EDIT: 11/27/2018 Please check the updates at the bottom.
OLD TITLE: Worst business decision ever since Adobe's move to creative cloud subscription only.
OLD review:
Photobucket, more like photof#cket.
What would you feel if you make a blog, a website or any other post, and then years later, found out that the (old) images were replaced with a message demanding you to upgrade your account to a paid subscription.
Images across the internet using Photobucket are now WREAKED, asking users to pay money to have them hosted (not a one-time fee, a periodic $400/year plan). It's a huge insult that they WOULD DECIDE to have this subscription at the most expensive of all their subscriptions. I am so disappointed to see this forum post of arts just got wiped out:
https://bbs.saraba1st.com/2b/thread-*******-2-1.html.

EDIT
Hotlinks aren't the only ones destroyed, viewing it directly, downloading or otherwise accessing it (even from their own site) on some images SOMETIMES NO LONGER WORKS (the "please upgrade your account" image instead of the image intended). That is a mess. This could be one of the biggest internet DISASTER ever. It's like they're censoring them for ransom. More like hosting images disabled, not just 3rd party.
Many people said they did this because their income are short due to users using adblockers on their site, you know why? Its because your site is heavily infested by ads. At least some news sites, deviantart and wikia step it up on keeping their ads clean. Nobody wants ads that have un-close-able, website access/usability-disabling, redirecting, opening in a new tab, scam hosting, fake close buttons, spawning a separate browser window as pop-ups (including pop-unders), banners/boxes WITHIN the website filling the screen, installing malware, noisy auto-plays that refuses to mute, any browsing-obstructive content placed on a webpage and any other what google describes them as "abusive experience". I've experienced mediafire and rayfile doing this cr@p with clicking on the (real) download button. Viewing it on mobile is EVEN WORSE, just run away.
This company turned to sh! T the way imageshack (better to be called imageshat) did. They had the nerve to turn their backs to say "no, it's no longer free" and prevent hosting images. What's worse is that they don't give enough warning to all its users that there is a change in terms of service.
The first time I saw this was on smwcentral, and it look god awful: http://smwc.me/*******
I hope this practice does not spread to multiple companies that host images like cancer, if any of them were to act this way, then there is no way to host your images permanently, like an avocado thats opened. Better to use google drive and link without hotlinking.
If you're an active user who wanted to fix your post, you have a FIELD DAY of fixing thousands of images across the internet you posted. If you're inactive, its gone forever. They could've make only images uploaded after that point be blocked, but they decided to screw it all.
EDIT: give a shout to Michel van Heijster for making a script that makes fixing your images WAY easier, download here: https://bitbucket.org/michelvh/photobucketscraper. Not sure if this is gunna work with if the image view on photobucket got replaced.
Thank god someone was smart enough to help others with this problem.
EDIT2: There is an browser add-on that circumvent this "hotlink protection" called "photobucket hotlink fix": https://github.com/Ryan-Myers/photobucket-embed-fix. What I want you to do is use that extension to enable viewing images, then download them ("save as"). It should download the actual image. Now reupload that image to another site (that does not do sh! T like photobucket did) and post a message stating that you backed up the image as intention to help visitors reading it.

11/27/2018 update: They have improved their business models and no longer block images anymore but rather watermarked them on outside sites. Now lets hope they continue to grow. The only sad problem now is due to the nature of how hotlink detection works, web archives cannot archive them as the hot inked content can read your URL. But you can download their originals.

There are SOooo may ads nothing will load for me. There are zero pluses fir this site.