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By now, you may have heard of, or encountered, Photobucket's "ransom" of hotlinked images. In summary, Photobucket ambushed users without warning, suddenly no longer allowing hotlinking images, replacing them with this generic ransom note "speedometer" image:
Understandably, users are outraged.
If you list eBay auctions with your images hotlinked from Photobucket, you might see "speedometers" replacing photos of your items. An auction is useless without photos.
If you're an eBay buyer, you might come across millions of auctions with broken images replaced by "speedometers". Do you dare buy an item without seeing photos of it?
Photobucket goes back to the 2000s. If you want to view a classic user guide written in 2005 on "how to set up your Floyd Rose" and it had Photobucket images to illustrate the procedure, it's likely the guide is now filled with "speedometers" and is useless without photos.
In effect, Photobucket is holding, for ransom, billions of images going back to the 2000s across the entire internet. A huge amount of user content has essentially "vanished" from the web.
Some JCFers are experiencing no service interruptions. All their images are displaying just fine:
Myself, I am a high-volume hotlinker. JCF is accustomed to my photo topics where I share many images. None of my images display properly, but instead show dozens of "speedometers":
Users are supposed to be able to "rescue" their images by logging into their accounts to download their images (to reupload elsewhere). I can't even download some of my images; the files don't even display properly when I'm logged in to Photobucket, let alone being able to download the images without them being corrupted! I empathize with this user:
Until Photobucket reverses this decision, I can no longer recommend Photobucket as an image host. There are plenty of other hosts (just Google "free image host" and you'll see them) and I hope they don't follow Photobucket's example of greed and unpleasant surprise.
Further reading:
Understandably, users are outraged.
If you list eBay auctions with your images hotlinked from Photobucket, you might see "speedometers" replacing photos of your items. An auction is useless without photos.
If you're an eBay buyer, you might come across millions of auctions with broken images replaced by "speedometers". Do you dare buy an item without seeing photos of it?
Photobucket goes back to the 2000s. If you want to view a classic user guide written in 2005 on "how to set up your Floyd Rose" and it had Photobucket images to illustrate the procedure, it's likely the guide is now filled with "speedometers" and is useless without photos.
In effect, Photobucket is holding, for ransom, billions of images going back to the 2000s across the entire internet. A huge amount of user content has essentially "vanished" from the web.
Some JCFers are experiencing no service interruptions. All their images are displaying just fine:
Myself, I am a high-volume hotlinker. JCF is accustomed to my photo topics where I share many images. None of my images display properly, but instead show dozens of "speedometers":
Users are supposed to be able to "rescue" their images by logging into their accounts to download their images (to reupload elsewhere). I can't even download some of my images; the files don't even display properly when I'm logged in to Photobucket, let alone being able to download the images without them being corrupted! I empathize with this user:
Until Photobucket reverses this decision, I can no longer recommend Photobucket as an image host. There are plenty of other hosts (just Google "free image host" and you'll see them) and I hope they don't follow Photobucket's example of greed and unpleasant surprise.
Further reading:
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