Thread photos and photobucket

[TheCougar]

I should probably know this since I'm not old enough to be technologically ignorant, but... lately I have been seeing threads with photos embedded, but the photo is blocked somehow and it says "enable third party hosting blah blah blah photobucket. I've not seen this before and I can't see the photos. What gives? Is this an problems with the person doing the posting or me?

 

[realunlucky]

The photo host ( photo bucket) is no longer allowing people to view the image, unless the poster pays a yearly fee. It's a growing problem that will probably affect all older thread pictures across the internet.

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[oldgoat]

I might be wrong on this, but I thought they were trying to get the forum owner to pay a fee from something I read on another forum. I know I haven't been contacted by them which is what makes me think they are going after the forum owners for money. Whatever it is, it sucks, because that was the easiest way to post pics on some forums without having to resize etc..

 

[realunlucky]

I might be wrong on this, but I thought they were trying to get the forum owner to pay a fee from something I read on another forum. I know I haven't been contacted by them which is what makes me think they are going after the forum owners for money. Whatever it is, it sucks, because that was the easiest way to post pics on some forums without having to resize etc..

Your wrong they want the user to pay for third party hosting.

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[Kevin Dill]

Exactly. PB hosted pics for many years and a majority of their revenue came from advertisers. That money apparently has been drying up and PB is looking for alternative sources. Users of PB are being asked to pay $400 per year to update their accounts and allow 3rd party hosting. Basically your forum PB images are now locked down and unviewable until/unless you pay the fee. Some call it a ransom fee. The worst part is all the PB images going back many years on forum and message boards will be blocked...thus history searches will likely show fewer or no pictures. I understand the fee...no argument at all. The way it was implemented (without broad knowledge and transparency) is terribly bad. It resulted in many people suddenly not having images available and being pressured to pay the fees in order to restore full usability. It does seem similar to some of the software hostage situations used by criminals.....or maybe more like an antitrust thing. Anyway...there is pretty severe backlash happening across social media, forums, message boards, auction sites, etc.

I've got lots of posts using PB images and they are now all blocked. I've decided against the fees simply because of two things: I don't care enough about posting forum images to pay the $400 yearly. I'm against the way PB implemented the changes without clearly making it known well ahead of time.

PB says they have 100 million total users. If only 5% of them pay the $400 that amounts to TWO BILLION DOLLARS of yearly revenue. My guess is they're willing to sacrifice the other 95% to free up server space and lower their overhead.

 

[TheCougar]

Dang. $400 a year is highway robbery!

 

[Finch]

Dang. $400 a year is highway robbery!

No joke! I don't see many paying that. Is there another image hosting site that will let you embed photos?

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[Kevin Dill]

imgur

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

 

[Brendan]

Been a bunch of threads on this lately. Here are two that are stickied:

http://www.rokslide.com/forums/general-discussion-forum/71274-photos-photobucket-move-service.html

http://www.rokslide.com/forums/general-discussion-forum/71287-post-pictures-using-imgur.html


Initial Discussions:

http://www.rokslide.com/forums/general-discussion-forum/70925-warning-havent-photobucket-hose.html

http://www.rokslide.com/forums/general-discussion-forum/69555-photobucket-alternative.html

 

[jmez]

I checked a couple old threads and mine are still up! Guessing I'm not high on the priority list as I have 42 pictures in photobucket currently.

 

[Brendan]

I checked a couple old threads and mine are still up! Guessing I'm not high on the priority list as I have 42 pictures in photobucket currently.

I think it has to do with bandwidth. If you get to a certain amount of traffic viewing your photos - they shut you down for third party sharing until you pay up. Small number of photos, or views - and you probably wouldn't have a problem. I wouldn't keep uploading more though...

 

[jmez]

The only time I ever upload to there is to post something on a forum. I have copies of everything of mine on my PC.

 

[Where's Bruce?]

They should change the name to PhotoSuckit.

 

[RoJo]

I don't know if this has been discussed in any of the other numerous Photobucket threads, but there are a few extensions out now for Chrome that allow you to still see the old linked PB photos in threads. Just go to Chrome's Extensions tool and search for "photobucket fix". The extension I am using that works is called:

"Photobucket Embedded Image Fix 0.6
This extension fixes nuked Photobucket pictures."

I have still switched to hosting my photos on Flickr, but at least I can still see old PB photos...