WARNING! Is Photobucket an Example of Corporate Ransomware, and a Sign of Things to Come? SnapChat, anyone?

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Photobucket-- it's one of the world's largest and oldest image hosting sites; and I'm willing to be that more than a few Steemians are using it to host their images here.

Because it was a free service, it was often a popular choice with those using web forums and web sites that require 3rd party image hosting.

Up Goes the Paywall... and it's like RANSOMWARE!

Well, a couple of days ago, Photobucket changed its terms and conditions to where "3rd party hosting" is no longer a free service, and instead now requires users to upgrade to their "Photobucket Plus 500" membership level... which basically costs US $39.00 a month or US $399.00 a year!

The first reason I am calling this "ransomware" is that Photobucket disabled all existing hot links to 3rd party sites, as part of rolling out the new terms.

Now if this were a new provider coming to the end of it's "introductory burn in" that might not be a big deal... but keep in mind that the site has been around since 2003, and has an estimated 100 million users, with an Alexa rank in the 400's. They currently host in excess of TEN BILLION images. 

Think about that, for a moment. No small potatoes here.

The second reason I am calling this ransomware is that we-- the users-- were given zero advance warning of what was going to happen. Some I have talked to say there might have been a generic "We have changed our terms of service, please click here to agree and continue" popup window somewhere... but certainly no announcement that all the images would be deactivated without a grace period.

The Scope of how this Impacts People

So imagine logging in to Steemit this morning-- or a favorite forum (which was how I found out about this) only to discover that 10 years of your shared images have been replaced by a generic image!

And the only way to get your images live again is to pay a very expensive "ransom." Or, of course, you can upload them to a new provider and manually update 1700 posts!

Would you do that? Probably not...

Now, you can still log into Photobucket, access your account, and download all your images as a zip file... but that doesn't exactly undo the fact that your images from the last 10 years on third party sites are now... gone. 

Implications for the Future-- SnapChat?

When I was a kid, my told me that "There is NO such thing as a free lunch," and then he explained how even visibly "free" things always had a "hidden cost."

We probably all know that to be true... but it's never certain where the "cost" will be.

Somehow, this event brought to mind the recent IPO of popular social site SnapChat. It's initial stock offering raised a stunning US $33 billion, but many were critical of the "exuberance" surrounding the IPO, citing that SnapChat has no viable model for generating income. 

It makes me wonder if the new "viable model" for generating corporate income is to allow users to cruise along for free for years and years till they have a huge time and emotional investment... and then-- when they have become truly "addicted"-- lock them out with this type of "ransom-like" change in the Terms of Use? 

What do YOU think? Do you have images on Photobucket? Whether you do, or not, does this strike you as a mercenary tactic... or, basically, a "ransom?" What would you do, in this stiuation? Do you think something similar will happen with SnapChat, a while down the road? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- start the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Posted 20170620 22:18PST