I can’t tell if it’s intentionally them avoiding the issue, or if they are truly that stupid that they don’t understand the hate they are getting, but Photobucket is seriously not actually saying anything on what people are giving them hell for.
To capitalize on this, they posted this link on their Facebook page:
They are simply like “oh, here’s what you need to know about 3rd party hosting” as if people have no clue what’s going on; they are treating their users not only like they don’t have any intelligence but also like they don’t realize they are having a key element of their websites held for ransom.
https://www.xadara.com/the-internet-reacts-to-photobuckets-stupidity/
https://www.xadara.com/photobucket-just-screwed-over-the-blogging-community/
That may be a strong phrasing, but let me explain. You can even read the comments and find people telling the stories of how their websites are ruined, some sites that are now 15 years old that now have to be basically re-structured because of this.
What’s more fucked up, though, you actually find people defending Photobucket – people who are saying that “people can still view the images” and they “they haven’t gone anywhere, they are still there, they just have to click the link, or right flick and select view image to see it” and adding in that “you can download all your images from Photobucket via blah blah”
Oh yeah, sure, that’s what someone wants to do, spend hours re-downloading every image they don’t happen to still have, through the apparently complex interface Photobucket has now, then you expect a person to put those images somewhere else and update their site to reflect these new locations.
As I said in the previous article, what about websites that are long abandoned but still useful? Those are still ruined – yeah, you can go out of your way to look at time images but that a good website doesn’t make.
I know where some of this stems from though – people often are using the phrasing “my images are missing” and Photobucket, and the sycophantic fans are treating those complaining like they are children and giving the above types of comments.
That’s not what the people mean and you fucking know it. They mean the images are no longer showing (have gone missing from visibility) on their sites, some of which are over a decade old and have had no issues, which is now a problem due to your intentional and dramatic change of policy. You’re skirting around it like the biggest elephant in the room ever, you’re actively deleting and hiding comments against you…
Really, Photobucket, you just don’t get it, do you?
What’s more, they just keep posting terrible support attempt after terrible support attempt. It’s absolutely pathetic, and people are roasting them constantly on it all. Check it out.
⚠️ Thank you for all of the recent feedback and questions. We are trying our best to respond quickly and thank you for your patience 🙂
— Photobucket (@photobucket) July 1, 2017
https://www.facebook.com/photobucket/posts/10158878416045632
ADDRESS. THE. FUCKING. ISSUE.
…oh, and you know what’s funny about this? I’ve devoted all this time, and I didn’t ever get around to using the site. I’m safe from this, but I feel horrible for fellow bloggers and website owners, my peers in the world of information sharing that is the internet, and even moreso for the massive annoyance this is for my friend Prince Watercress who, thankfully, has a solution to his image storage issue – it’s just going to take a long time for him to fix this.
Ah…don’t you just love it when Blogger and Patreon both give you image hosting solutions from within, so you don’t get screwed up the ass by Photosuckit? I know I do.
But seriously, they can’t take the heat, and with the angry user base clearly outnumbers the idiots defending and/or white-knighting the company, that heat is as hot as a million suns.
At first, I was angry with them for doing this. Now I’m angry with them for putting themselves in the position that got them here in the first place, entertaining the idea, and STILL going through with this anyway, because this sure as hell didn’t happen overnight.
It’s absolutely hilarious how they are handling this. That’s all I can really say.. it’s hilarious!
Absolutely mind blowing how idiotic a company can be, its less PhotoBucket and more Kicked the Bucket at the moment because there isn’t going to be many users now. Luckily I haven’t used it anywhere on the blog but there’s a small forum I go on sometimes called Jul (the forum for The Cutting Room Floor) that I used it a few times to post pictures.
You’re right, this is going to kill their new user intake. What’s the point of the service at that rate if hotlinking isn’t a thing? They aren’t the only image sharing service and honestly, for what they do offer on the “normal” accounts virtually every other site is better.
This screws them over fully, in the long run. I’ma just kick back and watch it happen.