Photobucket - making everyones life miserable

[RAJEN]

It is like when I was a kid I used to think it must be nice to have one's own candy store!

[DACC]

Not condoning PB in any way (their customer experience is awful) but they are trying to run a business and that means make a profit. If you don't pay - they need to make money somehow and it's often adverts. The vast amounts of storage and bandwidth they have to pay for isn't free.

Same for Facebook, twitter, gmail, hotmail, et al. They are all using your details to sell adverts. Some subtly, others - like PB, awfully.

PB deserves to fail purely from their treatment of their customers and greed.

If you use a "cloud service" (which is what these all are) unless you pay, expect to be shafted at some point in the future!

Sorry but that's the new .com business model.


Sent from TZ-UK app on an iPhone

[learningtofly]

It's somewhere in this lot, Tony: http://photobucket.com/terms (changed again on 5th July !!)

It may help to read in conjunction with this: http://blog.photobucket.com/please-r...s-photobucket/

There's a section there on 3rd Party Hosting Specifics further down the page ....



So possibly some good news for PB users who were paying for a (lower level) Plus account - that's assuming they survive until December 2018 (which seems extremely unlikely).

Some small mercy at least, and time to think about how I can address issue relating to my blog. I don't think historic forum postings have much of a chance, though.

[Seiko7A38]

Some small mercy at least, and time to think about how I can address issue relating to my blog. I don't think historic forum postings have much of a chance, though.

So you're in the same boat as me, Tony ? With a paid subscription ? I'm on their Plus20 plan (which no longer exists as an option, since the change to their ToS). Ironically, PB took the renewal payment on 25th June, three days before they first revised their ToS ! 22GB is more than enough for me - I've still only used 19% of my storage, but that represents 19,000+ images, most of which are embedded in my forum. Going by that statement, they should be safe till the end of December 2018. What happens then ? Presumably I'll be given the option to upgrade to Plus500 for $399 or my images will be blocked. That's if PB don't go under first !

By the way, if you want to see (lots) more comments from p!ssed off PB users, you need look no further than their status blog: http://blog.photobucket.com/status/c...ge-9/#comments
There haven't been any new comments added since 6th July so presumably it's been locked down.

[learningtofly]

What a complete nightmare (and yes, I've been a paid member for a few years now).

I suppose that another alternative is a PB u-turn, although that would be problematic for obvious reasons.

So, two issues for me... how and when to self-host, and then how the frack to change all the image links on my blog and in a few other locations given that it'll be an enormous task!

[Seiko7A38]

I suppose that another alternative is a PB u-turn, although that would be problematic for obvious reasons.

Yes that's my quandry, PB caving in to all the protests (or a class action lawsuit) and doing a U-turn. I've always taken great pride in my little forum - particularly with regard to missing images / spaceballs and placeholders. In the past I've fixed them, wherever possible. I think I can safely say, that prior to the PB fiasco, there were no more than a dozen across my whole forum. There wasn't much impact in the first week, but then last week the images belonging to three major contributors were blocked, replaced by PB's Plus500 ransomware placeholders. It hadn't occured to me that they were free PB account users. I only have one WRUW thread on my forum (for wrist shots) - it's 66 pages long with 1300+ posts. Overnight I found I'd lost 200 plus images in this thread from just these three members ! Last weekend I started 'fixing' them, by re-hosting their 'missing' photos in my own PB account and editing the links in their posts. Working backwards, I've done pages 66 to 61 so far, but it really is a slow balls-aching job. But am I wasting my time ?

http://www.seiko7a38.com/apps/forums...159326?page=66

Something odd I've noticed is that not all the images from these three users have been blocked - for example this one from the top of page 65:



Yet his photo at the top of page 66 had been blocked (and since re-hosted by myself). So perhaps PB have implemented some algorithm that is actually looking at the bandwidth of individual photos, rather than blocking all a user's images. Seems unlikely though.

[Seiko7A38]

PS - Try googling Class action Photobucket:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Cla...on+Photobucket

Lots of people are suggesting it. Just needs someone to get off their arse and hire a lawyer.

[P ELLIS]

mines been blocked today apparently...arseholes

[robt]

Something odd I've noticed is that not all the images from these three users have been blocked - for example this one from the top of page 65...

Hmm, just had a look and neither of them is currently blocked. I thought this could potentially answer a question, and it almost has, but not quite. The two images are hosted on different servers:

• i1194.photobucket.com
• i158.photobucket.com

This would support the idea that they are just rolling it out one server at a time and haven't got to all of them yet. Maybe that user just paid the random to get their images unblocked?

