Want your images back? Sure... That'll be $5!
lutr.devI have received the email that my photobucket account is going to be deleted, so I've logged in after who knows how many years and got offered the same thing, to subscribe. Instead I've went to close the account and in the process (or somewhere else, don't remember exactly) there was an option to first download all the data which I've used and got the images back (there were just a few as I haven't used the service really), then I've closed the account. There was no need to subscribe.
I predict that in the future, when you cancel an LLM subscription, they will threaten that unless you pay, to fully delete your anonymized chats, they will be public as paid training data.
You know ...that is how we managed to offer you such a cheap subscription...
I always pose fundamentalist questions and hypotheticals to the LLM to poison such training data.
I have loads of requests to 'Play Despacito' across agents all over the blogosphere
Now you can place a bet on how well that approach will work out in ten years.
> they will be public as paid training data.
Your data is already training data. If they promise to delete everything from their models or those elsewhere that they made the data available to, even if you pay, I'd call them liars.
I was doing a Udemy course about AI and there was a section where I had to do some processing on randomly scraped tweets and the random tweet that the machine chose to display as an example of something was from a gay porn star and about fisting.
it obviously knew your hn username
I did the same thing. I contacted support via email who told me to go through the deletion process and near the end, there would be an option to save your photos free of charge. I downloaded my photos, looked through them, then deleted the account.
This is the real tip. Thank you.
I had gone through a whole process probably 2 years ago now to "recover" my account that I lost the original email and forgot the password. I eventually got into the account before they paywalled it, and procrastinated downloading everything because I couldn't find a good way to do it in bulk.
Interestingly, you can request the download, and then just NOT delete your account, which is what I plan on doing out of spite. My 81MB of ~600 cringe avatar edits from Gaiaonline circa 2007 will forever take up that tiny space on their servers as they hope and pray that one day I might toss them $5.
Yeah, makes sense. I think it's just a little honeypot for fools that don't do their research. 1 prompt to Claude would have saved me the pain, probably. ("Research" isn't even that hard nowadays!)
Or maybe... you know... read
the whole part about dark patterns is to be technically not doing the asshole thing while getting most people to fall for it.
It's true, doing things carefully can avoid a ton of problems in life. I guess I wasn't expecting to have to use my full attention for a little "side mission".
And I'd already made peace with losing those $5. "It's time to relive them for just $5" didn't really sound like you can get them back, in my defense.
Why are we complaining about this as a corporate greed thing? (I do agree that it's bad that there were no images preserved and that component of the post is justifiable)
Obviously Photobucket completely failed to properly monetize, and was sold to Fox and then offloaded to some no-name startup called Ontela (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photobucket). The service could have been shutdown completely and the harddrives fed into the shredder. Instead some former PE vulture did the math and figured out that preservation might make some money. You _can_ access old Photobucket images (when it works) that would otherwise get a median of 0 hits a month, while the rest of the internet succumbs to linkrot. Seems like a win-win for everyone involved.
Well one complaint is that the OP was told he would be able to get photos for $5 when they actually weren’t any there (which photobucket knew before obviously). That actually seems deceptive enough that I would try to get my money back.
Back in the 2000s there was an implicit social contract that websites would treat your uploaded data with respect. You weren't putting your stuff in Chad's garage, you were putting it in a professional seeming storage business that just happened to be free because none of us really understood how to monetize the net.
Life really is a series of xkcds, it turns out!
Considering they explicitly said they had some photos of yours ("You shared them. We protected them."), this seems like chargeback territory.
Right?? I mean again, I could have gotten a refund in 48 hours, per the smallprint... But I noticed it about ~3 months too late, while writing about this.
But it's okay. Getting those $5 back would make Photobucket look slightly better in my mind, and I don't want that.
You can charge back months after. Best to ask for refund first (as in now, despite their legally irrelevant time limit) as the CC would expect you to do that first.
Huh, never did a charge back in my life (I'm not from the US, charge backs aren't a big thing here). I'll give it a shot, just for fun :).
I use a debit card and I wasn't even sure you can do charge backs with them. But yes, apparently!
It's not an automatic thing. The bank has to review your case and decide if photobucket committed fraud. But the odds are higher than you think.
100% issue a chargeback
Fully agree, that's just straight up fraud and it's covered by chargebacks.
The ToS is what binds. Good luck getting most card companies to allow you to do a chargeback these days.
I’ve been sold counterfeit or defective merchandise on eBay thrice in the last year. eBay’s guarantees are totally worthless even with evidence, and it was like pulling teeth to get my bank to do a chargeback. In one case they wouldn’t at all.
> The ToS is what binds.
I don’t know where you’re from but this isn’t the case in any normal country at all.
