I’ve never had the need to use Photobucket, but I’m aware of their revised policy.
Browsing through the postings on the Photography sub-forum shows that some carry this Photobucket apology,
some include photos with a Photobucket ‘overlay’, and some lack photos that (presumably) used to appear but have no Photobucket apology. In the 3rd case I’m guessing that forum members employed a non-Photobucket host that is now defunct or problematical.
Obviously, if a posting provides a link to a non-existent image-hosting website, or the hosting website linked to no longer carries the photo, the photo will not appear on this forum. Nor (as you’ve said) if a hosting website no longer permits the linking capability.
Photobucket has been reporting site problems on Twitter since 18 December 2019 and work to fully resolve this was still in progress on 3 January 2020. (I’ve no idea if this will have any negative effect here.)