Warning: Photobucket changed its T&Cs - lots of inlined images gone

[splin]

Photobucket provided a free service allowing images to be stored which could be displayed inline, or embedded, on other websites including EEVBLOG. But apparently without informing anyone it changed its terms overnight and now demands a $39.99/month or $399/year subscription to allow it.

As a result, for example, this thread used to show lots of hi-res pictures of the interiors of various pieces of test kit you now get what's shown in the attached.   

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/what-do-you-want-to-see/


Note that the images are still viewable on the Photobucket site but that is not a good experience.

This has affected probably millions of images across the internet and it's not going to win Photobucket any plaudits - I can't see many rushing to upgrade their free accounts to $300/year ones. I doubt it will go well for them and it's possible they will reconsider.

Probably we have, unreasonably, come to expect everything for free - but as time goes on the 'free' internet services business models funded by advertising are perhaps proving to be non-viable. I can't see that excuse stopping a big backlash against Photobucket though especially because of the suddenness and magnitude of the change. And perhaps especially because it may be looked upon as an attempt to ransom existing users through a bait and switch operation.

[WastelandTek]

Remember kids, when something is "free" YOU are the product.

Apparently scraping your photos for big data wasn't paying the "bills" any more.

[CatalinaWOW]

Maybe it wasn't paying the bills, but even more likely it wasn't satisfying the demand for ever increasing profits.  The mantra in financial circles is that if you are only making as much as you were last quarter you are dead meat.

[alm]

This is why it is better to attach pictures to post on the forum as opposed to uploading them on some third party site that may or not continue to serve them.

[Cyberdragon]

It's dead to us now. Boycott it, let it fail. If it can't survive without pulling evil then it was failing anyway and needs to die. Let Photobucket kick the bucket. Someone will fill the need in short order as soon as it's available.

Soon...

[electr_peter]

Please consider embedding photos directly in forum posts (via attachments and links to attachments), so mentioned problems with 3rd party services won't happen in the future.

[Brumby]

Probably we have, unreasonably, come to expect everything for free ....

I would hardly call the current Photobucket environment "Free".  You get hounded - and I do mean hounded - with advertising when you are trying to do the simplest of things on their site.

As a classic example, when I tried to read the announcement about their updated terms and conditions, I had to clear 3 ads out of the way so I could read it all.


Some people will have so much invested in their image stock on Photobucket, they will have to kowtow - at least in the short term.  But such tactics by Photobucket are going to cause them grief on a scale they are going to regret.

I know an eBay seller who would have 3,000 - 4,000 images on Photobucket that are in active listings.  If this switch drops out of the sky, they are going to be very unhappy.  I can see them paying the fee to keep the images functional - for only as long as it takes to switch over to an alternate host, when they will clear out their PB account and send it into oblivion.

You also have to wonder about collusion.  EBay have been pushing for sellers to host their images on eBay, so those images can become part of the eBay "catalogue", I believe.

Does anyone know if eBay and Photobucket have any connections?

[xrunner]

This is why it is better to attach pictures to post on the forum as opposed to uploading them on some third party site that may or not continue to serve them.

Right! There are too many posts here (including a few of mine) that have pictures of parts and procedures that are not to be found in many other places. DO NOT TRUST YOUR PRECIOUS IMAGES TO ANYTHING OTHER THAN UPLOADING HERE!

 

[tautech]

Yeah, look at the mess in this thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/tektronix-465-repair-and-restoration/

Losing general pics is one thing but TE pics and repair documentation is entirely another. 
PM'ed ModemHead about the mess and he's replied he'd tidy it up. 

Always upload pics to EEVblog.

[Tim F]

This is why it is better to attach pictures to post on the forum as opposed to uploading them on some third party site that may or not continue to serve them.

But then you kill the forum owner (i.e. Dave) with huge bandwidth requirements.

[Len]

This is why it is better to attach pictures to post on the forum as opposed to uploading them on some third party site that may or not continue to serve them.

But then you kill the forum owner (i.e. Dave) with huge bandwidth requirements.

