Great Moments In Internet Stupid: Photobucket

[AbortRetryFail?]

Photobucket Breaks Image Links Across the Internet

Embedding images on a website or in a forum post is a very common practice, with those images usually living on one of the many well-known image hosting websites. One such host is Photobucket, but a recent change to its subscription tiers means many millions of images across the Internet are no longer going to load outside of Photobucket's own site.

The key feature of a Photobucket account we're talking about here is called "3rd Party Hosting." It allows you to embed images from Photobucket in another location on the Internet, e.g. in a forum post or on a website.

As Norvic Philatelics discovered, Photobucket changed its terms and conditions and removed the 3rd Party Hosting feature from the lower subscription tiers. If you want to continue using that feature then a Photobucket Plus 500 subscription is required. It costs $39.99 per month or $399 per year....

Not only did they drop this pant-load on July 1st without input or notice, they re-coded and eliminated the ability to locally back-up individual account libraries 'en mass' -- an account holder must now back-up each image individually to their home world.

Throw $60- to $100 million away, much?

Congrats, Photobucket. You win the Martin Shkreli Pharma Bro A-Hole of the Week Award ...

HA!

[Tim]

WOW! That's nuts. Ahhhh I remember the good old Photobucket.

$39.99 per month or $399 per year....

Nopity nope

[alpha0ne]

Good old greed and rampant capitalism ............................guaranteed to f*ck it up every time

[BenchZowner]

I can see them disappear in the next 6 months

[Kai Robinson]

There's a reason imgur exists.

[kromosto]

I love the companies that starts war against their own ecosystems.

[chew*]

Yah i got rick rolled by photobucket last week or so...

[Sparky]

Some warning would have been nice.

And maybe having more reasonable prices would have been a good idea too.

But they technically don't owe free users anything, so I can't get too mad I guess.

Besides, that's the beauty of the internet (and also a free market) - some service pulls a stupid stunt like this, market responds with "heck no," dumps them, and goes to a competing service. Sure, they're welcome to charge what they want, but that doesn't mean anyone has to use their service and pay for it

BTW - imgur I think has in their TOS that they aren't to be used for hotlinking to other forums. Imgbb looks like they are set up for that specifically though.

Blast from the past - imageshack still exists lol.

[StAndrew]

Sounds like they got a new CEO who is going to let them die, take a huge bonus check, and make out like a bandit. Its not uncomong for dying companies to be bought out, run into the ground while the new owner bleeds it dry with bonus checks, etc...

[bearcatrp]

Lucky for me that every photo i put on photo$ucket in on a separate drive. I will just delete the account. Bet they will reverse in 3 months once they see the ship sinking!

[Tim]

This has actually broken a ton of guides on forums and the like, especially automotive guides on how to fix things. Some of these guides are pretty ancient and I doubt the original posters are even around still.

Quite annoying!