Re: Photobucket
If enough people don't use Photobucket because of the cost, maybe 3rd party hosting will be made part of their less expensive plans. People would then be more likely to heave a sigh of relief and pay.
I'd say it would be better because customers would stay and Photobucket would at least be getting something. Not as much as they wanted but a lot more than they were getting from the free service. Obviously they weren't making much money from their advertising and would be well aware that many people block ads anyway.
I could have done that but have paid for the ad-free service for a few years. Not to avoid ads but to support the service I'd been using freely for a good while. Maybe the problem has arisen because not enough people were willing to pay something.