Photobucket 3rd party hosting?

Got the email last night. All pics gone, $399 a year to bring them back.

I suppose it was obvious this was PB end plan, get everyone in and used to their service for free, then start charging them. They'll lose some people but enough won't want to deal with the PITA of switching that they'll make quite a bit of money.

I suppose the issue is what's a reasonable cost for them to charge? I'm literally using 2% of the space given to me for the free account. So having to pay $399 a year for 3rd party hosting (which is the only reason I use PB) seems a bit outrageous to me.

I am an Amazon Prime member, so I suppose I'll just start using that service and will have to slowly start moving my old posted thread pics over to that.

Well, downloaded the Amazon stuff, most of the pics I use are on my phone anyways, so they're backing up to my Amazon account right now, which is taking forever. Once that happens I'll go into my build thread and start to change the links over to Amazon...

And this is why I don't trust cloud storage. Change the business model (or go belly up) and you're screwed, whether it's pictures, music, or data.

This is going to kill the internet's usability for DIY projects on older cars as so many forums had threads on DIY projects that had PB hosted images. As many of you guys found out. LOTS of important and informative threads going back a decade that are now lost on forums across the web. Luckily PBs social media is blowing up about it, and maybe it'll be a warning to others that promise functionality then renege on it.

Just wait until YouTube pulls this.

Oh YouTube won't pull this...this is an idea so suicidally asinine that only Photobucket could pull it off. They've already earned a reputation as the worst photo hosting site out there and now this...it only makes sense if the execs sold all their shares and then shorted the stock.

YouTube is hell if you actually try to make money on it but that's nothing I have to worry about.

Crap. They're essentially holding every build thread ransom at this point. In the meantime, you can still view the images by right clicking and opening image in a new tab, which will obviously send you to the bloated PB site so they get the ad hit.

$400 is an exorbitant amount of money for a service that is free on so many other sites. Even if they restore service, I'm done with them.

Burrito wrote: Crap. They're essentially holding every build thread ransom at this point. In the meantime, you can still view the images by , which will obviously send you to the bloated PB site so they get the ad hit. $400 is an exorbitant amount of money for a service that is free on so many other sites. Even if they restore service, I'm done with them.

So you're saying I should still be able to see my pictures in the site and possibly save them back to my computer?

In reply to Nick (Bo) Comstock:

Yep.

Chris_V wrote: This is going to kill the internet's usability for DIY projects on older cars as so many forums had threads on DIY projects that had PB hosted images. As many of you guys found out. LOTS of important and informative threads going back a decade that are now lost on forums across the web. Luckily PBs social media is blowing up about it, and maybe it'll be a warning to others that promise functionality then renege on it.

Yeah, this is my concern. My build thread on S197Forum, for instance, is like 30-some pages, about half of which have images that were hosted on Photo-suck-it. I'm sure as heck not going to go back and try to figure out which image was which and try to re-upload all of them to Amazon.

I imagine Corner-Carvers.com looks like a dystopian hellscape of broken image links at this point.

YouTube seems to use a different business model. You already get ads when you watch videos. Especially the more popular stuff. About a year or so ago, the ad for Jay Leno's Garage became mandatory to watch. But it's only a 30 second commercial, so I don't have a problem with it.

Yep, YouTube is owned by Google, meaning it's all about the ad revenue.

Agreed, going back through all my old threads, figuring out which photo that is and then relinking it to Amazon just isn't going to happen.

I kept all my photos on my hard drive, so they're not disappeared into ether, but I don't have the time or inclination to repopulate all the links...

Well, this sucks. My build threads are pretty much shot now. PB is also the main reason I installed an adblocker on one of my browsers. It had hit the point a year or so ago that it was unusable without it.

I didn't even see the email, my PB account is linked to an email address I rarely use. Currently downloading my entire album. Don't know if I'll rebuild any of my old build threads, but anything that gets hosted in the future will be done elsewhere. Guess I might as well leave the pictures up there for now, if the click through actually works.

Edit: the email ended up being in my spam folder, too...

