Well, if Comcast ever fixes my connection, I'll be over at Dreamwidth. I sure hope DW comes up with their own photo hosting & lets me move over my scrapbook.

Have you looked at photobucket? I use that to host photos, and it's very simple to then load them into LJ or DW posts.

I haven't considered photobucket, yet. I did recently get a Flick'r that I am using for fabric photos for Spoonflower.

What I was really hoping for was not so much a place to host photos in future but a place that a) wouldn't delete stuff they disapproved of (dunno whether SOPA/PIPA are REALLY dead, or if they'll come back under another name- and even without that nude photomanips would prob. get booted out)

and b) would let me transfer in bulk from my Scrapbook- we're talking thousands of photos now, many of them even sorted neatly.

and c) not that I know if it's POSSIBLE, but would be fantastic if it could somehow retain the link to the old places where it had been used.

(Although I don't know why I care about c, as the only 2 places I posted pics linked to scrapbook were my mac.com homesite which is going to vanish in a couple months, and my LJ which I figure is going to vanish the first time the Singapore shopbloggers discover LJ's DDOS attacks and all go somewhere else.)

That could be difficult. Photobucket will take down pics if someone complains about them, but then again so will LJ so there's really no difference there. You can upload to Photobucket via their bulk uploader but I'm not sure how many pics you could do at once; I uploaded 132 pics today as a bulk lot but I don't know the limits.
As for c)- I do think it wouldn't be possible; links won't copy across and you'd be up for some tedious hand-coding if you wanted the original links to redirect to the new location.
But for future hosting it would be all right. It's really easy to upload and to copy across to LJ etc using photobucket. No doubt there are a lot of other similar sites too.

I've heard of people having stuff they didn't consider offensive taken down on Photobucket quite often. And so soon after uploading it seems that they hire people to check uploads, and don't simply respond to complaints.

One person's photo of an abstract sculpture in a public park (a cylinder between two spheres- which wasn't labeled anything offensive so it wasn't found by a normal search) was taken down the DAY she posted it to an art community who definitely would not have taken offense and reported it.

While theoretically LJ could take down images I've never heard of them doing it.

I haven't tested Flick'r's stance on censorship yet, as so far everything I've stored there has been squeaky clean. I *THINK* you can host nude photos of adults there, so long as you mark them a specific way. I'll have to check that if I ever get 'round to it.

That's interesting, I didn't realise photobucket was quite that tyrannical.I've been lucky so far; I have a few things there that could be construed as offensive (not to mention suggestive, like the pic you mentioned above) but haven't yet had anything removed.
I'll have a look at flick'r too; if it doesn't police its contents quite that much then it might be worth setting up an account there.

I just posted about Flickr's rules (weren't easy to find, and are kinda vague) but it LOOKS as if you can store adult images there PROVIDED you have them filtered the way Flickr wants.

Check out the 'Community Guidelines' for details.

I was surprised to find that they disallow posting a link to a commercial site or anything that could be construed as selling/merchandising, etc.

And they insist that screenshots be labeled as such.

I suspect that if your photo storage has few viewers, it's not as likely to get picked on, no matter what service you use.

Thanks for that, I'll go have a look.
I guess my pb account flies under the radar as it's private, therefore no-one else can look at it except for the specific pictures I use in my journal.
Labelling screenshots as such is protection for them, I guess, in case of legal action over ownership. I forget what it's called in the case of images; not copyright still is it? Brain is mush this morning.

I think images are copyright protected, too. Flickr said that labeling screenshots was to help people select what to search for, but that doesn't sound reasonable to me. I think you're right that it's to protect Flickr in case someone whines that a screenshot of their stuff shows up.

All the site hosts are running scared of being blamed for their users offending one of the mega-corporations or one of the prude-groups or... pretty much anyone with clout.

I can't help but think there should be a way for them to keep we long-time users happy while still reaching out to newbies. I don't understand why it has to be one or the other.

They're just not interested in us. We don't bring in the dollars in sufficient numbers. *sigh*

Except that their current user base isn't actually all about us - the article points out that fandom is a very small part of what Livejournal is now, their main user base is in Russia and Singapore. The company has been Russian-owned for a long time now, why shouldn't they cater to their Russian customers rather than their American customers (Never mind the rest of us, neither you nor I are American, but we're apparently represented by them)?

Way back in 2007 some Americans wanted to make some money, so they sold their company to the highest bidder who happened to be Russian. The Russian who bought it assumed that he could do what he wanted with it (as you do when you buy something), so he did, and he made it a very successful Russian company. And that's what it is now, a Russian company. In line with the vast majority of business models, when a user base in one country becomes less important to the success of that company, it's no longer the central focus of what happens there.

Is it a nice business model? No - but I'm fairly sure that the people complaining about the Big Evil vs Fandom aren't out there trying to change the system in general, only when it affects their own toys. (I wish they would, and I hope at least some of them have been Occupying in some way)

I hate it when they change the shampoo I've been buying and loving for years and years, but I can see the bigger picture of it too...

I'm kind of surprised you're still posting to lj - I'm guessing you've set up a dw account... *g*

Sod big business. Yes of course I understand that the decisions are made based on economic models rather than happy-fairy-land for existing users, many of whom like me have permanent accounts and therefore aren't any longer contributing to the bottom line, and there are a lot of freeloaders who don't contribute at all. Hard to run a business that way.
But it's like my boss being retrenched after 20 years when her position was abolished. No consideration for the people who actually helped them to get to where they are now. Not when business is concerned.
I don't have to like it. If I'm getting dicked I'm not going to roll over and say "harder please".
And yes, I've had a dreamwidth account for nearly three years now. This site is a mirror. A lot of my friends are there, and the main community I follow is there. But if I move permanently I'd rather it was my choice, rather than having it forced upon me.

Lol - you didn't say "sod big business" about my issue over a bank's right to authorise payments continually from my account, with no right for me to cancel it with them! *g*

I think my point was mostly that I can't see it as the fault of the Russian company - the people who "dicked" lj users was surely the American company who sold lj in the first place (and there was grumbling about that at the time, I remember). I can't imagine that they sold it dependent on the buyer continuing to run it in a fandom-friendly way, and so there's no reason why they should - much as I hate change too. That said, I didn't see anything particular to worry about in the article - it didn't give specifics, except that it was going to change various widgets for communities. The rest seemed like speculation, so I'll save worrying until they do it. Of course, I still like the changes to comments... *g*

*g* yeah well I tend to get defensive when it's about banks, simply because I work for one and bank-bashing is pretty much a blood sport here in Australia. It's a topic that the pseudo-current affairs sleaze tv shows love. (and my point was that the banks don't "authorise" payments; your car club debits your account electronically. It's a difference. An authorised payment is generated by the bank not by the RACC.)
Anyway. Regardless of fault, it's just the attitude that shocked me - saying it out loud that they really don't care about those of us who've been there a while. They can do what they like with the site; turn it into an auction site if they want and I'll just have to suck it up.
I don't mind the new comments, now that it actually works. That was my complaint previously iirc;it didn't work properly until I disabled a script that stopped other nasties from happening and for a while there I couldn't comment on other journals.
I just don't like change of any sort. Makes life interesting at work, I can tell you.