Because you decided that all photos of any relevance you've ever posted weren't worth paying $39 for a month, then cancelling the account.
Dude, there's no rational explanation or excuse. You get exactly what you paid for.
Have you ever looked at a thread and enjoyed pics? Ever seen a technical thread and it helped you make a repair more easily or correctly? If so you've used photobucket for free as well most likely. It's not only being used by its hostees but also from anyone who looks at the posted pics.
Its the same with Facebook. Free to use. They make their money in other ways. Photobucket offered a service. 10 years ago. Free hosting of pics. The catch was they used the dashboard of the user interface to advertise. Thats fine. There was no pay option...ever. They did offer photo related services. Which i occasionally used. This nonsense of somehow paying for the past is silly and backwards. They made the site free. They wanted traffic to their site to sell ads. This was their model of business. Same as Facebook YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter and a score of other mainstream public digital programs. Now suddenly they not only reversed that model but gave absolutely zero notice. Or options. Then for added fun the prices that they gave to their users is completely preposterous.
It's funny because most people post pics to share knowledge inspiration or experiences with others. Then they read and share others experiences pics or knowledge. Think about all the technical threads that are now next to useless. All the road trip or off roading threads that have been stripped and ruined. Who is going to take the time to go back into those threads and figure out how to repost a pic? Next to no one I'll wager. I can think of dozens of threads that the posters pics made a critical difference in me taking on and completing a repair. That's just the Land Rover world.100s of forums with 1000s of threads. For everyone to share knowledge. That's the entire point of the internet. Now gone or runied. Because of greed. I gladly would pay if the price was relive to the service. Just to keep the little sliver of knowledge I've shared w the web alive. 9.99 a month seems fair. That's what you pay to use You tube with zero ads. I refuse to believe photobucket stores more data than Youtube does.
In the future I will use another host site.