An additional thought - this could easily be one of two things:

1. They are desperate for cash to cover operating expenses, so you should download anything you want to keep a copy of now before they go under.

2. It's a cynical attempt of generating outrage at the $399 price, and they plan to offer 3rd party hosting at lower (but still unreasonable) price in the near future, that will make it look like they are being nice by not charging nearly $400 a year.

I would say this is a death rattle and they are going for one last desperate cash grab in the form of ransom. People who pay are going to be even more PO'd when they go out of business anyways.

Shame that the Molvo build thread is going to lose a lot of pictures, but not going to pay $400.

I imagine that in today's storage world it's tough to go up against Google and Amazon.

This is a prime example of why we need to be able to upload pics to this site. Then they never disappear.

carguy123 wrote: This is a prime example of why we need to be able to upload pics to this site. Then they never disappear.

We have discussed hosting the message board photos--both in the past and again today. Our web site is already a big, complicated entity. Adding in a bunch more photos only makes it bigger. I'm not saying yes or no, but I'm sure that we'll discuss this more when everyone's back in the office on Wednesday.

mazdeuce wrote: I had been a paying member, but at the lowest tier, and things had been ok through the great internet blowup of the R63 thread. What I worried about is that someone else is using my pictures (I just post direct links) in such as way that it's considered third party hosting and that's why I got dinged. I don't know enough to know what I don't know.

This is what I had been doing as well (2nd tier) and when this issue came up I checked one of my build threads on ohiorotaries.org and all the pics were there!

And now they ain't.

I think, but am not sure, that if you use their embed code that you can still hotlink.

Well, nope.

David S. Wallens wrote:

carguy123 wrote: This is a prime example of why we need to be able to upload pics to this site. Then they never disappear.

We have discussed hosting the message board photos--both in the past and again today. Our web site is already a big, complicated entity. Adding in a bunch more photos only makes it bigger. I'm not saying yes or no, but I'm sure that we'll discuss this more when everyone's back in the office on Wednesday.

Obviously this doesn't help for the complication issue, but even just having the ability to upload photos and have them processed into low-res pics, so they don't take a lot of storage space would be awesome, and would hopefully limit the amount of storage space taken up.

cmcgregor wrote: In reply to fasted58: That's pretty rich since their entire existence is more or less thanks to allowing so-called 3rd Party Hosting. This is a ransom situation.

I resent that remark!

Joking, I agree totally. It's just one of those funny things that happens with my name.

Ransom wrote: It's so involved as to be prohibitive, but you *can* link google photos; you just have to look them up through Google drive, note the ID, and create your own link... (Seriously. About both the ability and how stupid the process is; Gah, now I can't find the how-to, but really, you don't want to do that...)

I use google photos. It's not a streamlined process by any means, but it works and it's free. Basically I put the photos I want in an album with the privacy settings on public and hotlink from that. Sometimes it's a bit screwy, but once you figure it out it does work.

Well, I haven't gotten any emails, and it looks like all my build threads are still alive and well. I hope they stay that way. I've been paying for hosting since 2014, but at the Plus 20 level. We'll see how things go. I uploaded several images this afternoon and linked them with no issues.

If PB decides they want $400 a year from me, I guess I'll be looking for another option as well. That would well and truly suck.

I got no email and I can't access my photos in the app

I got hit tonight also. None of my photobucket links are working.

I've been paying on a plus 20 level account and my links are still working. I'm expecting a ransom note. I will not pay $400.00 a year and will not renew my plus 20 if I get the note.

I got my note this morning, for the few pics I link off my Photobucket.

MOST of my pics are coming from my own domain, since I'm paying for it anyways.

A note about switching to another image host - the same thing will happen again.

I used to have my website on ubc.ca when I was a student. Then as a free one on xoom.com. Which then became nbci.com. Which then became geocities.com. When they went down, I think I paid to host my website through yahoo.com (who owned geocities at the time), but later moved everything to justhost.com which is currently serving me well, but I keep my fingers crossed. I've had some version of my website around for 20 years now. Gosh I'm old.

Anything free won't last forever. I'll stick with hosting my own pics.