People always treat ToS as some god-given mandate that’s valid just because it’s written somewhere, but in reality there obviously are limits to what you can enforce.
You can’t just circumvent customer protection laws by denying them in the ToS.
ToS are rarely binding.
> The ToS is what binds.
Sure. Now provide a notarized statement showing THEY agreed to those exact terms.
Cause guess what... they cant prove shit.
If ever there was a use-case for chargebacks, this is it. Threaten their support to refund or you will file a chargeback, and then file one if they refuse.
Why store "childhood memories" on an online service though? Those websites get hacked all the time, you're lucky if your privates pictures don't endup in the wrong hands...
Ah, no, by "childhood memories" I meant like whatever I was screnshotting as a kid. Believe it or not, but finding old screenshots like 10 years later is sooo sweet!
For my actual chilhood photos, I'm using a little self-hosted Immich that's nicely backed up as well. Hoping that doesn't get hacked!
Oh man.. you made my day.. I especially loved the tiki spongebob memes.. I still have Jacques Cousteau's voice going thru my head "One Hour Later"......
Given this is a largely technical crowd, I feel it my duty to share just how good (and free/open) Immich is.
If you’re like me and don’t want to be an “admin for life” then it’s still for you.
What has worked for me for over a decade is to keep the source of my photos in a boring old folder (backed up to my synology and Dropbox). And then layer photo viewing and sharing apps on top.
The day I’m sick of Immich and there’s a better alternative, I switch.
I’ve written about how it works as I’ve gone along. Recommend reading and putting your own twist on it.
https://jaisenmathai.com/articles/my-ridiculously-robust-pho...
https://medium.com/vantage/understanding-my-need-for-an-auto...
100%!!
In fact I'm also using Immich and it's amazing! It's as good as the Google Photos app, but you own your data and can more cheaply upgrade your storage, if needed.
On that old Photobucket account I was hoping to find screenshots I made as a kid. Didn't store actual photos there, thankfully.
That's pretty deceptive conduct on Photobucket's part.
$5 recovery in small claims court maybe? :)
Would be a nice part 2 :P. But I've already had enough with this "side mission". Maybe I'll try a charge back and see if that works, though.
Regardless of whether this is legal or not, I think this move is subjectively scummy. I know that profit maximisation means going against common ideas of what is "a nice thing to do", but there's a line that's been crossed here between "the business has to support itself" and "trying to exploit and milk our customers".
Honestly, if storage costs were an issue, I would have preferred they delete it with notification than sell hope at a ransom.
Wonder if there any startups that have grown without resorting to these low blow tactics - just the idealised free market of "we provide such a good service that you're willing to pay us our fair price".
> I would have preferred they delete it
The fact that they did delete it, and then tried to sell access to bupkis, is just the icing on the scummy corporate cake, eh?
> I think this move is subjectively scummy
I'd argue that it is objectively scummy.
5 dollars for having that story to tell, not bad
Yeah. To be fair I'm not that mad about it. It was a very poetic moment that I'll forever cherish...
"As I was writing and reliving this beautiful experience, I noticed a little footnote on the payments page
It's not a footnote, it's written prominently right above the button so people are well aware of it...
You have to view all cloud storage - all free cloud storage anyway - as ephemeral. If you want your childhood pictures to survive, store them someplace you have control over.
To be fair I'm doing that now, with Immich (= a "self-hosted Google Photos"). I was just curious to find out what things I was screnshotting as a kid.
I resent comments like this. It’s captain obvious and nothing to do with the actual point being made by the author, and subtly justifies the author ending up in a disadvantaged position.
“if you didn’t want your computer data to disappear, you should have used paper” gee, I didn’t think of that, I’m glad I had someone to point it out, said no-one, ever.
People uploaded photos to Photobucket 20 years ago, before anyone knew this. This smug take is not the least bit helpful in this instance.
Many knew this 20 years ago, as well.
There’s a emphasis and repetition of sound bites and empty words in our culture, as though they mean something clear and understandable though it’s really a sound bite and a phrase to ease your discomfort and help you feel better about yourself: corporate greed is one of those words.
There is no such thing as a corporation being conscious or taking a will of its own and choosing to be greedy. It’s just a symbol to represent humans being greedy. Let’s call it what it is: it’s human leaders and bourgeois people being greedy. I don’t find it honest when we continue to use inaccurate phrases in this deceptive manner since we don’t want to look at the situation for what it really is. Or assume our responsibility in the matter.
We’ve allowed this greed by tolerating it, interacting with the humans (or not) and pretending the reality isn’t what it is. What is complaining and stopping there asking about it? Surely we can do more than just make an internet article about it and think it will change.
Tolerating it? No! Greed is good. We've grown this monster from a pup and now it's all grown up and eating people.
