I think that expectations from physical-world objects could be clashing with online service "objects".

For example, if I buy a physical-world object then it's well-understood that the vendor can't break into my house and take it back or, in most circumstances, demand its return. Many physical-world objects additionally come with a warranty assuring that it will continue to work for some length of time.

Online, the digital "object" that I upload to a free service has no such ownership analogue - the service provider can generally cease to offer the service at will. This not only means there's zero warranty, but effectively that service providers can "break into my house" to "take back" the object.

I don't think there's much awareness in the general public that GMail, to pick on a well-used example, could shut down tomorrow and almost every user would irretrievably lose the last N years of their email.

I think a decent analogy would be a grocery store. Sure, you've gone there and got free samples for over ten years, but now they feel those burger bites and cheese dip w/ crackers weren't actually helping them sell more product.

Do you expect the grocery store to give ample notice? Should they change their mind when people complain?

Admittedly the analogy isn't perfect because the samples aren't a major portion of the grocery store's cost/business, but it's still decent.

>it's a pretty dreadful world where you're to completely understand the business model behind every service you rely on to some extent, or else it's really your own fault when they pull the rug from under you with like five minutes of very non-specific notice.

I'm baffled that people seem to feel this is an unreasonable expectation for anyone trying to make money from such a service, especially as a free user. It's not a public utility.

>Society just couldn't operate if everybody actually read the entirety of the terms of all the services they use. We'd get nothing done.

This isn't society, though, this is business. This is why companies hire lawyers and pay for contracts with their suppliers, etc.

Yes, the way Photobucket went about this is crass, clueless and rude, but users who just expected the service to "work" indefinitely are also at fault for doing so.

In a general case I'd agree with you, but Photobucket is an exception. This would be like Yahoo shuttering their free email tier overnight and asking for payment.

The bar for being a business is pretty low, though. If they had the logistics and budget to pay for a lawyer, they probably wouldn't be hosting on photobucket anyway.