Photobucket just broke a million forums on the internet - including this one!

[dahj]

I'm going back to geocities, who's with me!!!


What?

 

[T'Bonz]

For the curious a quick search of the database would indicate it impacts about 182,000 posts on the forum.

Ha ha, too bad they didn't do that a while back when Google came after us to get rid of 15 years worth of dodgy images. [/one weekend shot to hell]

 

[Owain Taggart]

Some of it may be laziness, but a lot of it is probably that people just don't know.

Or in some cases, some that have been using the service for so long as to be reluctant to part with it. That's my case. I've been using it for so long because that's what I've been familiar with and I've accrued a large library over the years.

Well, I suppose I'll have to change. But Imgur did something similar only a few weeks back and they reversed their decision when people balked, so who knows what could happen with Photobucket? $400? That's a little extreme, and I feel they may be confused of their target audience. The general populace won't pay $400 for it. If businesses are their target, I've never heard or seen any use photobucket, so I'm not really sure what they're expecting? It seems like a total flip on policies that benefit no-one.

Even if they were to reverse their decision, I think the damage is done. I don't know if I would trust them after what they've done. I was contemplating last night about deleting my account vs the fact that the decision might be reversed, but in the end, I might still do so anyway.

 

[B.J.]

Ha ha, too bad they didn't do that a while back when Google came after us to get rid of 15 years worth of dodgy images. [/one weekend shot to hell]

Wait, I remember when that happened, but didn't realize it was retroactive?! Ouch.

 

[E-DUB]

I'm wondering if any site offering this service for free can survive just as, someone once observed, no restaurant can survive being "discovered".

 

[Bagofmostlywatr]

Is this actually for real, because I've neither seen nor heard any sign of it happening?

 

[auntiehill]

Yes, it is real. I can't post any of my images from Photobucket on the BBS anymore, so I am in the process of choosing another free web host.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Is this actually for real, because I've neither seen nor heard any sign of it happening?

Yes, as auntiehill said, definitely real. You can find articles online about it with only a minimum of Googling, and you can see threads on this board with the "no 3rd party hosting" images showing up.

That being said... for now, my images are still showing. If it's still working for me and Australis, I'm wondering if it's possible that they've started blocking US accounts first? (I don't actually remember if I had to identify my country when I signed up, but they could be going by IP address instead.) Or maybe they've started with users with higher bandwidth usage? I don't know, but some are still working, and some are blocked.

 

[Sibyl]

Some of it may be laziness, but a lot of it is probably that people just don't know. Especially if you are in your late teens or early 20s, you may not even remember a time when self-hosting was commonplace and so wouldn't know that it's available or how to obtain it. Personal websites are pretty dead these days.

There is, of course, the fact that image hosting services tend to be free, while hosting isn't. And paid web hosting requires more technical competence than an image hosting service. And it's not unusual for someone to buy less hosting bandwidth than they need--a problem that is eliminated by using one of the large image sharing services.

As with so many other things in life, the path of least resistance dominates.



No kidding. $400 a year is batshit. Do you know how much general purpose hosting $400 a year can buy? A lot. Much, much more than Photobucket will give you.

Okay, that makes sense. I knew mentalities had changed, but I didn't realize that it was such a "quaint" idea to own your own personal website.

Yes, $400/yr is insane.

 

[T'Bonz]

Wait, I remember when that happened, but didn't realize it was retroactive?! Ouch.

Yep. It was brutal. And they wouldn't tell us WHAT was offensive; just threatened to close us down if we HAD offensive content.

Which is why we're so conservative on pictures now.

 

[Owain Taggart]

That being said... for now, my images are still showing. If it's still working for me and Australis, I'm wondering if it's possible that they've started blocking US accounts first? (I don't actually remember if I had to identify my country when I signed up, but they could be going by IP address instead.) Or maybe they've started with users with higher bandwidth usage? I don't know, but some are still working, and some are blocked.

Yeah, still working here too, so I'm not sure what's up. But maybe it's being done in stages, rather than all at once.

 

[φ of π]

Yep. It was brutal. And they wouldn't tell us WHAT was offensive; just threatened to close us down if we HAD offensive content.

Which is why we're so conservative on pictures now.

It's a shame there was no way to subpoena-type thing to make them specify which pictures were the offensive ones.

 

[Sibyl]

When you say, "Shut us down," you mean advertising with Adsense, right?

With some of the images I've seen on Google recently for the most innocent of search terms, I'm amazed they have a leg to stand on.

 

[Amaris]

When you say, "Shut us down," you mean advertising with Adsense, right?

With some of the images I've seen on Google recently for the most innocent of search terms, I'm amazed they have a leg to stand on.

Google is a firm believer in "do as we say, not as we do."

 

[RJDiogenes]

I think Australis is right about the 500Gb limit. All my pictures are still showing, and I know I don't have that much stored there yet, because I just switched a couple of years ago when Comcast took away our storage space. I wonder if there's a way to tell how much you've got there.

 

[Owain Taggart]

There is, kind of. In the upper left where it shows you the profile you're logged into, it gives you a percentage of how full your storage is. Mine says 16% full.

 

[Spot261]

How on earth do you scroll through years of posted images in one weekend?

 

[Timewalker]

I have a paid subscription to Photobucket (have had for years, since that's where I keep the various images used for the forums I run - banners, smileys, logos, icons, as well as many of my lolcat pictures).

At some point during the last year, someone there decided that harassing the subscribers to "upgrade" our accounts was a good thing. I'd get several emails a week, sometimes two or three on the same day about this. I wrote and told them I was happy with my current account and didn't appreciate this.

Even as I was in the midst of renewing my subscription a few weeks ago, I got an obnoxious popup "suggesting" a higher level of subscription - far more than I would ever need, and twice what I knew I could afford (the exchange rate between CAD and USD is horrendous these days).

And now, they've got this cutesy thing where people are forced to log in again every so often (or maybe just when you want to upload something)... and get treated to more of these "upgrade" popups, along with a "sponsored ad" extolling the so-called virtues of the kinds of photos you can find on the site.

Well, the photos in that sponsored ad are pornographic, as far as I'm concerned. I don't need popups of full frontal nudity staring me in the face when I'm trying to log in and having to try several times because they haven't flashed that crap in my face or the "upgrade" notices enough times.

I've sent in another complaint, but it'll probably accomplish what the first one did, which was absolutely nothing. And in the meantime, even though as a subscriber I'm not supposed to have to deal with ads, they're constantly bugging me to buy posters, mugs, mousepads, etc.

My account there is set to private, which means nobody get into it but me. I can post stuff on forums, attach stuff to email, etc.

(just to see if it works here, here's a random lolpic)

I don't hotlink from other people's public accounts. I wonder if that's what they're talking about?

But I am looking for another image host. I don't appreciate the "sponsored ad" material.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm using Imgur to host all my nerdy memes and graphics now. Fuck photobucket

 

[feek61]

Everything I have over the past 10-12 years is on photobucket including all of the images for my website but I've switched to postimage.org based on someones advice here. I like it, easy clean and simple.