I haven't done anything to fix the broken images I hosted on Photobucket. They look unpretty, but I'm pretty sure no one is visiting any of my blogs so I don't feel the urgency to fix everything immediately. It's just too much work, too much hassle. Photobucket has been changing their terms and conditions several times over the past decade I've been using it and to be frank I never read any of their emails (moreover their latest terms and conditions). I noticed the broken images on my blog and thought that I have gone over my bandwidth for the month. I thought that is weird, considering the pics I hosted there are tiny mood theme items and icons, there is no way my blog generated so much views that my account ran out of the free bandwidth. Normally when you ran out of bandwidth, the pictures you hosted on PB will be replaced temporarily with their placeholder image, and will be back when the bandwidth quota is reset at the beginning of the next month. However, this time the placeholder images aren't going away, I checked the P500 thing they demanded me to upgrade to just to find out the price for that plan is $39.99 per-month which is too expensive. I gave up and just let my broken images as it is while I think of the best way to fix this. I was a paying customer for a couple of years but for the most times I was just a freeloader so I knew a time like this would come. EVERYTHING now comes with a subscription plan and Photobucket is no exception.

It was only after I googled 'photobucket alternative' that I realized how big of a problem this was worldwide. I know people hotlink images to forums and blogs, but didn't know that people also linked images hosted on Photobucket on sites like ebay and even Amazon. I could see why PB made this decision, they've operated since 2003, hosted billions of images and 75% of their expenses is to pay server fee for images uploaded on free accounts. It's never easy to change policy and make people pay for what used to be a free service. There will be outrage. There will be complaints. But as I mentioned above, I don't care that much. It was a free service and I was enjoying benefits without paying or seeing any ads for years. I knew that things wouldn't be free forever. They could've notified their users beforehand, yes. They could've provided a better pricing plan, I agree, but I don't feel like I have the right to be outraged when something I used for free suddenly goes away.