Photobucket ToS changes

@Wolfie Pie, They are not deleting photos. As long as you are under the free limit, you don't have a problem except for the poor performance and ads.

If you have an ad-free account, it is good until it is time to renew. Then you need go down to a free account or pay more.

There are some threats of locking accounts if you violate the new rules, but the back off a bit. I really don't think they expected the anger they have generated.

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I am going to sit in a corner and cry for a while. I just figured out how many photos I had stored on PB. I'm trying to get them switched to my other photo account. If you see a broken link for me and the thread isn't locked please know that I'm trying my best to get everything back up and running. You can poke me too...

 

I'm in the process of switching to ImageBB, at least for sales photos, as we speak. Their ToS is clumsy and very simplistic (not even a full paragraph) but their uploader is easy, and they allow direct linking. Plus, my sales photos are hardly archival quality, so I'm not worried about... Say, intellectual property rights on them or anything.

 

Really? That's disgusting! Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that kind of stuff, but to unexpectedly redirect someone to it is wrong. And didn't PB forbid nudity anyway? At least back years ago? I seem to remember PB deleting pics of nonsexual doll nudity. If so, how hypocritical of them.

 

@iamkathybrown @nancy_schroeder_ca Oh good! I can live with the slowness as long as I can at least still pull my stuff off bit by bit. I was worried that I had suddenly just lost everything today once the "over sharing limit" pics showed up. XP

 

been waiting for an HOUR for an album of 45 pics to prepare to actually download... oh gods i'm so done with PB ><

 

Is there a way to share photos on here from Flickr whilst using a mobile phone? I rarely go on my computer now and it's a real bug Bear that I can't upload photos from my phone or via Flickr if I'm on my mobile.

 

I had that problem on a few of my albums over the past few days of trying to download everything. The only thing that worked (for me anyway) was to "cancel" that download and then completely reload/refresh the entire website and then download the album. That seemed to "fix" all the "endless" downloading time on my system whenever that occurred.

 

Slowly go through my photos and deleting the ones I know are not linked here anymore, plus I've got through two threads so far that are updated with the new links... 500+ photos and over a dozen threads left to go.

 

I have trouble sharing photos to DoA via Flickr's mobile app. They have a URL share option, I believe, but it just gives a short link, I think. So you can link images, but not use it for IMG tags here.
I'd assume you could log into their website on a mobile browser, then get the correct links then paste them in, but I'm not sure. I usually post things to DoA from my regular computer though, so I haven't tested it. (I have my Flickr app linked to my IG and FB accounts, so I really only use the Flickr app to share directly to another app, rather than a website)

 

For Flickr, if you have a phone browser that has the capacity to do "Request Desktop Site," you can follow this tutorial to get the photo link. Use the app or website to get to the picture you want, then open it in your browser and request desktop site. Then, the one change would be that instead of being able to copy the image address directly, you will probably have to click/hold down on the picture, then hit "Open Image in New Tab," then copy the address in the browser bar of that new tab.

 

I requested the desktop site and still couldn't get a proper link.

 

Gonna start my download today!! Yaaayyy...... I've got something like 2 thousand photos on my first account... Luckily, a super large portion of them aren't doll-related, so hopefully I'll manage.

For those who have downloaded stuff; I clicked on the download Bucket option, then it started the little loading symbol, but I clicked off to dismiss a popup () and the download window went away. It did say that it would go to my email if I left; does anyone remember if there was a further verification to actually get it to go to my email?
(or I suppose about how long it took to get to your inbox?)

 

Just requesting the desktop site isn't enough. You have to follow the rest of the steps in the tutorial: press the "down" arrow under the picture, click "View All Sizes," click on the desired size, *then* long press on the photo to get "Open Image in New Tab." That tab should be the static image address of just the photo, not the whole page. The address bar address of the tab that has *just* the photo in it is what you can copy to paste into the BBC code on DoA.

ETA: since mobile Safari doesn't natively have a 'request desktop site' function, I assumed that people would understand to use a different browser, but just to state plainly: you have to use a mobile browser that will open photos in a new tab on request. Mobile Chrome does this on iPhone.

 

Unfortunately, I found that clicking "off" to avoid the popup completely stopped the download as well (at least on my system )

 

I am like 99% sure I have copies of everything on my computer but the paranoid part of me wants to download everything and oh lord it takes so long and is so dysfunctional and man, photobucket, this is why I stopped using you like a year ago. >_<

 

omg lol same here PB just got so sucky and ya paranoid.... now if i could convince the site to cough up (real dl before crashing) my vids I'd be thrilled stupid

did not always work for me unless i tried a 'different' album... but i also have zero patience left lol... I'll get it... thankfully i didn't have years of content .... if this was flickr doing this i'd freak.

