Photobucket used to offer free image hosting, then late last year they yanked everyone's linked photos out from under them and said if you wanted to continue to share those photos you had to pay. Which might not have been the end of the world if they weren't charging so much. So that's why so many threads on here, like this one, have broken image links and no more pictures. A lot of forums have suffered. Basically Photobucket are a bunch of asshats.
I switched to Flickr, which is better, and free.
Supposedly there is a plugin for Google Chrome that lets you see some photos still, but I hear it's hit or miss. It's called 'Photobucket Hotlink Fix' if you want to try it.