Warning about Photobucket and how they sell your photos to AI companies

[Archiver]

In a recent video, Louis Rossman talks about Photobucket's egregious new terms of service which state that by default, all images will be sold to a third party to train AI models. And it specifically states that biometric data from recognizable faces will be harvested.



In bold typeface, Photobucket says:

In particular, to the extent permitted by the laws of your region, you grant us the right to commercialize, including the right to license or sell your Public User Uploaded Content to third parties for the scanning and processing of Public User Uploaded Content, including extracting physical features (e.g., measurements) of your Biometric Information, solely for the purpose of artificial intelligence and machine learning training and the subsequent uses derived therefrom. The law in areas such as data privacy is continually changing.

Photo Storage

Store your photos and videos online with secure storage from Photobucket. Available on iOS, Android and desktop. Securely backup your memories and sign up today!

photobucket.com

I only had a free account with Photobucket, hardly used it, and let it go when Photobucket was deleting free accounts. I downloaded whatever was there and just let it go. Now I'm glad that I never decided to pay money to those people. I don't know anyone here who uses Photobucket, but if you do, it's time to bail.

 

[DownUnder]

Cynical and suspicious as I am, I've long suspected that many sites do. Face***k and Flickr maybe, to name only two.

Photobucket I reckon did the world a favor when they dumped their free accounts. Which woke us all up to the fact that those sites were not all altruistic and set up just to please us. Like all other businesses, their bottom lines were the $$$. No room for charities on there.

How they (Photobucket) blatantly brand all posted photographs with their ugly logo, has always annoyed me. To the point that I refuse to look at images they have so defaced.

Do we really believe the owners of these sites get their jollies from looking at everyone's posted photos and say, "oh, how nice!"...

 

[joe bosak]

I thought Facebook had some line that they owned the content and could do as they pleased with it.

Flickr's terms of use says: "You retain all intellectual property rights in and to any User Content you post, upload or otherwise make available through the Services, including the copyright in and to your photos and videos. SmugMug does not claim any ownership, right, title or interest in and to your User Content.". I assume that excludes this kind of thing and I couldn't immediately see anything suggesting otherwise.

 

[Archiver]

I thought Facebook had some line that they owned the content and could do as they pleased with it.

Flickr's terms of use says: "You retain all intellectual property rights in and to any User Content you post, upload or otherwise make available through the Services, including the copyright in and to your photos and videos. SmugMug does not claim any ownership, right, title or interest in and to your User Content.". I assume that excludes this kind of thing and I couldn't immediately see anything suggesting otherwise.

From what I understand about Facebook and Instagram, part of their terms of service is that they will provide user content to AI training as well. There's a way to opt out, but this is only an option in some countries, and they can even reject the opt-out request! It's disgusting how much they monetize user content.

Flickr seems to be much better in this regard, although I have no doubt that companies are using site scrapers to gather photos from Flickr and Smugmug for AI training purposes. The difference is that flickr doesn't seem to sell user content directly.

 

[ddutchison2]

All I know about Photobucket is that they like to deface their users photographs with huge intrusive watermarks and/or by blurring them out. I've been baffled for years as why anybody would use that service, let alone pay for it. As for the issue here, PB loudly brands peoples pictures with their own name so it doesn't seem surprising that they would also sell them in bulk to AI hawkers.

 

[pggunn]

I hate those watermarks too. So much that I quickly scroll right past any photograph that has one.

 

[aw614]

Photobucket practically killed a lot of automotive forum DIY photos I used to use as reference when working on my car. Still bitter about that

 

[JoeV]

All I know about Photobucket is that they like to deface their users photographs with huge intrusive watermarks and/or by blurring them out. I've been baffled for years as why anybody would use that service, let alone pay for it. As for the issue here, PB loudly brands peoples pictures with their own name so it doesn't seem surprising that they would also sell them in bulk to AI hawkers.

Nobody paid for it initially, because it used to be a free service, like Flickr. Then they transferred to a paid hosting service and held our photos hostage. I have hundreds posted to RFF and my own blog, still held hostage. I refuse to pay, but am still getting ransom notes via email from Photobucket. My attitude is every one of my photos that’s defaced with their watermark is negative advertising against them, sending the message to potential future clients that “we will hold your photos hostage too!”

 

[ddutchison2]

"... My attitude is every one of my photos that’s defaced with their watermark is negative advertising against them"

It's certainly worked as such for me!

 

[Archiver]

Nobody paid for it initially, because it used to be a free service, like Flickr. Then they transferred to a paid hosting service and held our photos hostage. I have hundreds posted to RFF and my own blog, still held hostage. I refuse to pay, but am still getting ransom notes via email from Photobucket. My attitude is every one of my photos that’s defaced with their watermark is negative advertising against them, sending the message to potential future clients that “we will hold your photos hostage too!”

When Photobucket moved to a subscription model for all accounts, I just downloaded my images, took some sentimental screenshots of Photobucket, and let it run out. My old account is now deactivated and can only be reactivated if I pay them, which won't happen because I have a flickr Pro account, and Flickr is a much more pleasant and useful website than PB. Occasionally, I see images with the PB logo and figure those people didn't want to pay, either. It only makes sense for PB to try to find more ways to make money, as I imagine the percentage of free to paid conversions was very low.

