Photobucket Just Broke Billions of Photos Across the Web

Since 2003, the popular photo hosting service Photobucket has been letting users upload and host images for free on their servers. They have over 10 billion images stored by 100 million registered users. But now they’re going to start charging, and that means billions of images around the Web are now broken.

Hotlinking (AKA inline linking) is when someone takes an image file hosted on a server and embeds it on a different webpage elsewhere. Since the new webpage continuously requests the file from the original source server, it saps the server owner’s bandwidth (and storage space).

Photobucket allowed hotlinking photos uploaded to and stored on its servers for a long time. This was their business model, and they made money from ads on their own site, which users would be exposed to when they went to upload content.

Unfortunately for Photobucket users, things are about to change in a big way as of June 26th. Now the service is rolling out a $399 per year subscription fee for those who want to hotlink images from Photobucket’s servers to display elsewhere. That means that billions of images across the Web now display an error message instead of the image in question.

Just look at this forum thread to see how Photobucket users are reacting to this change. The move has sparked fury from users, who have relied on the service for years and now feel “blackmailed” into paying the subscription fee.

⚠️ Questions about your account? We’re here for you! Send us a DM or email our team at support@photobucket.com.

— Photobucket (@photobucket) 27 June 2017

you are a DISGUSTING company @photobucket this is 100% blackmail. I have years of blog content on your platform, now forcing to pay 400/year

— Julia (@Contour_Affair) 27 June 2017

Hope you go out of business with this strategy. Not paying a $400 ransom, I'll find someone else to host my pictures.

— Ms. Virion (@Pathogenome) June 29, 2017

#photobucket right now http://pic.twitter.com/bFg0gwBTN8

— Rebecca Jo (@RebeccaJoKnits) June 30, 2017

Special congrats to @photobucket for killing their own site. No more 3rd party image hosting unless I pay $400/year? I'll go elsewhere, ty.

— Samantha Johnson (@srj_art) June 29, 2017

Just closed my #photobucket account that I've had for well over a decade. Thanks for breaking my pics in every forum I've used, @Photobucket

— David Jenkins (@m16a172) June 30, 2017

It’s not a huge surprise to see a decision like this. Advertising revenues are declining for publishers, and the costs of servers to host 10 billion images are surely incredibly high (especially when requests are made for them from all over the Web). While other free services remain, it seems fairly likely that others will follow suit and start charging for hosting files too.