The demise of Photobucket

[88v8]

You may know that as of 28 June, Photobucket have blocked third-party hosting so that links to forums will no longer work.

Looking at their revised Terms of Service as of 28 June, I see that in order to link to an external site such as a forum I would have to pay $99 pa.
http://photobucket.com/pricing

This is a sad development. It will affect probably thousands of fora worldwide. Explanatory and technical posts will become opaque.
Even if Bucket users pay the $99 pa - unlikely - those payments will eventually lapse, I need not elaborate.

From my limited technical knowledge, it appears that fora would have to boost their own upload capacity significantly, presumably this costs.
Fora with very small upload limits will be particularly affected.

A user jump to other free photo-hosting services is likely to be no more than a sticking plaster. In the end, nothing is free, and Bucket has taken this action partly because so many users were using ad blockers, understandably so considering the extent to which Bucket had become polluted by advertising.
No doubt other free services will eventually follow.

This is a landmark in the evolution of the web, and not a good one. The web is an ephemeral thing.

Ivor

 

[Feltwell]

That's not good

At the moment past links still work, having checked one of my old posts on here. I've always used Photobucket although it was becoming so bloated with video adverts and hence slow that it was almost unusable, despite my having reasonable fibre broadband connectivity.

For those who use other picture hosting sites, which do you reckon is best?

 

[Flyfisher]

This is a good example why I don't, and will never, rely on any web-based service to look after my photos or any of my other ' 'digital stuff'. All those 'cloud' things are fine and dandy when they work but they simply cannot be relied upon to be there tomorrow. The importance of a robust backup regime for our PCs because of potential failure is widely advised - this is a good example of the potential failure of cloud services.

 

[Damon]

I've been using this

https://ctrlq.org/images/

Seems to work fine and provides a direct link to the uploaded image. Nice and simple and you don't have to sign up to use it.

 

[Flyfisher]

Here's a list of other photo sharing websites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites

However, to emphasise my point above, it also includes a long list of defunct photo sharing websites. :shock:

 

[Abi Cott]

 

[Abi Cott]

Well that link seemed to work

 

[88v8]

Ooh, is that your notnew house?
How did you link that? Must have a magic touch.

Summat very odd going on with Bucket.
When I went to the site via my Favourites just now, I see a text-only screen like something from the 80s.
To get the log-in to work I have to open it in a new tab.
Then my Library will only open by opening that in a new tab.
Then when I open a pic, the sidebar, the one that contains the img link, has moved down the screen and is not swipeable, so I can't use it.

I swiped the whole pic so it blued, got this

View album Crop Rotate right Rotate left Add effects Move Delete Print Download Copy Prescott 09 Pb.InitEventQueue.addToDomReady(function() { Pb.Data.Shared.get(Pb.Data.Shared.MEDIA).sequence = "currentMedia"; (new Pb.Component.Media.Media({ 'currentTarget': Pb.Data.Shared.get(Pb.Data.Shared.MEDIA), 'canEdit': true, 'showPagination': true, 'canCopy': true, 'isMobile': false, 'showPreview': false })); }, Pb.InitEventQueue.HIGH_PRIORITY); Click to add description Your Bucket

Perhaps archaeologists of the future will be able to turn that back into a picture.

Wickipedia has updated its write-up of Bucket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photobucket
On June 28, 2017, Photobucket changed its Terms of Use regarding free accounts and third party hosting (hosting on forums, eBay, etc). Only the most expensive plan, at $399.99 per year, now permits third party hosting and linking to forums, etc.[11] Even a day later the site broke links to billions of pictures that were posted online. Photobucket sent out no emails to warn users of this change. This resulted in millions of users being forced to ether pay up to restore links or find alternatives. Somewhere between 200 million to 1 billion picture links on forums and Twitter, etc. are broken and replaced with a "Please update your account to enable 3rd party hosting" message.
This new business model has caused thousands of forum DIY's and write-ups with explanatory pictures to be rendered useless. Photobucket has not had any new accounts created on their site since this new change took place.

One has to wonder whether the site will soon, ahem, kick the bucket.

Digital photos as a whole seem ephemeral. They're on my computer, which one day will expire and may or may not be retrievable.
And on my backup drive which I only run once a week for whole-disc backups.
I should keep a backup in the shed where it won't burn if the house does.