 

Photobucket has posted status information here: Please review the latest changes at Photobucket. - Photobucket

It contains the following on current accounts:

Moving forward, new and legacy free account users will NOT have third party
hosting available.

If you were a Plus Account subscriber in good standing as of June 1, 2017,
you will continue to have all the privileges you have enjoyed including 3rd
Party Hosting until December 31, 2018 as long as you maintain your
subscription.

Non Plus 500 Account subscribers that purchased after June 1, 2017 will not
have access to 3rd Party Hosting.

 

Thanks for that latest info, @nancy_schroeder_ca . I think I'm a Plus Account subscriber... on autopay (which I will have to remember to cancel). It's good to know they are giving us some time, after all those years of paying! And that does seem to confirm my thoughts that PB is blocking the Free accounts first...

PB is now sending out advertising email spam! I still haven't gotten any emails from them about the new ToS or this latest info about Plus members...

AND, I've tried downloading an album and the site is so laggy that it won't allow me to click the "download" button! I got as far as the "This will take a while, so we'll email you" last night. I left my laptop on, but I don't see any downloaded album anywhere (someone said it was compressed?)--I even searched... so I suspect it didn't download.

Luckily, I have all my photos... somewhere... on external HDs... but I thought I should see if I can download anyway... but no... (Maybe I'll try again after people get their photos downloaded and the site isn't so busy.)

 

Started the transition to Flickr today. Got really thrown off when it said someone already registered with my email! Lo and behold I can use my tumblr login (was not expecting that, thanks Yahoo *eyeroll*).
It's just gonna take so long... ugh. >_>

 

it didn't download because you were not there to d it... when it says it will take a while that means to 'prepare' to dl... then you have to hit the second download button THEN it dl's... fun huh?.... and the email... if you get to it too late the process simple times out... and yo start again ... whee?

 

@Lady Tiku -- Wow, thanks for the info! I'm going to wait a while... because when I tried today, I couldn't even get to the "prepare to dl" part!

--------------------------------

I tried to see when I last paid for my Plus account, but of course PB doesn't seem to have that info... just says that I have a Plus 20 account (which was discontinued a while ago). Hmmm... I'm not sure how I was autopaying that... (I don't recall changing my cc on there at all... maybe it's billing my bank account? I don't remember how to even find out how I set up an autopay... yet I still am signed up... unless PB is totally out of their minds and hasn't updated... I guess I'll know if I start getting 3rd Party-blocked! what a mess...
Oh... I see down at the bottom there are links about PAYMENTS... That led to links about how to change payments and plans... I'll need to check those out...

 

do note it doesn't actually say 'preparing' that's what the 'may take a while' page is ... for me i get a big grey box (supposed to be a video i guess)
after that you should get 'another' download button... THAT is the actual dl... so messed up

 

The new "status" page indicates you can download a picture! One picture at a time does work.Some of my very old photos are on my very old pc which needs a new power supply. So I have been downloading some of them.

 

move them into album or several... and dl the 'album'

 

I tried and it didn't work. I think there are too many people downloading right now. I'll try again in a couple weeks!

 

yep understood ... i found a lull in things and got 5 smaller albums! wheeeeeeeeeeee! lol

 

OMG! I have A LOT of pictures there. I probably won't upload most of them again though. Like all my old The Sims pictures and my pixel dolls. But I'm downloading everything and deleting albums as I go.

Haven't even gotten to my BJDs yet. SIGH!

Dustbunnie

 

Yes, it was quieter last night and I did get 3 albums downloaded and I did get the email notice!

 

oh no

 

I was able to download a couple of smaller, ancient albums a couple days ago, but now it won't let me download my 'Bucket', where 90% of my pictures are.

 

I had success late in the evening last night. It's not working now.

 

I was actually able to get through after about a half dozen attempts.
Ugh! I have SO much sorting to do before I can even THINK of transferring all this over to Flickr My poor Flickr is gonna have to adopt about 100 new albums so I don't have to scroll through 30 pages of pics just to find stuff.

 

tag as you upload to flickr... it's your only hope LOL

 

I've also used Photobucket since the beginning for all my Sims pictures. Unfortunately, since I don't play anymore, I've decided to just delete my Sims blogs because of this. It's easier than reuploading elsewhere.

Adding: So when you delete your account and they ask you why, tell them why you're leaving. Their new policy sucks arse!

 

My flickr just asked me to sign in before accessing it today which is unusual. Usually I can just type flickr and search and it goes right to my Flickr page. So I signed in but now there's a totally new page that looks like a new account but one that is still linked to my original email and ALL of my content is gone! Yikes. What just happened?

 

I had to sign into my yahoo mail this morning. I think that also signs me into flickr. But flickr looks normal.

 

Flickr usually takes me through two log-in pages, one asking for my yahoo mail and one for the password, but once I get in it's all normal.

 

This is super helpful, thanks!

