When I began to use Photobucket, more than a decade ago, I think there was just an ad banner per page, like on here. And when I began using an ad-blocker, many years later, I forgot about it.

Until a few weeks ago, when Photobucket "noticed I was using an ad-blocker, please white-list us", etc. All right, it's fair game. Then all hell broke loose.

A banner on top of the page. Two square ads on the right. Auto-play video ads - with sound on max level by default, of course. And then a vertical banner comes from the left, moving the whole page to the right, and sometimes messing up with the page layout. And if I go to another tab on Firefox, when I come back to the Photobucket tab, now comes another layer, covering the whole page with crappy click-bait ads, and a CONTINUE TO WEBSITE link.

I'm all right with a well-behaved single ad banner per page, but this is just horrible. The whole site now looks dubious, untrustworthy. And now they want 400 dollars a year to get rid of this ad infestation and still be allowed to link my photos ? I'm sorry but it's way too much, way too late.

This latest move by Photobucket looks like a poorly planned, last ditch attempt to move the company onto the black. I don't think many casual users will pony up 400 dollars a year, and I wonder if the company will still be there next year. If the billions of hosted photos get wiped off, there will be a lot of problems on forums, including IMCDb (some comment photos are still hosted on PB).

Again, apologies for the off-topicness, but the situation is rather worrying.