Photobucket ToS changes

Flickr's pay or go away issue starts on Feb. 5. (I'm going to have to start paying them, it seems, but I'm waiting until the last minute! I swapped over 1000 photos from Photobucket to Flickr, and I'm not going to change them all AGAIN, even if I have to pay. --grrr!)

Hopefully the current issue is temporary. Geesh. So hard to find a stable photo host these days!

 

Some relevant Photobucket news today. They're being sued for selling inactive user's images to train AI. This includes biometric data without owner consent. Anyone who used their image hosting services is eligible for the class action suit.

 

Damn you Photobucket. How creepy.

 

That's bad but I wonder if it even matters outside of the formal lawsuit scenario? I assume that everything that's publicly visible on the internet is crawled and harvested by bots for AI training. There are crawlers on DOA (like on every other forum) and they're probably scraping the images for AI regardless of site policies. Staff, please correct me if I'm wrong. AI disgusts me but that's how things are. The law never matters when there's trillion dollar investments at the root.

 

ePhotobucket updated their TOS as of last July. The relevant part is here:

Bolding mine. At the time, I thought it was someone's idealistic idea of fomenting a new revenue stream, but with the latest info about the progress of AI being stymied by its increasing encounters and so reliance on its already-generated own output, either someone there had good insight or a lucky guess. Getting there first with fresh content for the AI fangs and maw may have looked monetizingly attractive. If you still have the same email you had while an active member of photobucket, you'll be aware of their constant, desperate onslaught of emails re: you're being deleted/don't you want to save your pictures/you're deactivated/please come back/one more chance to save your pics, etc.

About them selling off the content of inactive users, it's likely the entire TOS besides arbitration is opt-out only, not opted-out as a default.

 

Phew, thank goodness it's solely for the most heinous thing and its uses, like facial recognition and profiling in public, and derivative content using your face! We all know there are no precedents of this sort of thing being used for evil deeds, no sirree

From what I understand from reading the article, the trick they're getting sued for is that in order to delete your account or opt-out you have to first accept the new user policy, which means they can probably still use your images because you did give them consent at first. I doubt it's just dark patterns or they wouldn't get sued.

 

I hate Photobucket...back when they raised their prices I got out and thought I deleted everything...but sometimes I run across an old post and my image from Photobucket is still showing (with the big ugly Photobucket banner across it). How can that be when I (supposedly) deleted all the photos?

I think I got out before I had to agree to any new terms...but I'm not sure. In the article is says even people who ignored the emails after 45 days got locked into the biometric stuff.


@St. James - Thanks for letting us know about this.

 

That doesn't sound right, how long ago was it? These sites keep user data for a while, but it's something like 6 months. And when you delete an account your pictures are generally taken offline right away. Are you sure you did not "deactivate" your account instead of straight up deleting it?
I never used Photobucket so I'm going on a wild guess.

 

About two years ago...I thought I actually deleted each photo...(because I eventually I moved stuff over to Flickr). When I would open my account I wouldn't see the stuff I "deleted". So, I'm confused. I don't think I can even access the account (forgot password)...but I do get emails in my junk folder every once in a while saying something about if I don't do 'whatever' my account will be deactivated. But I didn't care because I thought I deleted each photo.

If I go to an old thread I made here on DOA I see photos from that Photobucket account. At first I thought only I could see that...but I was wrong. How can it still be showing up?

 

If you're sure that you deleted every photo, are you sure you only had one account? Perhaps you made another account at some point, and that's the one that's still up.
Getting emails in your junk folder means there's still an active account, and you can probably reset the password on that email. Just make sure it's legit.

 

@lutke - As far as I know, I only had one account. And the last time I went there I had no photos and no folders.

 

@luluna That's really interesting... If you deleted the photos and closed your account you should absolutely not see them. Even if they were temporarily cached somewhere, after such a long time the links should be dead. They're still up somewhere on the Photobucket server.

 

Is the class action suit US only? Because I still have a Photobucket account and they keep emailing me about it saying that I can save my photos from there if I give them money but I'm in the UK.

 

I did this in 2016, I know the date, because I saved a whole lot of pictures to Flickr, and that was when I got Flickr for the first time. It was a Sims-2 challenge. My Photobucket pictures disappeared for the website it was on, I figured that was that.

Sometime earlier this year I logged back into the old website wondering how active it was. Just seeing who is still there, etc. All of my old Photobucket pictures are back, even the ones I didn't bother to resave, and all with that Photobucket banner over them.

I suppose if Photobucket tries using my pictures I pretty easily prove they are mine because of the duel post on Flickr. I also don't remember anything about about my old Photobucket account. I deleted the account, not the pictures, but that should have taken everything off, and it did for awhile, only the pictures are all back up on old websites.

 

@RabbidBunnies - Oh how interesting! And frustrating! They just should not have the right to do that....(the scoundrels!)
But that might explain why photos keep popping up on old posts from photos I deleted.
Thanks for the information!