I got this E-mail from Photobucket.
ANY PAYING MEMBER WHOSE PLUS ACCOUNT WAS IN GOOD STANDING AS OF JUNE 1, 2017, SHALL CONTINUE TO RECEIVE ALL THE PHOTOBUCKET SERVICES THAT WERE AVAILABLE TO HIM/HER ON SUCH DATE, INCLUDING IMAGE LINKING AND 3RD PARTY IMAGE HOSTING, UNTIL DECEMBER 31, 2018 AS LONG THEY MAINTAIN THEIR CURRENT PLUS ACCOUNT SUBSCRIPTION OR A HIGHER LEVEL PLUS ACCOUNT SUBSCRIPTION DURING SUCH PERIOD OF TIME.
What this means is "we are giving you until 31/12/2018 to work out what you are going to do"
I've started to self-host and will now not add any further images to my photobucket account. I'll pay my current subscription for the next year until they cut off the 3rd party hosting to keep my older articles fully live for as long as possible. Fixing my entire back catalogue is far too big a job.
Now I have a strategy for the self-hosting including generating bulk sets of links (one of the things I loved about PB) to use on my website and in forum posts.
They have given me the push to now ask, why go back to using an image hosting service? Quite frankly, there is no reason as all I'll get is insecurity.
Part of me wants them to fail completely, but part of me wants them to see reason and restore the huge chunk of the internet they are holding to ransom. Maybe Google can intervene and set up the "Fixing PhotoBucket's mess" project for the good of all internet users.