Photobucket question

[Orrex]

Yesterday the image host allowed free third-party linking for free.

Today that basic default service costs $399 per year.


What the fuck?

[Ptah]

1. free third-party linking for free test

[Orrex]

5. Now why does it work for you?

I've spot-checked about five dozen of my images, and all of them yield the "give us money" image?

[elleng]

2. It appears they've changed their approach.

This was posted at Photo group yesterday:

'If you host your photos on photobucket and share them here be aware that PB just changed their terms of service .Unless you have their $399/yr account you cant use 3rd party hosting which is what you do when you share them here. They are blocking peoples accounts for in theory going over an undisclosed bandwidth allotment and not even allowing people to access their own photos.

If you do a google search for photobucket 3rd part hosting you will see its all over internet forums.

Evidently they just started doing this in the last week or so.'

Another poster wrote:

'The easiest host for photos is imgur. You don't even need an account to upload and use as a host. It's not the best choice for higher quality pictures as compression will significantly reduce the quality of high resolution images. This has it's upsides and downsides as images load faster, but high quality large files will suffer.

Dropbox isn't bad if you need a bit more features and quality. Most of the more full featured options from there work best if you pay for it, especially if you need a lot of storage space.'

[Orrex]

3. Another fun thing about Photobucket

I just logged in to check something on my image files, and I got seven (count 'em--seven!) large pop-ups with hard-to-find "close" buttons, and they blew right past my adblocker.

So not only is Photobucket a clunky, inefficient platform for which they suddenly want to charge an obscenely high fee; it's also choked with inescapable ads.

Again--what the fuck?

[steve2470]

4. They lost me with that stupid policy

I actually paid them for a year because I was linking videos. No more. I could have clicked on one of their ads, but nope, going to use another service now. Will use https://postimage.io/ instead. They have paid plans also if you really need one.

[Different Drummer]

6. I got an email to that effect myself a couple of days ago,

I stopped using Photobucket awhile back when I couldn't get in for some reason and have been using TinyPic ever since. No way I am paying a ridiculously high fee for image hosting!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. It's very strange, and I do not understand what's happening...

But I have given them money for years (NOT $400/year, either) and I have not gotten any notices about new rates or whatever.

I can share my photos here, no problem.

No idea why.