From Shutterfly’s Terms of Use:
Why is it that people insist on recommending sites that censor their users?
It’s a complete guess, but perhaps this new charge is just a way to get one final source of profit for a company already on its way out by being outcompeted?
In short, they hope that those who have already uploaded thousands of photos will pay (cursing them the whole time) rather than tediously switching to some new service (or maybe they don’t even have their pictures elsewhere) - certainly no new customers are going to join!
It is, in effect, holding the existing clients’ pictures hostage. If they are going down, might as well go down with some more cash on the way out.
I just tried some of my old Photobucket links from here and see that they still work, but they are using an anti-ad-blocker.
It was bad enough when they had all of the crap around the photo–I started using Photobucket when it was truly free all the way because it was simple and would show the photo without any crap around it.
Ugh.
I guess I’m just going to have to create a special SDMB gallery in my Smugmug photography site.
Alas, any site that aspires to the sort of respectable profitability that attracts respectable investors or buyout suitors will impose restrictions for content. Because of the “this is why we can’t have nice things” phenomenon that people will otherwise go Anthony Weiner on their account…
…and that’s … … bad, okay, right? … that’s bad.
Unless you actually planned on putting up the stuff they forbid, why would it matter? Do you not recommend the Dope because there you are “censored” from personally insulting people?
And, just for the record, Imgur also forbids content, but only if you publish. Maintaining a distinction between the social media platform and the image platform itself is part of their business strategy.
Shutterfly in particular markets itself as kid-friendly. Many of my kids’ teachers and sports teams create Shutterfly pages for the teachers, coaches, and parents to share photos. It works for them, even if it doesn’t meet your needs.
Actually…
*Shutterfly does not generally restrict the storage of nude/adult photos within your account, but each image must meet the following basic requirements:
Copyright. It does not violate our copyright policy (that is, that you are the legal owner of the image).
Illegal images or images in violation of our Terms and Conditions. You may not store images in which the content of the image is illegal, or which violates Section 1 ("Your Use of Our Sites and Apps") of our sitewide Terms & Conditions.
The above applies just to storage. There are certain restrictions on the usage of images, described here:*
Policy
Basically they won’t print it for you nor can you publicly share it. But you can keep your very treasured photos up there.
And, geez, it’s free. I don’t know how far free providers need cater to fetishists. It’s like saying Town Halls are discriminating if they bar BDSM displays…
And everyone knows what they mean by ‘illegal’, even if they aren’t saying it.
I must have missed that. Let me see if I can link something from my Photobucket.
Well, the direct copy box didn’t work, but right-clicking on the image and saying copy image address did.
That’s Imgur’s Community Standards, i.e. the stuff that’s put out into the world for everyone to vote and comment on. You can start a private album and fill it with all the (legal) nudity in the world, if you so please. You can link to it and share it. I think they even have a little flag setting for adult content. You just can’t make it public for other Imgur users to stumble across.
That link slowed down my browser, opened up two pop-up tabs - which my browser blocked for suspected malware - and was completely covered by an “upgrade now” plea.
Meanwhile on Tapatalk for iOS it showed me the preview pic right in the post with no trouble or need to press a link.
In Chrome for Android, this pops up a picture of a nice red WTF button in a new tab. No extra pop-ups or anything like that. Can’t wait to try this when I get home; I’ve always used Photobucket as a quick way to show off photos, so I don’t have much stored there, but I also haven’t visited my account in several months.
Well, waddya know…
I just received an email from Photobucket saying “Some features on your account will be disabled”
They boldly accused me: “WE NOTICED THAT YOU HAVE BEEN USING
PHOTOBUCKET FOR 3RD PARTY HOSTING”
Yes, I have been using Photobucket for what it was originally intended to be used for: free hosting. They kindly offered to allow me to continue using the service, for a fee. (“Nice photo collection you have there…it would be a shame if anything happened to it…”)
It appears that they have made the decision for me: We must part ways.
Interesting. It took a while to load for me - possibly in part because our office is having server problems - but opened without any popups or other issues.
Tried Photobucket from a couple of computers and browsers at home (finally!). The page takes forever to load, but I only get one massive (but easily dismissed) overlay insisting that I become a subscriber. I’ve noticed that the pop-up text on the “?” where the links are listed keeps changing though. Sometimes it says “Please note that linking is reserved for our plus 100 and plus 500 customers and 3rd party hosting is only available to our plus 500 customers.” Other times it has a helpful hint about using HTML to embed the photo’s link on a website.
Well, I was able to set up an anonymous gallery in my photography site (from Smugmug), and I think it’s my solution to the Photobucket problem for now.
I created a new gallery and went to the Security & Sharing tab of Gallery Settings and flipped the Hide Owner switch. That removed all of my branding from the gallery and changed my custom URL to a random one in the Smugmug domain. Nice!
Here’s my test photo, ready to play some jazz.
Hopefully it doesn’t appear all covered by annoying ads.
I just checked on of my threads where I linked photos. Not embedded, just a link. Photobucket considers that to be third party hosting. So a free account is only good for an online backup of photos.
Bye bye, Photoassholes.
A well-deserved pitting, I have to be really really interested in an image to tolerate Photobucket. It’s like they do everything they can to be annoying. Imgur all the way.
Updated to add that they finally got around to hosing my account as well. So, all pix gone from PB and I’ll find a new hosting site soon.