[Seiko7A38]

Thanks for at least looking, but I don't think you quite got my drift ....

This image, still viewable at the moment is at the top of page 65 of the WRUW thread:



It is still hosted in Don's (theoretically blocked) PB account.

This later image at the top of page 66, I have already 'fixed' by re-hosting his photo in my PB account and editing the link in his post:



If you look at Don's (user Donwatch) posts of 7th / 8th April on page 64 of the thread:

http://www.seiko7a38.com/apps/forums...159326?page=64

Lower down that page you'll see there are 4 more of his photos that are also still currently working, still hosted in his (theoretically blocked) i158 Photobucket account.

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t94/Don_Garrison/

PS - And Don has NO INTENTION of paying them one cent ! (He used slightly less polite terms).

[robt]

This later image at the top of page 66, I have already 'fixed' by re-hosting in my PB account and re-linking

Argh! Do you still have the old, broken image link, so we can see if the same account was split over more than one server?

[Seiko7A38]

Argh! Do you still have the old, broken image link, so we can see if the same account was split over more than one server?

Nope. But check out those 4 (still working) photos of Don's on page 64 and I'll think you'll find they're all on the same i158 server. Pretty sure all those I've fixed so far were, too.

Edit. My bad. Looks like the old bugger had two free PB accounts.

This one is still good: http://s158.photobucket.com/user/Don...=recent&page=1

This is already blocked: http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/do...=recent&page=1

[robt]

Nope. But check out those 4 (still working) photos of Don's on page 64 and I'll think you'll find they're all on the same i158 server. Pretty sure all those I've fixed so far were, too.

If you spot another case please post details before fixing for confirmation, as it would be good to know for certain.

[Neil.C]

I guess it is always the way with these free hosting services. They eventually get too popular, the bandwidth is too expensive and find they need to raise revenue or just go under.

In my time on forums I have seen the previous darlings, Imagestation, and Imageshack fall by the wayside to be replaced by Photobucket who are now suffering in the same way as their forebears.

Consequently everybody moves to Flickr or Imgur and we wait for them to fail at a later date.

[DACC]

I
In my time on forums I have seen the previous darlings, Imagestation, and Imageshack fall by the wayside to be replaced by Photobucket who are now suffering in the same way as their forebears.

Consequently everybody moves to Flickr or Imgur and we wait for them to fail at a later date.

Totally agree

Unfortunately many dot.coms are valued highly but have no cash flow. It took years for Amazon to make a profit (and not sure how Amazon prime does).
I use a paid for Dropbox account and hope they have enough subscribers over free accounts to survive.


Sent from TZ-UK app on an iPhone

[robt]

It took years for Amazon to make a profit

Amazon is a very misleading example of this, because they've always made huge profits. However, they have until very recently, re-invested 100% of those profits back into business expansion so it always looked like their profits were exactly zero. This is how they have come to dominate pretty much every aspect of online business outside search and social media.

Agree wrt the cycle on image hosting sites though. Imgur is at risk because they've taken loads of VC capital and will be under a lot of pressure to turn profits. They didn't really start with a business model at all, so they are having to make big changes. They've already disabled hotlinking for some sites, and have changed the way links to images work, so you're more likely to see unwanted (and sometimes inappropriate/nsfw) crap from their fledgling social network. Flickr are at risk because they are owned by Yahoo, which is basically an ongoing fire sale now.

I've decided to go with postimages, as one of the smaller players, because bandwidth isn't as expensive as it used to be, and they have put some thought into how they can monetise through ads and sensible premium-tier accounts, without draconian restrictions. As a small player, they are always going to be at risk of folding, but they seem to have been ticking along since 2004, so presumably have some idea what their cost/revenue graph looks like.

TBH though, adblockers are going to hurt sites like this really badly. As those continue getting more popular/essential, it's going to balance out the savings in cheaper bandwidth & storage, so the cycle could just carry on as before. This is the reason sites like Imgur are pushing so hard down the social media path, but it's also what's going to turn people away from the platform as a generic image host.

[Carlton-Browne]

It took years for Amazon to make a profit (and not sure how Amazon prime does).

There's a difference between not making a profit and not making a profit for tax purposes

So, two issues for me... how and when to self-host, and then how the frack to change all the image links on my blog and in a few other locations given that it'll be an enormous task!

