Photo-suck-it, part 4
Sep. 19th, 2021 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiderbraidsDidn't expect to have to write another installment of Photo-suck-it, but here we are...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Source: https://twitter.com/MinisterofDOOM/status/1430944801797537794
Several months after my last login to Photobucket, they've started sending me bi-weekly (later tri-weekly) emails similar to this one seen above (mine says 25,000 rather than 2,500) trying to convince me to pay (at a discounted rate) to upgrade my account, or download and remove photos from my account (which as you'll remember, suddenly became over storage once they introduced their image count limit; and after the first few emails they've upped their offer to unlimited images, but also added "or contact support to delete your account" as another "option" at the bottom, so pay up, delete images, or delete account... not much of a choice there PB :-\)... and despite the fact that I have no real intention of returning to PB's services and that I've already made an offline backup of my bucket (thankfully; that's more than can be said for others), there's something about these emails that still give me a slight sense of worry :-\ And even more recently, they've reworded their emails to this (while subtly changing their subject from "Do you want to keep your account? Manage your photos" to "Do you want to keep your photos? Manage your account")
Source: https://twitter.com/BarrishUSAFL/status/1436048632428601347/
And apparently also locked over-storage free users out from accessing their accounts until/unless they pay :-\
Not to mention that as already mentioned last time, PB already threatened to make accounts that haven't logged in for a long time inactive, which only really makes sense for things like private emails (emphasis on "private" here), but not for something like images intended for public viewing; in other words, to paraphrase this Techcrunch article, you can take my pictures over my dead body... (and speaking of pictures being taken away, not only is their Facebook still getting complaints, there's also discussion on Reddit about this whole deal, which I imagine many others are in the same boat as the original poster :-\ ... and here's another Reddit post showing how another long-time user filled out PB's customer feedback survey... or at least tried to)
Now, let me make it clear that this isn't an issue of not being both able to afford it and willing to trust credit card numbers with Photobucket; rather it just seems like they're threatening to betray their legacy users a la 2017 all over again :-\
(Make mental substitutions as necessary; obviously PB wouldn't stoop this low)
Artist: Peter Paltridge
Source: http://platypuscomix.com/onlyme/cnetcartoon8.html
This blog post from earlier this year claims that they transitioned to a subscription model ("which, admittedly, not everyone was thrilled with") in order "to remain an independent provider that keeps your personal data out of the hands of big technology, ensuring your privacy." On the one hand, I respect the need for privacy (always a real hot-button tech issue there)... but on the other hand, the option to buy more space has existed since at least 2013, and poking around the site today, instead of being able to sign up for a free account from the get-go, they have you sign-up for a 21-day free trial of all features (minus third-party hosting), then they downgrade you to the free plan... all part of the upsell, they'll probably say (yes, they're a business, but still...) And that's before considering the notion that pre-2017, users were using their image hosting storage to store art, icons, and other lower-res imagery (which now all count equally against the image count limit), while looking at today's PB, hosting photos (in full resolution, even) seems to be their main modus operandi these days, seeing it's the only way to get full value from the storage allotment with the image count (I obviously have no clue how PB runs, so I don't know if it really does cost as much for PB to host a single 100x100 avatar icon as it does to host, say, a 24 megapixel photo, but I kinda doubt it :-\) The blog post makes a brief shoutout to legacy users, but the new scheme hardly seems accommodating of those who used PB under the previous terms and conditions (again, they're a business, but still...) which brings me back to the Techcrunch article, whose author put this in better words than I could (even if PB are trying to differentiate themselves from big tech):
"Big tech companies are good at a lot of things, but what they seem to lack is collective empathy and heart. When humans use the things you build and you stop treating them like humans, but rather like bits and bytes and revenue dollars, you’ve given your soul away."
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Source: https://twitter.com/MinisterofDOOM/status/1430944801797537794
Several months after my last login to Photobucket, they've started sending me bi-weekly (later tri-weekly) emails similar to this one seen above (mine says 25,000 rather than 2,500) trying to convince me to pay (at a discounted rate) to upgrade my account, or download and remove photos from my account (which as you'll remember, suddenly became over storage once they introduced their image count limit; and after the first few emails they've upped their offer to unlimited images, but also added "or contact support to delete your account" as another "option" at the bottom, so pay up, delete images, or delete account... not much of a choice there PB :-\)... and despite the fact that I have no real intention of returning to PB's services and that I've already made an offline backup of my bucket (thankfully; that's more than can be said for others), there's something about these emails that still give me a slight sense of worry :-\ And even more recently, they've reworded their emails to this (while subtly changing their subject from "Do you want to keep your account? Manage your photos" to "Do you want to keep your photos? Manage your account")
Source: https://twitter.com/BarrishUSAFL/status/1436048632428601347/
And apparently also locked over-storage free users out from accessing their accounts until/unless they pay :-\
Not to mention that as already mentioned last time, PB already threatened to make accounts that haven't logged in for a long time inactive, which only really makes sense for things like private emails (emphasis on "private" here), but not for something like images intended for public viewing; in other words, to paraphrase this Techcrunch article, you can take my pictures over my dead body... (and speaking of pictures being taken away, not only is their Facebook still getting complaints, there's also discussion on Reddit about this whole deal, which I imagine many others are in the same boat as the original poster :-\ ... and here's another Reddit post showing how another long-time user filled out PB's customer feedback survey... or at least tried to)
Now, let me make it clear that this isn't an issue of not being both able to afford it and willing to trust credit card numbers with Photobucket; rather it just seems like they're threatening to betray their legacy users a la 2017 all over again :-\
(Make mental substitutions as necessary; obviously PB wouldn't stoop this low)
Artist: Peter Paltridge
Source: http://platypuscomix.com/onlyme/cnetcartoon8.html
This blog post from earlier this year claims that they transitioned to a subscription model ("which, admittedly, not everyone was thrilled with") in order "to remain an independent provider that keeps your personal data out of the hands of big technology, ensuring your privacy." On the one hand, I respect the need for privacy (always a real hot-button tech issue there)... but on the other hand, the option to buy more space has existed since at least 2013, and poking around the site today, instead of being able to sign up for a free account from the get-go, they have you sign-up for a 21-day free trial of all features (minus third-party hosting), then they downgrade you to the free plan... all part of the upsell, they'll probably say (yes, they're a business, but still...) And that's before considering the notion that pre-2017, users were using their image hosting storage to store art, icons, and other lower-res imagery (which now all count equally against the image count limit), while looking at today's PB, hosting photos (in full resolution, even) seems to be their main modus operandi these days, seeing it's the only way to get full value from the storage allotment with the image count (I obviously have no clue how PB runs, so I don't know if it really does cost as much for PB to host a single 100x100 avatar icon as it does to host, say, a 24 megapixel photo, but I kinda doubt it :-\) The blog post makes a brief shoutout to legacy users, but the new scheme hardly seems accommodating of those who used PB under the previous terms and conditions (again, they're a business, but still...) which brings me back to the Techcrunch article, whose author put this in better words than I could (even if PB are trying to differentiate themselves from big tech):
"Big tech companies are good at a lot of things, but what they seem to lack is collective empathy and heart. When humans use the things you build and you stop treating them like humans, but rather like bits and bytes and revenue dollars, you’ve given your soul away."
