. Use your ISPs help site, or help line), and upload your photos. I did it with the same file structure as I used on PB.
Now the 'hard' part. (More time-consuming than hard)... Linking to a photo will have a URL like http://yourisp /yourfirstdirectory/file .jpg... (without the spaces.)
Open the thread with the dead PB linked pictures in it. 'Edit' it.
Copy the URL of the picture and replace the dead PB link with it... Save the edit. All done...

One word of caution... The URL must be EXACT! Even a lowercase letter where there should be uppercase will render it inoperative... So, if the file extension is .JPG, then .jpg will not work! It must be .JPG....

I hope this helps with our quest to remove the need for all those money-grabbing hosting sites.

Chris.............
(If you're having problems, feel free to PM me. Just remember that I am 12 hours ahead of you and I sometimes have to sleep)

 

[bruceb58]

I wonder if there might be a possible case for a class action suit?

Out of curiosity, what would your damages be? How much money have you lost? My calculation is zero.

 

[achris]

Out of curiosity, what would your damages be? How much money have you lost? My calculation is zero.

There's an awful lot of businesses out there who use pb for image hosting. I'm sure plenty of them will be losing money because of it.... Yeah, I see this heading for a courtroom, but I think that PB will be long gone before any case sees the light of day....

Chris....

 

[bruceb58]

There's an awful lot of businesses out there who use pb for image hosting.

TOS....

• You use the Site at your own risk and the Site and services are provided "AS IS."

I have a business and I host my own photos. If you have a business and you rely on PB to host your photos, you shouldn't be in business.

 

[laurentide]

Any business that used PB to host their images deserves to lose them. There are tons of legitimate paid cloud hosting services for actual business websites. None of us were trying to make money using PB's hosting services.