Argh!!!! Photobucket!!!!

[bearfacedkiller]

So photobucket has decided to change their terms of service recently. At first I thought that maybe I was just blocked due to using too much bandwidth. None of my photos are showing anymore. After doing a bit of research it appears as though you will now have to pay $400 a year to imbed photos. I have been using photobucket for over 10 years and have thousands of photos embedded in various forums, not just knife forums. None of them will work now and since I will not pay that much they never will again. I am now in the process of moving my photos over to another image hosting site. Luckily they are all backed up on an external hard drive so it wont be too hard. However, I cannot go back through the thousands of post I have made on the forums and update all of the image links so many of my posts are now sort of dead.

This is gonna have widespread effects on the forums and the internet. Stickies and FAQs all over the net are gonna be useless, or at least be devoid of pics. Many blogs will also see an issue here. I remember what happened when anglefire tanked and how frustrating all the dead end internet searches were then. This is gonna be almost as bad. A lot of people use photobucket.

Is photobucket trying to deliberately self destruct or are they so in need of money that they need to monetize more? Nobody is gonna pay that amount. Their service has already been slowly declining for years and now on top of the decline in quality they also want more money? The pages are so bogged down with ads at this point. Isn't that were their money comes from? Isn't putting up with all those ads the price I pay for the service?

I realize I am using a free service and that you get what you pay for so I am not exactly mad but certainly a little frustrated. What do you guys all think of this? Is anybody else havibng issues? Please discuss. :)


Here is the updated terms of service that shows no third party hosting without paying $399.99 a year.

Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:
o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.

o Plus 100 Plan: 50 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3rd party image hosting.

o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3rd party image hosting.

[greencobra]

This is gonna have widespread effects on the forums and the internet. Stickies and FAQs all over the net are gonna be useless, or at least be devoid of pics. Many blogs will also see an issue here. I remember what happened when anglefire tanked and how frustrating all the dead end internet searches were then. This is gonna be almost as bad. A lot of people use photobucket.

yeah, this could get ugly in a hurry but i'm sure it was calculated on their part. sort of forces people that use the service heavy to pay up or take your photos and go somewhere else.

for what it's worth, my account is working as it normally does. i don't know it there was a grace period, just scanned over the new terms of service and didn't read of one, but it allowed me to post a photo in a test thread on another board.

it won't effect me much, i never really used it unless i needed to post photos online somewhere. i think it's time to find another free host.

[The Deacon]

They are not alone, either. There's a "sticky" on another forum I visit saying that Dropbox has changed their TOS and dropped "public folders" altogether. Not a problem for my photos, as I host them on my own website, but it's definitely going to impact a lot of forums and forum users.
.

[Doc Dan]

O great. Just great. What will become of all of our photos we have stored on the site?

[bearfacedkiller]

It says that they are safe. You can still store pictures for free. It is just linking them and embedding them that appears to require a payed account.

Maybe I got hit first due to the fact that I embed A LOT of photos. Many others seem OK so far. Unfortunately the TOS service are quite clear.

What site should I use now? Is free 3rd party hosting just gonna be a thing of the past now?

[demoncase]

Switch to Imgur. Problem solved.

[awa54]

Flickr still allows linking, though lots of features in their interface have been getting changed lately, so that might not last too much longer.

[Evil D]

Well I'm about sick of their constant ads and their crappy app anyway. No way I'd pay for their service. I have all my pics stored on my PC anyway so I'll use someone else to host.

[Liquid Cobra]

Brutal. Absolutely brutal. I feel for you Darby.

I use Photobucket only because it allows me to embed photos here on the forum. I used to use Flickr, but ever since Apple removed the ability to copy the BBS code easily on an iPhone I've had to switch to Photobucket.

I'll keep an eye out for a new solution.

[yablanowitz]

I've had a paid account with Photobucket for years, but it's only $29.95 per year. So far, I can still post images in forums, although the one click copy no longer works. The first time I get "you can't do that", their money will stop altogether. Their website is already mostly unusable on my connections, no way their service is worth more than I pay.

[remnar]

This is disappointing news. Most of my photos are hosted on Photobucket but I started using imgur a few months ago and have been happy with it so far.

[Evil D]

Just noticed a couple posts in the Sage 2 thread in General have an "update your account" image instead of their knife pic. What a joke. Absolutely not.

[murphjd25]

Looks like they pulled the cord on me too. That sucks.

[Filoso-]

Bye bye Photobucket. Switched to Imgur and so far so good.

[anagarika]

Brutal. Absolutely brutal. I feel for you Darby.

I use Photobucket only because it allows me to embed photos here on the forum. I used to use Flickr, but ever since Apple removed the ability to copy the BBS code easily on an iPhone I've had to switch to Photobucket.

I'll keep an eye out for a new solution.

I'm still on Flickr. BB code is a pain but doable. I am not in hurry to post pics, so I'm fine for now.

Darby's assessment is correct. Tons of info, forums, FAQs that created using PB as hosting with links going to be less informative (a pic paints a thousand words). Unfortunately.

[DougC-3]

All my pics on the forum were replaced by their message Wednesday. I thought it was rather rude that they just jerked away all my hundreds of pics without giving me some forewarning. IIRC when they first did it on Wednesday, they said something to the effect that my level of membership didn't qualify for hosting, as though I had been getting away with using the wrong level of membership and they had caught up with me and put a stop to it. They could have said that they had changed the list of services provided by different levels, and they could have given us a month or so to think it over. There were probably hundreds of people who were using those services for crucial things at the time they were curtailed. Maybe that's what they had in mind -- that those people would be forced to immediately fork over $400. I also think that the instant jump from $0.00 to $400.00 without warning is a bit excessive, and I'll keep that in mind when I decide who to do business with. Suppose you were at a restaurant with your hamburger half eaten and the waiter said, "Oh, by the way, that hamburger will now cost you $60." If they had included hosting in the $100 per year plan, I might have done it once until I worked out something else, but $400 is out of the question. OK, rant over :mad:

What are the advantages of Imgur vs flikr? Are there any other common ones to choose from?

[kbuzbee]

Got the same notice today. Bye bye PB. Hope it works out for you, but I seriously doubt it.

Ken

[Evil D]

I think for all the reasons mentioned about stickies and such this is going to cripple their business. The internet is pretty ruthless when it comes to this kind of thing and there's no shortage of other options. I've also been using them for 10+ years and they've been on a slow but steady decline.

[Eli Chaps]

Yep, mine aren't showing up any more either.

I too have thousands of pics loaded there. I have most of them on flash drives and what have you as well but there's years of linked images there.

Time to move on but definitely sucks. I agree with David though, their site has become almost unbearable to open with all the freakin' ads.

[SpyderNut]

Well, that is certainly a bummer. I too use Photobucket. However, as of the last several months, I am loathe to upload any pictures using Photobucket because (1) it is mind-numbingly sloooooooooooooow--even with a brand-new PC and (2) there are 45 million ads to sift through while your photos are being processed.

Are there any other free alternatives out there? I hear Flickr and Imgur are decent.