Photobucket Just Broke Billions of Photos Across the Web

[Merlin]

Amazon and eBay images broken by Photobucket`s `ransom demand`

Thousands of images promoting goods sold on Amazon, Ebay, Etsy and other shopping sites in addition to many forums and blogs have been removed after the photo-sharing service quietly changed its terms.

Since 2003, the popular photo hosting service Photobucket has been letting users upload and host images for free on their servers.
They have over 10 billion images stored by 100 million registered users. But now they’re going to start charging, and that means billions of images around the Web are now broken.

Denver-based Photobucket is now seeking a $399 annual fee from those who wish to continue using it for "third-party hosting" and is facing a social media backlash as a consequence.

Photobucket allowed hotlinking photos uploaded to and stored on its servers for a long time.
Hotlinking (AKA inline IMG linking) is when someone takes an image file hosted on a server and embeds it on a different webpage elsewhere.
Since the new webpage continuously requests the file from the original source server, it saps the server owner’s bandwidth (and storage space).
This was their business model, and they made money from ads on their own site, which users would be exposed to when they went to upload content.

Photobucket is now requiring its users to pay a $399 per year subscription fee for those who want to hotlink images from Photobucket’s servers to display elsewhere.

* That means that billions of images across the Web now display an error message instead of the image.*

https://thenextweb.com/apps/2017/07/...#.tnw_SwxnM3ZZ

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/pho...-embedded-web/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/for...-alternatives/

Amazon and eBay images broken by Photobucket`s `ransom demand` - BBC News

[GearHead_1]

They`ll run a few disgruntled users off and those that are heavily invested with pictures that are linked to commercial sites will simply pay it. They`ll offer a one time lower price for all users to troll the waters. Can sure see why PhotoBucket would want to do it.

[JBM]

1: Set the trap
2: Spring the trap

[Ronkh]

<---- gonna be pissed

[Merlin]

Did you read the BBC article?

[Ronkh]

Not yet

think I`m gonna go try and get some pics off first

[JSFM35X]

I hate that the posts now have broken links but I`m not paying 399 to host pictures.

[kevincwelch]

Same here. Unfortunately, a lot of my older posts had pictures hosted by photo bucket. Nothing critical. I mostly use tapatalk to upload images, and I`ve started to use imgur for forums.

Honestly, with all my tech capabilities, I never felt autogeek`s image upload functionality worked well. I`d use it if I could figure it out.

Photobucket never made a dime off me, so I`m sure they couldn`t care less that I won`t be using them anymore.

(Sent via my mobile device...)

[craigdt]

Photobucket turned to trash years ago. They have so many ads on their website it`s practically unuseable.

[ShaneB]

Photobucket turned to trash years ago. They have so many ads on their website it`s practically unuseable.

This. 100X this. I cant stand trying to navigate their site.

Understandable though. Nothing in the world is free

[Angus]

Oh man... well all my reviews pre 2016 are now screwed. Thanks Photobucket.

[jrock645]

Photobucket is useless on this site anymore. Not sure if it`s autopia or pb, but the embedded image links don`t copy in full anymore. Still haven`t found a way to post pics here, but I`m not missing pb at all.

[Bunky]

Forums that value their content today and tomorrow have ample decent image storage to host their own files so not a need for third party place. I realize this is cost to the forum. The smarter forums do have image size limits but also provide tools to optimize images.

[Nizmo]

Photobucket is useless on this site anymore. Not sure if it`s autopia or pb, but the embedded image links don`t copy in full anymore. Still haven`t found a way to post pics here, but I`m not missing pb at all.

It`s a mute point now, but I found using the [IMG] tags and the direct link worked the best. I know there was a time where the embedded link on PB would crash a thread.

I guess all my photos will be going to imgur now. Unfortunately there`s hundred of photos I`ve used PB for an now they`re broken.

[rlmccarty2000]

I`ve been using Tapatalk for awhile now. I never could figure out PGMB or Photobucket. Tapatalk is too easy.