Hosting sites

Can someone enlighten me on the benefits of hosting sites as so far I just don't get it.
I am aware that they are widely used so I am obviously missing the point.
I place all my photos on a usb hard drive caddy and copy them in when needed which unburdens my laptop and gives me a backup, I leave them full size and FastStone batch them for posting, a pen drive would do the same.
It was reported some years ago that all Photobucket operatives can access personal data which has left me a little wary, (or is it me just getting old and suspicious of a free anything).
Posting videos are a different area but so far I have not gone there.

The thing I have never liked about 3rd party hosting sites for photos is they change their format and re invent their rules far too often for my liking.

If you post the same image in a bunch of places, it can be easier to just upload the images to one image server, retrieve the image url, and then just copy-paste that image url wherever you want. In theory. The reality is that you're giving them a bunch of control over a single point of failure. We saw this happen recently with Photobucket, who suddenly started charging for their "free" service. This isn't that unheard-of, but they broke an unspoken internet rule by failing to retroactively grandfather everyone.

So, all of a sudden, if you hosted your pics on Photobucket, and then posted them on forums, your photos disappeared if you didn't pay Photobucket $40/month. More traditionally, when web services start charging, it makes sense to give away the service for free to existing members. For example, sometimes forums will open up a "pay" subforum, or offer paid subscription services, but it's widely accepted that this strategy is accompanied by giving away those services for free to established members, while new members pay the fee.

Regarding privacy, images contain something called EXIF data - details on camera type, camera settings, date/time, and geolocation data from newer cameras' GPS systems. There are various ways to view the EXIF data on your computer, and websites that will show you the EXIF data if you upload a pic. Sometimes you can just open up an image file in a text editor, and, amidst all the "junk" binary image characters, you'll see the EXIF details. If you want, you can strip away the EXIF data before uploading a pic, but, in most cases, you probably don't care.

mklotz brought up this issue in regard to YouTube. Self-hosting of videos is much rarer than self-hosting of images, and we don't really know what may happen one day when YouTube (owned by Google) decides to turn the screws.

Thematically, this all points to the rising belief that what will be most valuable on the net in the future is not a technical ability like image storing, video uploading, or web hosting. According to this belief, what will be most valuable is trust itself.

What happens when hosting sites go out of business or change their terms of service? You need to copy all your photos quick before they do. There are programs that will copy everything fast, if they work. You have to buy more Google drive space. The same is true of videos. One major video site closed this past year. I hear YouTube runs at a deficit. I expect that Google will support it until it becomes a monopoly. Then watch. I bet they don't give any more licensing fees, and/or charge to post your videos. Instant profitability. You have to back up everything on hard media- flash drives, your computer's hard drive or external drive, or DVDs. You can buy space on the cloud. That gets expensive.

I haven't bothered to investigate cloud storage, Photosucket, or any means of independent digital storage; like olderdan thumbs and external drives are low cost per gig, higher degree of control, and with better than 100% access (via ANY usb port). My cameras and phone are older; dependable and no 2nd or 3rd party interference.

'They' market convenience for their own good, not the customer. By making any process intricate, and offer "We'll do it for you" that drives certain folks right into the trap.
And failing to grandfather services to initial participants is little else than extortion. I'll pay for what I don't want to store or own, usually due to size or variety, such as streamed music. But if I create something, investing a bit more in saving it is chickenfeed.

I'm Agreed with Olderdan and TM51. Hard Personal Storage is cheap...flash drives, microSD's and for gosh sakes you can get a 4Tb drive for ~$100 now (2.5mo. of Photobucket). Not only can you store a SWad of files but even 30-40mb hi-res DSLR pics or vids as most every vid is in MP4 now. I keep all my old HD's and have 5 USB hard drives (350mb-1Tb) and a 1Tb firewire/usb, I use for Backups. For the older drives I use the BlacX Thermaltake and has worked perfectly for a few years now. I have a bag full of thumb drives and SD's from 500mb-64Gb explicitly for handy use. Overall and I haven't added all up I would bet I'm somewhere around 50Tb beyond what I have on my computers. The important thing to me is labeling them. Seems like years ago I use to use a file list command and prntscreen it (I Know, Right 250mb Seagate ST251s bed shakers but they are worth $200 eBay now). Now I organize the modern drives by Info Types with a sublist and dates. Even so it only takes a minute to load and search. One day when I'm richer I will invest in a larger NAS so I can lock it down and back it up with mirroring.

My graphic box is probably my most important and has 2.5Tb internal and most of my pics and All of my graphic files which represents a kazillion hours of my time. Adobe Premier files can get quite large as well as the export (burn) files for DVD/BR...So Regular backups and when they get older than about 2 years, off they go to a spare drive...if I need a file so as not to reinvent the wheel I just pop it in and get it. When my Box gets out of date old drives come out and process starts again.

I've never cottoned to the idea of Cloud services because of reliability, privacy, and most importantly as Jon points out Trust! No way in my lifetime will I trust my graphic stuff, CAD files or personal info to the cloud, unless I publish it somewhere...or pay for a service.

I was a bit confused by the term "Hosting site" as it has multiple connotations, but Long story short I see no reason for them as a cloud service unless you need to share them with the world on social media along with your Geolocation.

Whatever you do relative to hosting sites/clouds/etc. keep full resolution copies of all your pictures locally. There are so many things that can go awry with remote storage that it simply can't be trusted for primary storage.

Your local storage should be duplicated in several different formats. All formats, thumb drives, hard disks, DVDs, etc. can fail (or the device needed to read them can). As has been pointed out, storage is now cheap. Your effort to reproduce all that material isn't, even if that were possible.

Remember that theft is another way to lose backups. If your "backups" are DVDs or a hard disk sitting on top of your computer or next to it, they may disappear when the computer is stolen. Keep at least one redundant set of backups in a remote location. Among other remote backups I keep a couple thumb drives in a kitchen drawer under some cooking utensils. Over the years we've been burglarized three times in two houses and never once has the kitchen been ransacked.