 

I've been searching the help forums and just sent an official request for help. It sounds like I'm not alone. Be careful with your photos on Flickr. I have mine backed up but otherwise i may have just lost all of them.

 

Well, after this whole fiasco with PB, I am keeping all my photos in zipped albums in a separate folder on my computer (I actually used Flickr to organize and re-download them so it would be faster and easier than finding all the photos in the folders they are in on my computer, copying them into new folders, and then zipping up those folders). So if that ever happens to me, at least it would be quick to re-upload all my photos (although I assume it would still break all the previous links).

Might not be a bad idea for everyone to do this.

I also am doing what some people are doing, and using two different photo uploading websites for my doll photos (three sites total if you include imgur for some of my non-doll stuff). All my box opening photos are on Postimage.org and most of the rest of my BJD photos are on Flickr. Actually, if you include my two deviantArt accounts (my best BJD photos and my non-BJD photos), and the website I use for my BJD profiles (Elftown), my photos are in a variety of places now.

 

Egh, just checked one of my photostory threads here, and it uses photobucket so I'm gonna guess they all do. Being as I don't have proper PC access currently, it's gonna be a while before I can fix that. The images still work as I type this but I did only just get the warning email two days ago, so they'll probably break soon. I was gonna check dollyboards too but the url doesn't seem to work anymore. O.o I'll check again later in case it's a hiccup, otherwise I needa edit my siggy again. I already pulled the image I had in my siggy here cuz it's on photobucket as well.

I have my own webhost, which was Yahoo small business hosting because it was the cheapest plan after they had a revamp ($14 a month), but after another revamp it's called Aabbaco now. Some ridiculous corporate decision, wasn't the smoothest of transitions either. I've used them for a tiny bit of third party image hosting but I kinda think their TOS says not to do it. I'll have to look again once my living situation settles down.

Edit: Eh, I had a quick look at the Aabbaco TOS, and while a search for "image" came up with nothing, I did find this line: "Using an account as an online storage space for archiving electronic files is prohibited." So I am going to guess that is a no, for an image storing solution.

 

Photobucket says ad-free accounts will work for 3rd party hosting until the end of your service period and until the end of 2018 if you keep the account paid. Ad-free price has gone up, but not too bad if you don't have the time to deal with it now.

 

So for those of us who just use regular Photobucket, is there a definitive date before our photos stop working? I'm trying to fix all of my links, but I'm so busy with life stuff I don't really have much time to do much (only a handful a day and I'm still at over 500 images).

 

OMG I went to the Photobucket Facebook page LOL The internet is basically exploding over this! I feel really lucky to have dual accounts & most of my pics on my computer as well! There are some pitiful tales of woe out there!
BTW apparently those of us who've paid PB for one of their services get a reprieve until the end of next year...So I've plenty of time to migrate to Flickr.

 

Most regular PB users' images stopped working from day 1. It seems like there may be a few who were "spared" (so to speak)? I don't know why... but I would try to get them done asap, because if you just have a regular account, your photos could be disabled from 3rd party hosting anytime. :/

 

If you have a FREE account, you are in danger of getting the images blocked at any time, if they haven't been already. I don't think PB is actually telling anyone about their actions. Just from the ToS changes and the "coercion icon" and the secondary announcement that those with paid accounts would have 3rd Party images until the end of 2018, we just have to assume the free accounts will all be blocked from 3rd Party at some point.

PB keeping the paid people around for a while isn't a surprise. They are probably hurting for money and won't mind getting some income over the next year (as people swap out photos and close accounts!). I'll keep my account until I'm done fixing a lot of links... I hate paying PB more, but at least it isn't the $400 ransom...

 

Curious, my images are still working for now. I really am trying to move everything over as fast as I can, but things are busy with work and general "life" things. Hopefully they stick around a little longer.

 

You can check your renewal date in photobucket:

Mouse over the profile picture to the right of the search box and select Settings

Click on Account on the far right of the selections

You will get a display like this:

Account Type PlusAdFree — Get More Storage

Member Since
Aug 01st, 2004

Your account is set to recur payments
Yearly — Your next payment is on Sep 24th, 2017
​

 

The thing that makes me saddest about this is not the effort I'm going to have to put into moving all of my pictures - I'm still in the hobby, so I'm still around TO restore my stuff. What makes me sad is all of the pictures from people who are no longer in the hobby or no longer around that are just going to be gone forever.

Not just for BJD but other hobbies I'm into as well. As people move on it doesn't seem likely most of them will return to re-upload pictures from a fandom or hobby they haven't thought about in years.

I likely won't be fixing any of my meet-up photo threads though because I no longer remember which dolls go with which pictures and which owners. I may re-upload older meets to Tumblr at some point without captions but that would be about it. When I get the chance I'll just have to mark them for deletion.