This forum is hosting many thousands of images and Dave hasn't complained about it. Embedding images in the forum is definitely more reliable that using external hosting services - the images will last as long as the forum posts, anyway.

[Rerouter]

Out of curiosity, would there be a way to scan the forum for any posts that have used the inline function, so that users can move there photos if they felt it was important to the community?

Not everything needs to be moved, but a procedure, or some technical document, or a mod might be worthwhile to shift to attachments.

[tautech]

This is why it is better to attach pictures to post on the forum as opposed to uploading them on some third party site that may or not continue to serve them.

But then you kill the forum owner (i.e. Dave) with huge bandwidth requirements.

Only if you are an inconsiderate so in so. 
Compress every image to less than 100kb unless great detail is needed.
Within each of our profiles there's a list of attachments uploaded and you/we can use the same images in posts again and again. Some I've used in posts several times.

[station240]

$400 a year for basic image hosting ?
Oh boy what drugs did they self inject, to be that off the planet.

Is their server farm dying and in need of full replacement in the next year.
Frigging accountants, must have worked out how to still make money when 99.99999% of people stop using their website.

[Zero999]

Probably we have, unreasonably, come to expect everything for free ....

I would hardly call the current Photobucket environment "Free".  You get hounded - and I do mean hounded - with advertising when you are trying to do the simplest of things on their site.

As a classic example, when I tried to read the announcement about their updated terms and conditions, I had to clear 3 ads out of the way so I could read it all.


Some people will have so much invested in their image stock on Photobucket, they will have to kowtow - at least in the short term.  But such tactics by Photobucket are going to cause them grief on a scale they are going to regret.

I know an eBay seller who would have 3,000 - 4,000 images on Photobucket that are in active listings.  If this switch drops out of the sky, they are going to be very unhappy.  I can see them paying the fee to keep the images functional - for only as long as it takes to switch over to an alternate host, when they will clear out their PB account and send it into oblivion.

You also have to wonder about collusion.  EBay have been pushing for sellers to host their images on eBay, so those images can become part of the eBay "catalogue", I believe.

Does anyone know if eBay and Photobucket have any connections?

It will probably make them more money in the short term but only cause them harm when millions of their users desert them.

It does annoy me when people upload images externally, rather than attaching them and I have reposted them, attached when it's important. Another thing which annoys me is people attaching Word documents, when a simple image will do and using Jpegs for schematics too.

[jonovid]

toss Photobucket in the bucket, and find a new hosting service. I am also looking for an alternative to youtube as its now become too mainstream media!   ...full of spam.

[StillTrying]

But then you kill the forum owner (i.e. Dave) with huge bandwidth requirements.

There's still many posting 850KB pictures when 80KB would do fine, thereby wasting 10X worth of Dave's space.

Within each of our profiles there's a list of attachments uploaded and you/we can use the same images in posts again and again. Some I've used in posts several times.

I've had a good look, but I can't find that list.

[rdl]

...
I've had a good look, but I can't find that list.

It takes 3 clicks.

User Name (or your Profile) > Show Posts > Attachments

Once you know where to look, it's faster.

[StillTrying]

> Show Posts

That was the only place I didn't look. 

[Brumby]

Looks like this ...

[TerraHertz]

This is why it is better to attach pictures to post on the forum as opposed to uploading them on some third party site that may or not continue to serve them.

But then you kill the forum owner (i.e. Dave) with huge bandwidth requirements.

Not necessarily. Notice that attached images only appear in page loads as small thumbnails. Dave's server only sends the full image if a user is interested enough to click the thumbnail. Or, if the poster thought the image was worth inlining, so it shows in large format on first page load.

Generally people are reasonably frugal with inlining images, as they should be. It also helps that it's a technical forum and members are capable of using image editing utilities to crop, resize and encode images to a file size appropriate to the need for detail. (Unlike in the general population, where this seems to be beyond many people.)

Local image hosting is a very good arrangement. Vastly superior to forums that think image hosting isn't their job - so over time their threads end up full of dead image links.

[WastelandTek]

how do you make it so the thumbnail is part way through the text instead of all the attachments being bunched at the end?

I apologize for being dense in advance.

