Has PHOTOBUCKET committed suicide ?

[george~]

I find it difficult to understand how a company who has given something away for free it's entire life can suddenly turn into an evil extortionist ransom seeking monster who is completely screwing everyone over, I have a cheapie free proboard website with hundreds of photo's which is now totally ruined, along with a family history website and dozens of other websites with my content that are now all useless. a dozen years worth of work GONE !

https://www.facebook.com/photobucket/


http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40492668


https://petapixel.com/2017/07/01/photob ... edded-web/

[Dizzy1]

I could understand if you're using there services to post your images on eBay, etc. to sell something and make a profit for yourself. You could argue, that you're using their services for commercial purposes and thats quite normal to have to pay for that. If you're making a profit using their services, they should be making a profit off of you.

Was it a wise move on their behalf? Probably not, but if they end up offering a much better, more professional service - it could work. I haven't used PB in years, theres many more free sites out there to choose from.

[Loed]

Just move your stuff to a different site(google, MS, imgur, self host, god forbid you PAY to use a service...).

The way they did it was very shady and irresponsible towards their users, but really, free can't be free forever...

[Woodenhead]

That free site you love today will be the photobucket of tomorrow.

[Urban Cowboy]

For the minimal cost involved these days, I don't know why more people don't just host their own stuff on a personal cloud.

[OldIslander]

The recent PhotoBucket tactic is strange. I'd quit using them a couple of years ago because the site was so infested with popups and ads, that without paying the minimum, it was unbearable to use. I think they also slowed the site down, so unless you had a paid account, it was like molasses in January. But they are not a charitable organization, and if their new plan works, good on them.

I use a few others and have some Google "My Drive" space which works really well.

I often wonder how some of the photo hosting sites make their money. For example, one really good one is Imgur. When you go to their site http://imgur.com/, you don't see any ads. Once you register and sign in, you still don't see ads. When you open an image, you will then finally see a small unobtrusive ad or two. Apparently there is a paid membership if you want to upload hi-rez images and be totally ad free. Photo linking is permitted from the free account. From what I read online, using this business model, they are highly profitable.

[fvkasm2x]

For the minimal cost involved these days, I don't know why more people don't just host their own stuff on a personal cloud.

Because free is still better than low cost.

Until of course you get screwed lol

[george~]

I just checked my website and discovered Photobucket have restored the broken links but they still want money

[Jlabute]

Photobucket has also been implicated as part of the VPNFilter Router malware.

[TylerM4]

This process is called "cashing out" and is very common.

Offer a service for free, build up a large fan/user base while choking out the competition, then either make it a paid service or spam the crap out of it with advertisements (or both). Facebook in it's early days was almost Ad-free. Now it's more ads than content and they also sell your data.

It's all part of the strategy. These are companies looking to make money, not philanthropists.

[MCB]

firefox has an extension that restores the viewability of images hosted on photobucket that were posted on forums. Just sayin!

[TylerM4]

firefox has an extension that restores the viewability of images hosted on photobucket that were posted on forums. Just sayin!

Chrome too. Works great.