I say this only half in jest Tony but have you thought about outsourcing the task to India? The thing that made me think of this was that I spent most of 2010 in India and came very close to taking my CD collection out, one suitcase at a time, and paying someone to rip it into Itunes. I didn't in the end and the issue disappeared as I spent most of the following few years working from home; it was useful to have something to do during interminable conference calls (and possibly the Bear Pit benefited from not having a second Mr Angry).

I moved to self hosting when Dropbox withdrew support for third party linking (at least from free accounts) but at least they gave me three months notice.

[Mark020]

Photobucket was recently sold for USD 300m and claims to have 100m users. So if 1% bends over and pays the USD 400 somebody may have done a good deal...

[learningtofly]

There's a difference between not making a profit and not making a profit for tax purposes



I say this only half in jest Tony but have you thought about outsourcing the task to India? The thing that made me think of this was that I spent most of 2010 in India and came very close to taking my CD collection out, one suitcase at a time, and paying someone to rip it into Itunes. I didn't in the end and the issue disappeared as I spent most of the following few years working from home; it was useful to have something to do during interminable conference calls (and possibly the Bear Pit benefited from not having a second Mr Angry).

I moved to self hosting when Dropbox withdrew support for third party linking (at least from free accounts) but at least they gave me three months notice.

I'll drop you a line when I get a minute, Alan!

[robt]

I say this only half in jest Tony but have you thought about outsourcing the task to India?

The difficulty with outsourcing (to India or anywhere else) is that you need to be very precise about what you want, and you need to be able to measure whether you actually received what you wanted. The difficulty with self-hosting anything is keeping your server secure. Not something I'd advise outsourcing.

For someone non-technical, I'd recommend something like this:

http://www.positive-internet.com/services/z-hosting

And probably set up a free Cloudflare account too.

If you don't know anything about DNS, Positive would undoubtedly help with that as it takes some load off their servers and hence saves them money. I haven't used them for years, but their support was excellent and their reputation hasn't changed.

The observant may notice that this is actually a premium account as far as shared hosting goes, with excellent support, 1TB of storage, and is still less than half the price of a Photobucket p500 account. Cheaper options are available, but you won't get the same level of support.

Now, when it comes to translating all the links in dozens of HTML pages - that's the kind of thing you could outsource. Just post it on upwork.com and you're bound to find either someone who can script it, or someone in India/Ukraine willing to do it by hand.

[Carlton-Browne]

I'll drop you a line when I get a minute, Alan!

Don't get your hopes up - I never actually did a deal with anybody.

[Itsguy]

Photobucket was recently sold for USD 300m and claims to have 100m users. So if 1% bends over and pays the USD 400 somebody may have done a good deal...

I'd be amazed if 1% fell for this while better solutions are available, but maybe they've done their research and know that every 100th person has a site / blog that will need rebuilding. Nasty business model.

[learningtofly]

Don't get your hopes up - I never actually did a deal with anybody.

Bastard!

[geran]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: they aren't blocking all accounts. They are currently only going after those with the highest usage and therefore most likely to pay up. Their T&Cs are the same for everyone though and it would actually be easier for them to just block hot-linking from all accounts. The fact that they are not doing that shows they are trying to minimise the damage, but it seems likely they will widen the net in the future.

Stop using Photobucket for posting on forums. It's already caused the lost of a lot of historic information.

I use it for maybe three or four photos a month - it's blocked my images, hardly high usage!

I use it less than that, but still had the notification email the other day.

[Carlton-Browne]

Bastard!

Sorry about that . I'd say the Upwork.com link from robt will help you find what you need (I had a recollection there was another similar resource but I can't for the life of me remember what it 's called).

[robt]

Sorry about that . I'd say the Upwork.com link from robt will help you find what you need (I had a recollection there was another similar resource but I can't for the life of me remember what it 's called).

The other big one is freelancer.com. Both are extremely bad for the person doing the work, so I tend to avoid like the plague as you will never find quality workers on there. For really simple stuff like this though, it's probably quite good. If I needed to do a tedious data migration job again, it would be the first place I would try, before speaking to an outsourcing or temp agency.

Edit: you may also have heard of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, but that's not available in the UK. Probably something about slavery laws ;-)

[learningtofly]

The other big one is freelancer.com. Both are extremely bad for the person doing the work, so I tend to avoid like the plague as you will never find quality workers on there. For really simple stuff like this though, it's probably quite good. If I needed to do a tedious data migration job again, it would be the first place I would try, before speaking to an outsourcing or temp agency.