 

Oh, wow! Thanks... I was wondering where that info was hidden! It looks like I'm paid up until next year...! We'll see if PB lasts that long!

That's the sad loss for everyone online... the loss of information and images... It makes me sad. I'm a bit of a history buff, and very visual, so images going away like this, along with the threads that are no longer useful without the images, is kind of a nightmare...

I wasn't going to try and fix my meet-up photo threads, but I have fixed some and will try and fix others if possible. I just hate to see all that stuff disappear!

(I've been fixing the threads one at a time. It's easier to find the right photos that go with the threads that way, and I don't have to upload images that aren't linked anywhere important that way.)

 

just spent the last hour downloading my pictures and then I deleted my photobucket account....I'm really sorry they did this....well I guess it's time I upgraded to flickr

 

I am worried that flickr will have a bad reaction to all the people transferring to flickr hosting.

 

I've been uploading to Flickr, too, and it also worries me that all the file transfers will be bad. I've also been using imgur--same thing! (both free accounts. I paid for PB.)

 

Hm... Pony, from a Central NJ meet from a couple years back, right? It might be a longshot, and it might only help to see if your stuff is 100% gone, but do you remember if you commented on and/or favorited some photos of mine in the past? Probably of the meet you came to? If you see your name on one of those photos, try following it and see if you see your photos there. My idea is that you might technically be logged into a different account right now. Finding your potential different account might give you a clue to find out how to access it.

Edit: Well, I went digging, and I don't think it looks promising. The only person I didn't recognize that faved or commented on any of the pics was tornadowitch, and I don't think that was you. If you think I can help you some other way, please let me know. Anyway, this is the meet I was thinking of: /threads/abjd-meet-9-13-15-central-nj.687704/#post-11699362 Good luck to you!

 

OK, weird... some of my photobucket links here are showing as broken, but I can see them in the Editor... sometimes. Sometimes they aren't showing up there, either. The actual links still work to find the image on PB, but PB is a mess to access right now, so I was trying to save images that were posted on 3rd party sites... and I can barely download from PB. EDIT: sometimes I get the broken image icon on PB, too...!

No 'coercion icon' or PB missing image icon... Just the broken image icon. ! I have a paid account so my links should still be working. ---LOVELY!

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I was also trying to search my pb photos on DoA... I could find SOME via searching the partial URLs... but not any of my Gallery threads show up that way... I'm not sure why! So now I'm searching out the Gallery threads by user name, but that's pretty awful--comes up with posts and stuff that doesn't have photos in it...!

 

Ugh, super hacked off by PB's changes!!! I can't even put into words how completely annoyed I am by it! (primarily because most of those words really aren't suitable for polite conversation...)

Trying to go back to some tutorials and experiments I've come across in the past about customising OT dolls (fashion dolls like MH dolls etc.) and pretty much 9 times out of 10 the images are all messed up with PB's big ugly 'give us your money' image. I imagine most of the other bookmarked links I have for various crafting hobbies are also pretty useless now...
Years ago I used to be in the habit of taking screenshots/copying & pasting tutorials into word documents and storing them on my pc so I could access them offline, since my internet was super unreliable. I really should have kept doing that...

I dread to think of how many other pages for various hobbies and interests they've effectively killed off by this move. Some of these things are years old and practically abandoned, so they'll likely never be updated again.

I have backup versions of all my images that are on my PB account so I don't have to worry about losing anything, but I do need to upload some of them to flickr and get some of my posts updated, especially my sales threads.

Question: can delete my PB account, or do I just have to abandon it? (Forget that, I'll email them and ask them to delete it if I have to.) EDIT: It's alright, I found the 'delete account' option!
I don't want anything to do with them anymore - I really don't approve of companies who just bring in changes overnight and don't announce them or inform people to give them a chance to plan ahead. IIt's underhanded and I'm pretty disgusted by it to be honest.

Perhaps I'm overreacting to this, but... UGH

 

Well PB is doing a jerkface thing so being angry is a proper response. I am agonizing over my two really photo heavy project journals.
Not sure what to do about them. I don't remember the exact photos to replace them. The comments in those journals are so funny and kept me going so I don't want to lose that connection.
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi you're my only hope.

 

I'm having a hard time even rt-clicking my photobucket photos to download them. JERKS! They are supposed to honor the 3rd Party hosting for paid accounts, but many of my images are broken and I can pull the images up on their site but can't download them. GAH.

I really, really hate PB. I'm paid up until next year, but will dump them as soon as I can get some images off. (I have copies of my images--I'm just trying to get the same images I've posted in threads replaced... but PB makes even that nearly impossible!)

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Those on autopay... double-check to make sure that's turned off. (I haven't tried that yet.)

 

I find to works better to download things late in the evening when many other areas have gone to bed. If you can, try about 9pm.