Just like with almost everything Photobucket was sold or raised money from investors throughout the years repeatedly.
That money they want back!
From somewhere, any way, pimping the EBITDA and ARR numbers to the expected one for the 5-7 years resale cycle or such. ARR needs subscription, and if you have user lock in - well, otherwise you wouldn't buy some trivial service like this wouldn't you? You counted on the lock-in, that is central to you 'business model', or more like exploitation - then try cash it. Now! You can alienate people down the line? Let that be the problem of the next owner of the product, you will cash out soon anyway. And next PE look at the price/ARR ratio mostly, anyway, it will be a fine add-on to some other PE target at least, if the ARR ratio is fine.
PE is shitting where it eats.... and others eat too ... ruining it for everyone. Don't care. Why don't they buy oil or beef farms or whatever, why they need to ruin the internet too?
> Want your images back? Sure... That'll be $5!
That kind of long con is (and has always been) part of the basic business model of most of the "free" service providers on the internet.
First one is free, played on a decade time scale, works fine in a world where capital is quasi-free.
The hyperscalers play it a little more subtly, but the principle is the same.
So, like and a kind reminder they have legal obligation to give all the personal data they have about you under Europeans laws, and that's it?
Photobucket sent me multiple e-mails during a long time period to alert me about this change. So the author quite willfully ignored those.
They must have sent them to me too. However, the Photobucket account was registered using an e-mail address I no longer use. I found the account by accident, by scrolling through my password manager.
The e-mail account was fully emptied after 1 year of inactivity (with warnings and what not, to other addresses I stopped using). So Photobucket was way nicer than Yahoo from this point of view!
Wow this is a next level scam lol
Just do a GDPR request and get all the data they have on you for free. I’m pretty sure they would have to give you your photos as part of that.
Aren't they only required to delete the data on request? They don't have to actually provide it back to you
IANAL.
Article 15 says you have the right to request the data and they must provide it to you.
Article 20 says you have the right to get your photos back in a machine readable format.
Sadly, this only applies to those in the EU. Americans can keep taking it, which makes sense as it's an American company that's giving it. Sigh.
Minnesota and some other states have similar laws that basically mirror GDPR. States have forms you can get that you would submit to the company. I’ve done it for my Matterport data after they started making you pay to unarchive content (originally free)
Honestly I would just try doing a GDPR request and see what happens. They first have to find out if you’re from the EU, and they probably will err on the side of caution and just fulfill it.
> They first have to find out if you’re from the EU
Technically, you don't have to be from the EU. You just need to be in the EU (which includes Americans who are just vacationing in the EU).
Actually when reading up more on it, it looks like you don’t have to be in the EU at all.
If I understand it correctly, the GDPR applies to any company that does business in the EU and it doesn’t even matter where the data subject is located or which country they are a citizen in. So even if you’re from the US, you should be able to make a valid GDPR request.
No, you can request your personal data as a part of GDPR (and most other privacy laws). That's why things like Google Takeout still exist.
They have to provide the data on request. I also think they aren’t allowed to delete any data they have when you request it before providing it (although you can of course also request deletion).
Well... If I was smarter, I'd have definitely done that!
Are photos considered PII?
Not in general, but depending on what’s on them maybe. A profile picture showing my face definitely is.
But I’m also not sure that they only have to give you PII.
PII is a US-specific concept that has little relevance to the GDPR. So I wouldn’t say for sure that they have to give those photos to you but it wouldn’t be as simple as “not PII”.
Ummmm
The GDPR also covers data portability, so preventing your data (not just personal data) from being held hostage.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
GDPR covers more than just PII.
Chargeback time. They claimed to have your photos, then fucking lied about it.
And a chargeback costs them like $20.
Wow, shocker, a company will not indefinitely store your data for free.
If they can't, then why did they offer to (or at least give the impression that they were going to)?
I don't think your comment represents the situation very well. They allowed the user to upload the data and they're storing the data regardless, right?
Well they did store it for free, they are just holding it hostage. They didn’t say “pay or we’ll delete it”, they said “pay if you want it” and they’ll probably continue to store it for free continuously until you pay.
If it was just that, I'd be okay-ish with it (even though it started out as a service). But pushing a monthly subscription for a 1-time action? Man.....
It was happy to use it to make profit though...
Not only that, but there is a cost for retrieval and transmission especially if you are in cold storage. It's much cheaper to just mark it for deletion than it is to get it back.
Well, they didn't according to the article, the storage was empty. But the user discover that only after subscribing.
Every time I see one of these I make a note that it's a successful strategy to make money, so I might apply it in a future project.
The world would be a better place if you made money by providing value to people. Instead of extorting them.
Don't you value your childhood photos?