Edit: you may also have heard of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, but that's not available in the UK. Probably something about slavery laws ;-)

Rob, thanks for your posts on this thread - much appreciated.

[robt]

Rob, thanks for your posts on this thread - much appreciated.

np.

[Seiko7A38]

Hmm. Just logged into Photobucket (using my email address as I normally do), I had a pop-up asking me to confirm my email address. Wonder what they'll be sending out next ?



Interestingly, they appear to have temporarily stopped bombarding (paid subscription) users with advertising pop-ups. Note the AdBlock Plus pop-up counter at top right - showing just 1 ! In the last couple of weeks that would normally have been at least 10 by this stage.

[Maysie]

Anyone else having trouble dragging images to upload onto Imgur using Chrome?

Doing the same thing with Firefox is fine, but it just stalls every single time with Chrome for some reason! Grrr.

[robt]

I got the email today, asking me to pay $400, because I posted a handful of images in 2013.

So instead of that, I have deleted all photos that were in my account (revoking their copyright grant as per the ToS) and changed all the settings, so that all the details they have are now fake. Any emails they send in future will go to mailinator.com.

I did that instead of simply deleting the account, because on 99% of web applications, deleting an account doesn't actually delete anything (just sets a "this is deleted" flag somewhere), but changing the details overwrites the old values in the database, ensuring they are actually destroyed permanently. I'll give it a couple of months for backups to propagate, then I'll hit the delete link.

In other words, nuke it from orbit: it's the only way to be sure.

[lawman_nl]

Hi, I'm a bit late to this (I am in between jobs again and watches are not my priority most of the time) but am now seriously pissed of, to put it mildly.

Photobucket was the only hosting/sharing website I used.

I'll look for an alternative and think I'll try Flickr or Imgur, or possibly one of the other ones mentioned here: https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/306323...ncing-services

But it will probably take me many months to replace all the links I have posted here...

[markrlondon]

Can I just say: I told you all so (multiple times).

Admittedly not about Photobucket specifically but I have repeatedly warned of the inherent unreliability of using third party hosting.

Self-hosting on your own website, it's the best way. It relieves you of all these unexpected problems.

[robt]

Can I just say: I told you all so (multiple times).

Admittedly not about Photobucket specifically but I have repeatedly warned of the inherent unreliability of using third party hosting.

Self-hosting on your own website, it's the best way. It relieves you of all these unexpected problems.

However, it is a hassle, even if you know what you are doing (and from a security perspective, especially if you know what you are doing) and can come with unexpected costs if you don't correctly predict your bandwidth requirements or read the contract carefully.

There's no guarantee than any of the free services will still be around in 10 years, but on average, it's even less likely that anyone's self-hosted personal site will still be around either. There's no magic solution.

[markrlondon]

However, it is a hassle, even if you know what you are doing (and from a security perspective, especially if you know what you are doing) and can come with unexpected costs if you don't correctly predict your bandwidth requirements or read the contract carefully.

Not really, as far as I can see. Any old shared web hosting account will do. What do these cost nowadays? £20 per annum?

Security isn't a concern as the shared hosting provider manages it and there need not be anything other than pictures and maybe static HTML on the site. Unless your bandwidth requirements are humongous then whatever is the standard bandwidth they offer will probably do. Most shared web hosting accounts are structured such that there can be no unexpected costs.

To be clear, by self-hosting I don't necessarily mean running your own web server (although you could if you want to make the effort). I just mean using a perfectly standard web hosting account to host static content.

There's no guarantee than any of the free services will still be around in 10 years, but on average, it's even less likely that anyone's self-hosted personal site will still be around either.

On the balance of probabilities based upon what we see around us (e.g. this very thread and previous ones like it where previously reliable image hosting providers went bad) it seems to me that putting one's pictures on one's own website is demonstrably and unambiguously far more reliable than any free picture hosting provider!

There really is no downside whatsoever to using your own website to host your own pics. And of course you can move trivially en bloc if the web hosting provider becomes unreliable in some way.



P.S. An example of the kind of service that will do all that is needed is this, https://www.123-reg.co.uk/web-hosting/, from 123-Reg. The 'Essentials' account at a mammoth £3 inc VAT per month is entirely sufficient for most people. Unlimited bandwidth, ideal for static hosting, no security risks, no silly randomly changing rules and regulations, just web hosting.