[xrunner]

how do you make it so the thumbnail is part way through the text instead of all the attachments being bunched at the end?

I apologize for being dense in advance.

Post your reply and click on the thumbnail, then copy image location. Insert like this -

Code: [Select]

[img] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/warning-photobucket-changed-its-tcs-lots-of-inlined-images-gone/?action=dlattach;attach=328404;image [/img]

[WastelandTek]

when I do that I get the whole image, not a thumbnail, that's what I'm trying to avoid to save Dave's bandwidth

[xrunner]

when I do that I get the whole image, not a thumbnail, that's what I'm trying to avoid to save Dave's bandwidth

Copy the link of the thumbnail only then -

[tautech]

when I do that I get the whole image, not a thumbnail, that's what I'm trying to avoid to save Dave's bandwidth

Don't be too fussed about the forums BW.
There's been a recent upgrade and the forum is performing much better.

Just make sure your uploads are appropriately sized and upload your files/images where they will appear as thumbnails at the foot of your post.
If you want to embed them in a post copy the thumbnail URL and place the URL link in your post with an Edit of Modify. Be sure to embed the link within the IMG 'Insert Image" syntax and it will appear within your text. If you have multiple images you want to embed, you can open another duplicate tab after making the post and grab/copy the URL's and place them in the Edit or Modify post tab.

Find some posts that have the appearance you're looking for and Quote them to see the syntax used. Once you have it sorted just back out of the Quote.

[Rerouter]

If you really wanted to go overkill, you could do something like this

Code: [Select]

[url=https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/warning-photobucket-changed-its-tcs-lots-of-inlined-images-gone/?action=dlattach;attach=328407;image][img]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=90995.0;attach=328408;image[/img][/url]

[xrunner]

If you really wanted to go overkill, you could do something like this ...

Heh - yea really. 

I was looking at Photobucket's twitter earlier today and there were lots of people PISSED, but now I can't see any of the angry tweets. I guess they can shut that down? (I'm not a registered Twitter user).

[marshallh]

They want $40/mo? You can get a webserver with 100gb space and unlimited bandwidth for $5/mo digitalocean.

[alm]

Obviously, but for some people that have uploaded thousands of images for a blog, paying $40/month may be preferable over having to go back and edit all those blog posts. If Dave had been making text blogs instead of video blogs, and had been using Photobucket for those 1000 posts over all those years.

[hendorog]

I've used https://postimage.io on the forums.

I just find it faster than going through the resize shuffle.
Time will tell if they are any better, but I didn't have to sign up or create a login and so they can't spam me.

[X]

Aaaah, cloud services! So modern, so reliable, so online, so connected, so scalable, so economical, so environmentally friendly, so cheap, no fuss, no maintenance on your part, you can share and retrieve your data whenever you like...

[MacMeter]

Same thing happened a few years a go with a similar photo share site, and everyone flocked to the FREE photobucket site. Not sure if they are still around, forgot their name. Deja Vue indeed, they lure you in with free storage and linkage, and eventually attempt to extort you for money to keep it all intact. Hulu used to be free, until they were done using folks as beta testers. It's the new business model, I understand a need to make money to stay in business, it's just the lack of being upfront and honest the direction the company is actually going to be going in. Since I've seen this before, I stopped using such "services", as well as minimizing my use of any cloud services.

[TerraHertz]

So tempting.

[nctnico]

Generally people are reasonably frugal with inlining images, as they should be. It also helps that it's a technical forum and members are capable of using image editing utilities to crop, resize and encode images to a file size appropriate to the need for detail. (Unlike in the general population, where this seems to be beyond many people.)

Local image hosting is a very good arrangement. Vastly superior to forums that think image hosting isn't their job - so over time their threads end up full of dead image links.

I'm not going to resize, crop, whatever pictures I upload. Also attaching photos to messages and then putting them in the right place is way too tedious (even if you don't hit the limit). I'm currently using Flickr which provides a direct link to a resized image I can insert in a message. If Dave cares about pictures on his forum he should add a photo album function to it which also offers resized images like Flickr does.

[ixfd64]

This Chrome extension may be useful: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg