4 ms·
Photobucket are within their rights to do this but it is really sad that so much of the message board culture is inaccessible because popular free image hosts t
by AndrewStephens 9y ago
Photobucket are within their rights to do this but it is really sad that so much of the message board culture is inaccessible because popular free image hosts tend to go away after a few years. I would lay money that 90% of posts over 10 years old have broken images.
The moral of the story is for forums to host images themselves, but nobody wants to do that because:
a) uploading files is annoying to implement and exposes the forum to security issues
b) storing the files can take a huge amount of disk space
c) serving the files can take a huge amount of bandwidth
d) the first message board to allow uploading files would just become a huge dumping ground of images for other boards to link to, necessitating implementing a referer block just like Photobucket
Personally I think that the message board developers have really dropped the ball by refusing to implement a really bullet-proof solution into their software by default. It is a hard problem but the only real solution is to host the images yourself. Third-parties are always going to let you down eventually because their goals do not align with yours.
- mason240 9y agoe) you have to self-police against CP and terrorist groups using your servers to host their illegal content.
- kevindqc 9y agoCan you get charged if that happens? Sure you were hosting it, but you didn't know? Do you really have to look at all the pictures? What about privacy?
- CM30 9y agoSorry for the late reply, but forums do allow you to upload your own images. Every modern script (both paid and free) has an attachment feature or a gallery add on you can use with it. However, this isn't the best for the actual users, because: 1. Most forums disable hotlinking for obvious reasons. So if they upload an image to a forum, they'll then have to do the same thing for every other forum they post it on. 2. Forums often require users to register to see attachments, so the images are either invisible or reduced to tiny thumbnails for guests. Stuff like Imgur and Photobucket got popular because people could post an image once and use the same URL lots of times knowing anyone could see it. But yeah, forums do host images themselves and have for about a decade or so. Very few have problems with disc space, bandwidth or illegal content either, I know since I've run them for years without issue.