The Photobucket Ransom thing

[vodkafan]

Like others on here, my Photobucket account is being held to ransom. Does anyone know anything about this? Is it Photobucket or a malicious third party who have hacked the leaky bucket?
One thing is for sure I shall pay diddly squat. I have all my photos backed up onto memory sticks anyway. Whoever it is, bollocks to them

[flatpack]

Yes it looks like an overnight special, where they have gone from hosting pictures for free, to the new cheap as chips price of only 300 dollars a year.
What sort of a strategy is that ?
Absolute madness.

[Quendil]

I have just deleted my account with them.  I shall give imgur a go.  Too many adverts when you try and do anything on photobucket anyway

[YPU]

Yeah, I quit photobucket ages ago when clickbaity ads started showing up. Imgur isn't always the easiest to use (you might accidentally publish your images to the public page) but it "feels" a lot less shitty.

[Plynkes]

I stopped using them a long time ago for new uploads. The site is so crappy, with ads and pop-ups and everything takes an age to load. Why they think anyone would pay for a service like that is beyond me.

It is rather unfortunate that I have lots already up there, though. A lot of Plynkes pictures are going to be vanishing from the web if they are going to block you from linking to them, and I really cannot be bothered to re-upload them somewhere else.

[Cubs]

Same as many, I stopped using Photobucket a while back, because their 'upgrades' made life more difficult and they started charging. I swapped to MyAlbum, which is very basic, but that's what I wanted.

[Michka]

They did my account in too. Not sure where to go now, but there's no way in hell I'm giving them $400 a year to do the same crappy job they've been doing lately. Guess it will be a while till I can upload again.

[Mason]

Looks like most of my stuff is going walkies too, as I aint paying them either.

What a clever method of raising money.
Once their advertisers see how many people are leaving the ship they will too.
I feel they may have to do a 180 on this at some point, so will just leave things as they are for a while and see what happens.

I can live without anyone seeing my old stuff.
I will just claim it as 'new stuff' when I post it again in future.
 

[jon_1066]

I use Flickr! for anything to share on here.  It seems to work fine.

[sukhe_bator]

Sounds like lots of us will go dark for a while... I'll hang in there in case they see sense and do a U'ey. I'll see you guys on the other side!

[FifteensAway]

So, is there any possibility of LAF converting to allow photos from sources other than 'photo hosting' sites?  Neither my figures nor my photos may be earthshaking in quality, but I'd be happy to share them without that intermediary step.  I post to my blogs and people can go there to see things.  Always wondered why it's been so 'clunky' to get photos up here.  Hope there is a better way.

Of course, I predict that very, very few things will be 'free' on the web much sooner than later.  Infrastructure has costs and very few folks are here on the web out of the 'goodness of their hearts.'  This is a very mercenary landscape, the web.  Perhaps the most mercenary ever.  Whether that's good or bad is not for me to say, but it is very, very real.

[jon_1066]

So, is there any possibility of LAF converting to allow photos from sources other than 'photo hosting' sites?  Neither my figures nor my photos may be earthshaking in quality, but I'd be happy to share them without that intermediary step.  I post to my blogs and people can go there to see things.  Always wondered why it's been so 'clunky' to get photos up here.  Hope there is a better way.

Of course, I predict that very, very few things will be 'free' on the web much sooner than later.  Infrastructure has costs and very few folks are here on the web out of the 'goodness of their hearts.'  This is a very mercenary landscape, the web.  Perhaps the most mercenary ever.  Whether that's good or bad is not for me to say, but it is very, very real.

Images take up a lot of space and bandwith.  There are no adds or anything else on LAF so very little money to pay for things.  Hosting images would balloon the storage space required.

[jp1885]

Yep, I've been walloped by Photobucket's antics and am currently re-linking everything on my Frostgrave blog from Imageshack.
As for everything on the LAF, and my VBCW blogs... well, I think I'm just going to have to let them go in the hope that Photobucket see sense.

[OSHIROmodels]

Utter shits 

No warning andno chance of sorting anything out before being hit by it. I don't mind paying a bit for photo storage (which is what I'm doing now) but $33 a month takes the piss considering how many users they have 

Obviously I've got all the photos I've posted elsewhere but christ it's gonna take an age to sort them out 

[Plynkes]

So, is there any possibility of LAF converting to allow photos from sources other than 'photo hosting' sites?  Neither my figures nor my photos may be earthshaking in quality, but I'd be happy to share them without that intermediary step.  I post to my blogs and people can go there to see things.  Always wondered why it's been so 'clunky' to get photos up here.  Hope there is a better way.

Of course, I predict that very, very few things will be 'free' on the web much sooner than later.  Infrastructure has costs and very few folks are here on the web out of the 'goodness of their hearts.'  This is a very mercenary landscape, the web.  Perhaps the most mercenary ever.  Whether that's good or bad is not for me to say, but it is very, very real.

It isn't clunky. It's the standard method. Hosting images requires they be stored on a server somewhere and uses up bandwidth. Those things cost money. So what you are asking for is that the Prof pay for you to host your images for free. And actually, he does precisely that. You can host photos on LAF, you just have to use the attachment function. Now that is clunky and limited and also a drain on LAF's resources. But it is nonetheless there if you want to use it.

You can also access the gallery function if you are a supporting member., but clearly that isn't a free option. Mercenary as it may be, unfortunately nice things cost money.