 

[Tim Murphy]

Nobody paid for it initially, because it used to be a free service, like Flickr. Then they transferred to a paid hosting service and held our photos hostage. I have hundreds posted to RFF and my own blog, still held hostage. I refuse to pay, but am still getting ransom notes via email from Photobucket. My attitude is every one of my photos that’s defaced with their watermark is negative advertising against them, sending the message to potential future clients that “we will hold your photos hostage too!”

Dear JoeV,

I was an early adopter of Photobucket, mostly because other choices simply didn't exist at the time. I subscribed eventually but rarely posted anything there in the past ten years. A few months ago, they announced the changes to their subscription terms, and I was kind of caught in in a hard place. I have images on Photobucket that are only stored there, and I no longer have access to them without paying to recover them.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here when I say this, but I can't be the only one who is disgusted by all of the formerly free services that now have a subscription model. Outside the photography world I had lifetime pricing to Verizon FIOS, YouTube TV, Netflix, and Disney Plus streaming services all of whom have expired their lifetime pricing and increased the charges annually. The cost has risen to the point where it almost equals the cost of COMCAST when I quit COMCAST. I'm certain COMCAST is now at least $ 50.00 higher in price though.

It's a racket, and I'm about to say póg mo thóin to the lot of them

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA 🙂

 

[JoeV]

When Photobucket moved to a subscription model for all accounts, I just downloaded my images, took some sentimental screenshots of Photobucket, and let it run out. My old account is now deactivated and can only be reactivated if I pay them, which won't happen because I have a flickr Pro account, and Flickr is a much more pleasant and useful website than PB. Occasionally, I see images with the PB logo and figure those people didn't want to pay, either. It only makes sense for PB to try to find more ways to make money, as I imagine the percentage of free to paid conversions was very low.

I also got a Flickr Pro account, which I’m happy to pay for unlimited storage, considering the maintenance of the storage media is their headache, not mine.

But of course in the back of my mind I can’t help but think about my Photobucket experience and hope it won’t happen again. Yes, I did download many of my Photobucket images before being locked out, but many of those images were used in older blog postings of mine and I haven’t yet gone to the trouble of replacing them with the ones I downloaded.

 

[Pioneer]

Early on I investigated the price of on-line storage and decided I wasn't interested. I did try Photobucket for a bit but dropped after only a few month. I am so glad I made that decision. I now maintain my own small, personal databank and that seems to work but over 90% of my work is on film so it isn't that hard to keep track of things. However storing actual negatives and prints comes with its own problems and costs so I doubt I am actually saving any money.

 

[Archiver]

Dear JoeV,

I was an early adopter of Photobucket, mostly because other choices simply didn't exist at the time. I subscribed eventually but rarely posted anything there in the past ten years. A few months ago, they announced the changes to their subscription terms, and I was kind of caught in in a hard place. I have images on Photobucket that are only stored there, and I no longer have access to them without paying to recover them.

It's a shame that you weren't able to download the images before they locked your account. I made sure to get mine in those earlier days of 'Your account will be deactivated' emails. Are those photos worth it to get a year of Photobucket and then cancel?

I know I'm preaching to the choir here when I say this, but I can't be the only one who is disgusted by all of the formerly free services that now have a subscription model. Outside the photography world I had lifetime pricing to Verizon FIOS, YouTube TV, Netflix, and Disney Plus streaming services all of whom have expired their lifetime pricing and increased the charges annually. The cost has risen to the point where it almost equals the cost of COMCAST when I quit COMCAST. I'm certain COMCAST is now at least $ 50.00 higher in price though.

My prepaid mobile service is moving towards this. You could get a whole year of unlimited calls and texts, plus 13GB of data per month, for only $19/month if paid in full upfront. They will soon axe this option and the next tier up for one year is $23/month. It doesn't sound like much, but it's money.

 

[Coldkennels]

My prepaid mobile service is moving towards this. You could get a whole year of unlimited calls and texts, plus 13GB of data per month, for only $19/month if paid in full upfront. They will soon axe this option and the next tier up for one year is $23/month. It doesn't sound like much, but it's money.

Brexit had the same effect on mobile phones for Brits. I travel into Europe a lot in the summer, so I chose my service provider based on the best "roaming" plan; while we were still part of the EU, every mobile phone network had to allow free roaming in Europe by law. Once the referendum happened, a lot of the big networks started reintroducing roaming charges, so I swapped to one that promised to keep free roaming. And it did... for a while. Eventually I got a message (while I was in France!) that they were changing the terms of my contract the following month.

It's just greed. Corporate (and C-suite) greed.

 

[Archiver]

Speaking of Photobucket, they sent me an automated email about how my account has been deactivated, and may be deleted. So I went to the site to see if I could delete it. Interestingly, they wanted agreement with terms of service (which included gathering of biometric information) to log in. I clicked I Do Not Agree with the terms of service, which resulted in this:

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We've Updated Our Policies​

Please agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Biometric Information Privacy Policy before continuing.
If you do not agree to our updated policies, you will need to delete your account. If you need support, you can contact our support team.

and the options [I Do Not Agree, Delete My Account] and [Agree].

===

It was fun while it lasted, Photobucket. Not that my images had any people or biometric data to gather, but I don't agree with giving them permission to feed my images to AI training processes.