@WAHlelujah: Back in the 2000s before Imgur came along, Photobucket and ImageShack were ther virtual duopoly of filehosting. Tracking their decline and fall is like a timeline of the Web's descent into corporate dystopia. 
@Thorvald || Journal Entry
El Thorvaldo Moderator
Photobucket's final nail
18 Jul 2024, 09:00 PM
Let's cut to the quick: Effective July 22, Photobucket is implementing new terms of service, privacy policy, and a "biometric information privacy policy". The gist of these changes are, they will now explicitly mine your content and sell it to AI training.
If you had an account before the termination of free memberships in 2017, you were grandfathered in and your files remain on their servers. The good news is, you can opt out and dump your gallery without submitting to their ransomware threats: Log in with your original credentials and scroll down to the account deletion option; they will are-you-sure you three times and may claim you're not logged in, but this seems to be bugged and following the login link sends you on an infinite loop. On the third page, you will be able to download a .ZIP of your existing gallery. Save your files if desired, then confirm termination. You will receive an e-mail confirming the request.
Account deletion is "scheduled" and may take up to 30 days to process, but as long as you do it on or before July 22, it will fall within the 45-day grace period before they claim the scraping will actually start.
Comments (15)
Posted: Thursday, 18 July, 2024 @ 10:13 PM
back when I was revisit photobucket sometime after 2017(aka the termination of free memberships) by logging in there, when I regain access to my gallery there, my Gallery is no more so I can't download it as ZIP to my hard drives
so I ended up deleting my Photobucket anyway
Posted: Friday, 19 July, 2024 @ 07:38 PM
@Masonicon: Aye, when I checked in back in '21 they had this big scary ransomware screen without any obvious workaround, but you could navigate back to the main account page and proceed normally, so I was able to do a dump then (and individual images were still accessible). But the fact they tried to obfuscate it was my signal to start closing shop formally (though the rehosting fell off the rails and wasn't finished before now).
Posted: Friday, 19 July, 2024 @ 07:49 PM
@ragukokarn: Truth be told, my time with Photobucket only lasted a few months: I'd tried to use it as a substitute for ImageShack, but it would forcibly downscale my comics beyond certain sizes/dimensions (I later realized the Styles brothers' choppy format was a workaround for this). I did use it as a general file dump for CFC posts, but around 2014 it was abandoned for a combination of Imgur, Postimage, and hotlinking off dA rehosts.
But yeah: the Internet has been described as watching the Library of Alexandria ritually self-immolate.
Posted: Friday, 19 July, 2024 @ 03:01 PM
AI is a literal stain on the art world and the fact anyones entire life's work is ripped up and the regurgitated into a frankenstien looking mess. Is it worth putting your work up so greedy coporations can benefit off that and use a program to get around copyright laws. That's dirty pool I say.
Posted: Friday, 19 July, 2024 @ 07:58 PM
@XxTheCreativeKitsunexX: There are some people who have gone completely dark as a result of this. As I'd "joked" somewhere once before:
ROBOT APOCALYPSE
What we thought:
"SURRENDER FLESHLINGS, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE"
"DEATH BEFORE DISHONOUR, CLANKER SCUM!"
What we got:
"Please don't steal my art, I've got kids to feed."
"BEEP BOOP NOW PRINTING BIG-TIDDIED ELF WAIFU #759157018452"
Posted: Saturday, 20 July, 2024 @ 12:08 AM
@Thorvald:I can legit relate to going dark, nothing like feeling helpless in seeing you art bastardized by a computer program so that people who type in randomized words in a machine DARE call themselves artists when none of them know the horror of holding a pencil, pen, drawing tablet and staring at a blank sheet of paper/screen canvas.
Posted: Friday, 19 July, 2024 @ 08:54 PM
@Fihyn: If you still have the e-mail you registered with, you should still be able to recover your password the usual way. If you don't, though, you won't be able to dump the gallery, as it e-mails you the download link, though you may be able to petition customer support.
Posted: Friday, 19 July, 2024 @ 08:57 PM
@Danimarion: It's evolving, just backwards. :X
Rest in pieces, Photobucket.