Photobucket Just Broke Billions of Photos Across the Web

Merlin

Merlin

A Miracle Detailing
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...in-how-not-to-treat-your-users/#.tnw_SwxnM3ZZ

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photobucket-just-broke-billions-photos-embedded-web/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/650637/photobucket-alternatives/

Amazon and eBay images broken by Photobucket's 'ransom demand' - BBC News
 
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.
 
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...)
 
Photobucket turned to trash years ago. They have so many ads on their website it`s practically unuseable.
 
craigdt said:
Photobucket turned to trash years ago. They have so many ads on their website it`s practically unuseable.
Click to expand...

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

Understandable though. Nothing in the world is free
 
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.
 
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.
 
jrock645 said:
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.
Click to expand...

It`s a mute point now, but I found using the 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.
 
It really is a pain in the arse. You can download albums to your computer but other pictures must be done one by one. I`m in the process of going through PB and culling the pictures I don`t want to save and downloading the rest to my laptop. It will take a while.........
 
The best solution would be for Autopia and AGO enable us to edit our posts. At least then the links can change.

I wonder if Dropbox would work with direct linking.

(Sent via my mobile device...)
 
kevincwelch said:
The best solution would be for Autopia and AGO enable us to edit our posts. At least then the links can change.

I wonder if Dropbox would work with direct linking.

(Sent via my mobile device...)
Click to expand...


Dropbox has PO`d millions of users by making their "public folder" private. The public folder was Dropbox`s free photo hosting service. Once the public folder was made private, all the links went dark, just like is occurring with Photobucket. Now having said that free users still were able to go back and recreate a new link for each photo and with a minor edit to the link re-host the photos. Dropbox knows and supports this for the moment. However, I suspect it is just a matter of time before Dropbox decides to kill off us freeloaders once and for all.

Bottom, line is I would be very careful about putting a lot of energy into free photo hosting with Dropbox. They are running a business and they get nothing out of providing free photo hosting. Furthermore I am unsure if they still have free accounts of any kind. Mine is fre but I may have escaped through grandfathering.
 
Let`s hope Imgur doesn`t follow suit. I`ll be removing my cc renewal info from PB immediately. I screwed myself with them about 6 months ago when I was trying to free up some space and ended up causing all of my links to be severed. Every historical thread for every car I had done up until that point was affected.
 
Merlin said:
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...in-how-not-to-treat-your-users/#.tnw_SwxnM3ZZ

https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photobucket-just-broke-billions-photos-embedded-web/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/650637/photobucket-alternatives/

Amazon and eBay images broken by Photobucket`s `ransom demand` - BBC News
Click to expand...



Welcome to the world of Dropbox user`s! Dropbox created a sh1tstorm of epic proportions by doing the same thing.
 
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