And before anyone says "Eeeeewwwww, 123-Reg", get over it. They are entirely adequate for the job at hand. If you don't like them then there are literally hundreds of other similar web hosting providers.

The simple fact is that going to a specialist image hosting provider definitely adds hassle (as we have seen here) but adds no special must-have features for most people.

[robt]

P.S. An example of the kind of service that will do all that is needed is this, https://www.123-reg.co.uk/web-hosting/, from 123-Reg. The 'Essentials' account at a mammoth £3 inc VAT is entirely sufficient for most people. Unlimited bandwidth, ideal for static hosting, no security risks, no silly randomly changing rules and regulations, just web hosting.

Looks like it could do the job for most people, although I remain sceptical of these unlimited packages. Hosting companies have a history of offering them and changing the conditions later. 1-and-1 are even worse in that all their pricing is usually a 12-month "offer" and the price suddenly gets hiked up when renewal comes around. All companies in these price ranges tend to have fairly shady practises around upselling and cross-selling of uneccesary add-ons, sometimes making them necessary by crippling standard packages. I don't see too much of that from 123-reg, but they are pretty aggressive about cross-selling.

Part of my point is that people like you and I know what is or isn't needed. The average person who wants to host images doesn't know the difference between essential security maintenance and the pointless security scanning product that 123-reg offers you on page 2. It can be a minefield for the unwary.

And before anyone says "Eeeeewwwww, 123-Reg", get over it. They are entirely adequate for the job at hand. If you don't like them then there are literally hundreds of over similar web hosting providers.

I've used them a lot (though not for hosting) and no major problems since they introduced chat support. Bedore that, they were impossible to contact if anything ever went wrong.

[koimaster]

Not certain where to post this but we had a long discussion about the blackmail photobucket is attempting. That includes documented claims that their album downloader is broken and they are working on it. This downloader allowed me to download over 6000 photos in very little time.


There s a free version of this but it only allows 100 photos at a time to be downloaded. The upgraded version is $1.99




This is a Chrome (google) extention by the way and you purchase it at the google play store or just do a search for photobucket album downloader. After it is installed into your extentions log into photobucket and go to your library.





You can get the extension here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...pkeopelc?hl=en

You can get Chrome here:
https://www.google.com/chrome/browse...top/index.html


You will see two download menus. The regular Photobucket one and the Google extensions. Guess which one you use? One you hit download it will "fetch" the album and start downloading to your download folder. Sometimes it will stall and if it does, either hit re-fresh or exit the album and try again. It will work until photobucket tries to do a work around to disable it.

[Dark Side of The Loon]

Good to see there is a work-around, for the time being.

They've really cocked up what would be some great posts from years ago, which are still enjoyable and informative - or would be if they had their photos.

[markrlondon]

They've really cocked up what would be some great posts from years ago, which are still enjoyable and informative - or would be if they had their photos.

In my view the error was to rely on a third party service like this in the first place. This sot of problem was predictable and was predicted.

[Dark Side of The Loon]

In my view the error was to rely on a third party service like this in the first place. This sot of problem was predictable and was predicted.

There's definitely that as well, although they are being especially egregious with the sum of money etc.

[blackal]

I had a $35/yr account with Photobucket, which I utilised to around 10% of capacity.

Now - if they introduced a plan with 10Gb of capacity, and charged $20/yr - I dare say that a lot of private individuals would pay for that for 3rd party hosting......

But - with the cheapest option being $400/yr.............

I deleted all the pics and told them to cancel my account before the next regular payment.

It will be interesting to see how they fair for revenue in the next year or two.

[dommorton]

Seems I used their own downloader just in time then before it became

"broken"

[markrlondon]

although they are being especially egregious with the sum of money etc.

Yes, indeed. It's very odd, a seemingly suicidal strategy.

[Dark Side of The Loon]

As an aside, what do we use when we upload photos through the TZ-UK app? I haven't had to sign up to anything.

[Yokel]

this must be a deliberate ploy to ensure early bankruptcy and subsequent protection from creditors.

I think that would class as wrongful trading, which could (in the UK) make directors personally liable!

[alfat33]

As an aside, what do we use when we upload photos through the TZ-UK app? I haven't had to sign up to anything.

They are hosted by Tapatalk, who adapted the app from their generic app that many also use. You are signed up because you logged into the app. No charge yet, but surely one day.