I should print some key pics in black & white on photo paper. That's the only way to preserve them. One day I'll be saying coulda shoulda.

Ivor

 

[Abi Cott]

I used the app on my phone to post that. It automatically uploads every photo I take to photobucket and I just tap on the photo to get a direct link. Getting the brackets in the right place can be a bit of a pig. But clearly it was working when I posted that.

Yes it's the notnew house. Top two windows are out for full restoration. I still haven't finished the door :(

 

[plasticpigeon]

Look just like my windows Abbi. They have spent more time in the workshop than in their frames this year. Great looking house. Very authentic looking with all the period soot as well! Are you going to grain the door? I ask as it is a funny colour but a good colour as a base for graining.

 

[88v8]

I used the app on my phone to post that. It automatically uploads every photo I take to photobucket and I just tap on the photo to get a direct link. Getting the brackets in the right place can be a bit of a pig. But clearly it was working when I posted that.
Yes it's the notnew house. Top two windows are out for full restoration. I still haven't finished the door.[/quote]

App? I'm sure they must have been invented by someone oop north. Appen, like.
My phone is pre-app.

That sash in relation to the frontage, is the largest I've ever seen. And those notbricks are striking.
Hope the neighbours are equally appreciative of their own houses.

Everything takes longer than one thinks. And one only has so much net disposable time. Interior competes with exterior for one's attention.
Exterior needs to win, on the whole.

Ivor

 

[Flyfisher]

Digital photos as a whole seem ephemeral. They're on my computer, which one day will expire and may or may not be retrievable.
And on my backup drive which I only run once a week for whole-disc backups.
I should keep a backup in the shed where it won't burn if the house does.

I should print some key pics in black & white on photo paper. That's the only way to preserve them. One day I'll be saying coulda shoulda.

Sadly, I think you're probably right about digital stuff being ephemeral, though that's only because of the value attached to it and how people look after it. In theory it could last forever because it is so easy to make perfect copies. the storage media doesn't really matter as long as someone is prepared to copy stuff to each new generation of media - something that generally becomes easier and easier over time.

I still have digital documents from the 1980s that were originally stored on 8-inch floppy discs. Their capacity was so small that it was only a few documents per diskette, so many were required and copying them was a mildly time-consuming task involving lots of diskette shuffling. But as capacities increased, more could be stored on each item of media (diskettes, zip drives, and ever increasing sizes of hard drive) and copying became so much easier. Sure, it takes a fair bit of elapsed time to copy a full 2TB external hard drive, but it's no longer necessary to sit there while the PC does its thing - just a few clicks and walk away.

Thus, if people choose to ascribe value to digital stuff then it can be perfectly preserved forever, unlike even monochrome photos that will probably only last a few hundred years. But ultimately, someone has to care enough and that's where so much stuff - real and digital - is lost to history.

 

[Abi Cott]

Look just like my windows Abbi. They have spent more time in the workshop than in their frames this year. Great looking house. Very authentic looking with all the period soot as well! Are you going to grain the door? I ask as it is a funny colour but a good colour as a base for graining.

It's the primer. I'm using Jotun Windows and doors and it recommends that funny beige primer for previously painted wood. It's going to be blue when I've finished. I don't think my conservation area permits woodgrained
doors.

I got some pictures of the windows this morning. I might try and upload them later. The general consensus is the ground floor window would have had a mullion like those above but it was removed in the Victorian period when the property became a shop

 

[Flyfisher]

Thousands of images promoting goods sold on Amazon and other shopping sites have been removed after a photo-sharing service changed its terms. Ebay and Etsy have also been affected, in addition to many forums and blogs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40492668

It'll be interesting to see how all this pans out.

 

[Abi Cott]

Let's see if it's still working at my end

 

[Abi Cott]

Nope looks like that's busted now.

 

[Abi Cott]

Rather clumsy on my phone but might do the job

 

[Abi Cott]

Nope lol

 

[Abi Cott]

Ok attempt 2 and this one has an auto uploader which is nice

 

[Abi Cott]

If either of those last two attempts are visible on a pc that would be interesting. The come up as broken links on the phone