Fucking Photobucket

[next_to_normal]

Motherfucker, do you have any idea how much fucking WORK it would be to move all of my literally thousands of icons to another site and then go back and update all the links on over 100 posts - to say nothing of the icons I posted to challenge comms, my picspams, the gifs I've used all over the internet, mood themes, my custom LJ layout, etc.?

I am not paying fucking $400/year just to save it, though, so brb, mourning all the fucking hours spent on graphics no one will ever see again.

Comments

[wendelah1]

What are other graphics makers going to do?

Does this mean my livejournal style is going to break soon and all of the custom journals I've had made for my communities there, too? My profiles? Damn it.

They must be rolling this mess out slowly. My pictures are still visible, but not for long, it appears.

[next_to_normal]

No idea. I guess they'll find a new image-hosting site? But unless there's some way to import from photobucket and/or mass-update all the links, I highly doubt I'll bother with the old stuff.

For some reason, my mood theme on this journal still seems to be functioning on most old posts, but my LJ layout went kaput - that's how I first noticed it - and all icons, picspams, and gifs I've checked are gone, too.

[silverusagi]

I don't have a Photobucket, but I am angry on fandom's behalf. And $400 a year also seems really steep for an image hosting service?

[next_to_normal]

$400 seems ABSURD, especially to go from free right to that without any in-between phase or offering cheaper options. Basically, they are holding people hostage and expecting that we will pay up just to avoid the hassle of having to reupload everything somewhere else and fix god knows how many broken links.

Tumblr doesn't require third-party image-hosting, does it? I imagine if it did, the entire internet would be in revolt, but it seems like journal culture is fading out anyway, so who even knows how many people use icons anymore.

[silverusagi]

Tumblr doesn't require third-party image-hosting, does it?

No, anything you upload to tumblr is directly hosted by tumblr. But it's not like, accessible, or anything. You put a picture in a tumblr post, it's there, boom. But you don't have albums or organization or anything, or like any big listing off all your uploaded pictures. It's just directly in the post.

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, I mean, it's not a good replacement or anything, just that if photobucket had broken all of tumblr, there'd be chaos.

[deird1]

They're stopping their free services entirely? Seriously?

[next_to_normal]

Not exactly. They're still offering free image storage, and multiple paid packages with varying amounts of MB storage. But if you want third-party image-hosting (i.e. hotlinking on LJ/DW/etc.), that is now ONLY offered with their most expensive package.

So all my stuff is still THERE, and will remain there (as far as I know) unless I delete it. I just can't embed the images ANYWHERE, which makes their site basically useless.

Previously, there was a monthly free bandwidth limit, and people who regularly went over that limit could pay for more (but even with all my icon posts, I never went over). I don't know why they didn't just lower the limit, or offer different amounts of bandwidth at different price points, instead of going nuclear and requiring $400 for any hotlinking at all.