Photobucket hijacked my images

Up until some time in 2015 I used Photobucket to host all of the images that I posted on this forum; since then I have been using Flickr. But now Photoshop is holding everyone's pictures for ransom, demanding $400/year to allow third party hosting . So now all of the image links in all of my old threads from before 2015 are broken. Like this for example: https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?57942-Painting-The-Magg-(or-How-I-Spent-My-Summer-Vacation)&highlight=vacation.

I still have all off my old rocket pictures on my hard drive so as I have time I will upload them to Flickr and edit the old threads to point to the images on Flickr instead of Photobucket.

That is such a D**K move on Photo*ucket's part. I've never liked them (I keep seeing broken image links from them everywhere, and have been doing so for years), and now I like them even less. With your almost 1,400 posts, that will be a PITA (and I have over 6 times that number). One thing that Flickr used to do was to show where images were being linked from (making a fix like this "easier"). I don't know if they do that anymore (major change a few years back, but things have improved greatly since then).

Glad to hear you still have a way of getting them back and uploading them again.

For those who are going to have to make the switch, I have a tutorial for you:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?129437-Tutorial-Uploading-images-to-TRF-w-Flickr

Did you exceed some sort of limit on your account? My linked images are working just fine.

Classy move by Photobucket:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15919224/photobucket-broken-images-amazon-ebay-etsy-paid-update

From the article, it says they are charging people to use them who host images on 3rd party sites, like Amazon & eBay. They clearly think they can make some money off of some people...not realizing that a bunch of folks are just using it for stuff like this.

Worsaer said:

Did you exceed some sort of limit on your account? My linked images are working just fine.

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Maybe they haven't gotten to you yet. . . https://www.csoonline.com/article/3205765/internet/photobucket-replaced-millions-of-images-with-ransom-demand.html

What was the size of your account? How many GB? My photobucket is fine and is well under the 2GB limit for a free account. They would have to change the limit for free accounts to something like 20MB before anything happens.

I have 117 photos stashed on Photobucket for easy linking to YORF. The iOS app was easy and made getting the IMG code easy. I wasn't able to get Flickr to show me the IMG code from the iOS app.

Whelp, no more. The change in terms showed up in my spam folder a few days ago.

Same thing happened to a buddy of mine. He has/had 3,000 photos on Photobucket and they wanted $399 a year from him. Apparently it is the linking of the photos to forums like this that eats up the bandwidth and why they want the money.

You can still retrieve your photos from Photobucket by downloading the folders.

On one hand.... rent ain't free. On the other ransoming sucks. on the third....always keep a local copy.


i've always liked flickr. I do wish I still just ran everything off my own server... but those days are gone for me now.

Charles_McG said:

I have 117 photos stashed on Photobucket for easy linking to YORF. The iOS app was easy and made getting the IMG code easy. I wasn't able to get Flickr to show me the IMG code from the iOS app.

Whelp, no more. The change in terms showed up in my spam folder a few days ago.

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ive just started using Explorer for flickr. It's a bit weird but does provide the IMG code.

Nathan said:

... edit the old threads to point to the images on Flickr instead of Photobucket.

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and what stops Flickr from doing the same?

Zeus-cat said:

. . . Apparently it is the linking of the photos to forums like this that eats up the bandwidth and why they want the money. . .

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If you search for Minie-Magg in Google images the top search result is one of the photos of my Minie-Magg from Photobucket that I posted here in 2013. So Photobucket has definitely served that image a lot. (the reason that it is still visible on Google images is because Google has cached a low-res copy of the image).

Zeus-cat said:

. . . You can still retrieve your photos from Photobucket by downloading the folders.

Click to expand...

I still have all of my original image files. Luckily Photobucket uses the original filename as part of the link (unlike Flickr which generates a link that does not contain the filename) so at least I can tell which photos were in the old posts and it will be fairly easy to update the Photobucket links with Flickr links in the old forum posts. I'm obviously not going to update them all; just a handful of posts like paint tutorials and rocket gallery posts.

sunward said:

and what stops Flickr from doing the same?

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Hopefully when Yahoo sees how bad this move hurts Photobucket they won't do the same thing to Flickr.

sunward said:

and what stops Flickr from doing the same?

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In a word, nothing.

However, Filckr is owned by Yahoo!, which is now owned by Verizon. They probably counted on people using Flickr would also use other services by the larger corporation, and that would defray the overall costs.

Photobucket really is just Photobucket, and has limited opportunities for revenue, so consider that in your next choice of photo sharing sites.

Honestly, I don't think people have a problem with paying for "rent" for their photos, it is just that this was a "stealth" change of the user agreement, and caught pretty much everyone by surprise.

I suppose there's nothing illegal about the "Photobucket Ransom". Nothing moral about it either. Really the worst PR move ever for a photo sharing site.

Makes you want to try starting your own photo sharing server. Not possible though unless you have money to waste. Bandwidth is really expensive when you get into the business side of things. I'm intimately connected to the price of internet backbones in Canada. Building a server is much cheaper than the pipe feeding it. For example, your home 100Mbit internet might cost $70/mo with $100 installation, where a business might have to pay $700/mo with $1000 installation. 10x the cost for a 100Mbit connection to the internet for their server. Then once your traffic grows beyond 100Mbit, you'll need to upgrade to a full Gig for say... $4k/mo. :y: Not for the weak.

Seems the costs of all this [technology] is starting to become more & more evident. Also, the personal cost is becoming a bit of a pain; service / subscription based vs. a one time 'own it' fee, personal info / privacy concerns, targeted marketing & "personalized" experiences, I-net searches coming up with more & more sales info vs. general info.. And, some of the expenses we thought were combined / covered are becoming more & more itemized, and 'extra'..

I never used a photo sharing site, and with this I really don't want to anymore
(another thread about what we post / share immediately becomes the property of the hosting site)
I gave up FB because of the constant barrage of "suggested sites" & other known data mining
I despise Win 10 for it's marketing & need to have your personal info & preferences (remember when it was 'just an operating system'?!)
I thought cloud storage was just that, but after a nasty discovery with "Google drive" I'll never use one..
Google Play, Win Store the App store all seem to need to know your location, CC, file system, and other info to run something as mundane as a simple calculator app...

Sorry, I guess I'm just ranting on here..

I've got just over 300 photos, unfortunately I cannot update the posts on most of them.

$400 a year to host 300 photos, cannot see the value in that. For some reason they only allow the links with the most expensive plan I'm happy to wait for now to see if they change their mind. I suspect at some stage they will realise that all they have managed to do was upset every one.

I believe linking works just fine if your account is under the 2GB limit for a free account. I read over their updated terms of service and my photos still link just fine.

Let's test:

Using 1% of 10 GB

App no longer shows IMG link.

Wait - it just appeared again.

Charles_McG said:

Using 1% of 10 GB

App no longer shows IMG link.

Wait - it just appeared again.

Click to expand...

Hmm. Well, yours is blocked. Why does mine still show? Maybe I'm not so safe after all... They're coming for me!

sunward said:

and what stops Flickr from doing the same?

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Flickr will have the opportunity to see how this plays out with photo*ucket, and learn what not to do.

Cabernut said:

Hmm. Well, yours is blocked. Why does mine still show? Maybe I'm not so safe after all... They're coming for me!

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They appear to be turning them off in stages. Possibly related to size? Mine worked for a week or after people started complaining. I'm at 3% I think, could probably reduce my size by half if they actually set a reasonable max limit for free.