8 ms·

Doesn't sound like a successful or even self-sustaining online community though: > In 2019, SmugMug started deleting Flickr images of free users, except for th

Doesn't sound like a successful or even self-sustaining online community though: > In 2019, SmugMug started deleting Flickr images of free users, except for the newest 1,000 and Creative Commons images. > User Frank Michel estimated that the site had lost 63% of its images as a result. In 2020, SmugMug increased the fee for a Pro account to $60 per year, saying that the site was still losing money. > It would appear that an old community of professional photographers is keeping the site alive. Unless SmugMug can sell Flickr to a bigger company or come up with a new and revolutionary feature, however, the site's remaining years may be few...

julius_deane 5y ago
- reduce freeloading - increase price for paid accounts - focus on serving paid customers > un-sustainable — the orange website
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
muststopmyths 5y ago
So, I was really pissed off when they said they'd start deleting pictures instead of hiding them like the old Flickr. I was never going to re-upload all my pictures if I decided to go Pro again in the future. So I thought Flickr was effectively dead to me. However, in the 2 years since they announced that, all my 6000+ photos were still there. I never checked to see how many were still publicly visible, though. I wonder if they exposed only the newest 1000 public photos. That might account for the "63% of images lost" stat above. Finally, this fall I needed a photo-sharing site again and decided I still like Flickr with its shitty "new" UI better than most other sites. I particularly like collections of albums and the maps of photos. Plus, the overall UI for browsing an album is simple. No annoying sales-catalog style layouts. I have OneDrive for my camera uploads (habit carried over from Windows Phone) and other private uploads, but anything I want to share publicly will go on Flickr. They had a pretty good sale on Black Friday, so I ended up signing up for a year. Still keep backups of my photos locally of course and I am ready to bail if they change it to look like Smugmug :-)
- derefr 5y ago
  I bet what they actually did, is to only delete pictures from accounts that were clearly created by systems that used images as steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage. (The use of such systems is why Google Photos — originally offering unlimited storage — had to later limit free storage to 5GB.) Flickr had to make it clear that any free-tier user could potentially be impacted; but in practice the impact was limited to users who were actually abusing the system (though in a way that was previously "within the letter of the law.")
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    > steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage I'd be curious how you sell that. I understand you can have some API to take whatever data, put it into the images, upload the images, reverse for use. But some portal somewhere is like "buy secret storage" or something? I guess it is worth the processing/possible data loss efficiency. Or is it just using bandwidth?
    - rocqua 5y ago
      You build an app that will create your backups for you using your free image sharing account. Or maybe instead of backups it's for big filetransfers, or sharing somewhat secret documents. The main point is to make use of the effective endless storage, rather than to store things hidden in plain sight.
      - codetrotter 5y ago
        I remember also back when GMail first became available to people by invitation, and at the time the amount of storage you were given, while not as impressive by today’s standards, was pretty significant at the time. And someone created a system to allow you to backup files from your computer onto your GMail. I wonder if that system inspired Google to build Google Drive. Here’s an article from the time, and an excerpt from said article: > As many of you know, Gmail is Google's free web mail service that gives you 2+ Gigs of free storage for your email and attachments. Now that is a lot of storage; actually more storage than most people really need. So what can we do with all that extra storage you may be wondering? What if I told you that we could use all this extra storage to act as an online hard drive for you to store files? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-as-an-online-drive/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-... And the original page, which is still around too. http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm > GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Mail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium. Windows XP. Good times :) If Google did take inspiration from it when later creating Google Drive then maybe that’s even where they took the name for Google Drive from. Speaking of Google, storage space, and that time period, here’s a comic strip I remember from back then :) http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/669.html http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/669.html
garbagetime 5y ago
I don't see how your conclusion follows from the text you quoted
derefr 5y ago
It's a self-sustaining online community of paid users. Like an MMO. Who cares about free users? Unlike in a social network, free use of Flickr is not the point of Flickr. It's just a free-tier teaser to get you to understand the site, get used to it, and then start paying once you want to use it for anything "real." Like the free tier of e.g. Dropbox.
- acdha 5y ago
  Flickr has more of a social-network aspect than Dropbox: it benefits enormously from people uploading high-quality photography or, especially, offering good feedback on other people's uploads. People love to upload photographs and see other people react favorably, and you especially want a way to share your photos with your friends and family even if they never end up uploading anything. There's also a cultural angle: young photographers want to be able to share their work and get feedback but they may not have money — but that high-school kid uploading pictures from their photography class is potentially creating both great content and will turn into a Pro account when they have money. What they want to do is cap that: upload a few things you think about, don't use Auto-Uploadr to transfer 50GB of blurry lunch photos nobody will ever access. I've wondered whether the answer might be something like the old-school BBS ratios: have a free tier but allow people to get more based on the cumulative number of times people look at / star your work (with some care to avoid mutual promotion rings) or gift you a Pro subscription. If there's not a way to get cash out of the system, that could avoid unintentionally turning into OnlyFans while allowing people to contribute to the community.
vr46 5y ago
They said. I never had a single picture removed, going back to 2005.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Just checked. Also still have all my pictures going back to 2004. Glad that this was used only for actual abusers. The website does show me a warning now though.
  - vr46 5y ago
    I couldn't upload more pictures starting more recently, until I was a Pro subscriber again.
boondaburrah 5y ago
I was a paying flickr pro customer for years but when they basically tripled the price on me for zero extra service I could no longer afford it. Which sucks, because it was one of the few photo places that actually respected the users a little bit. Now I just don't/can't share photos.

julius_deane 5y ago

- reduce freeloading - increase price for paid accounts - focus on serving paid customers > un-sustainable — the orange website

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

muststopmyths 5y ago

So, I was really pissed off when they said they'd start deleting pictures instead of hiding them like the old Flickr. I was never going to re-upload all my pictures if I decided to go Pro again in the future. So I thought Flickr was effectively dead to me. However, in the 2 years since they announced that, all my 6000+ photos were still there. I never checked to see how many were still publicly visible, though. I wonder if they exposed only the newest 1000 public photos. That might account for the "63% of images lost" stat above. Finally, this fall I needed a photo-sharing site again and decided I still like Flickr with its shitty "new" UI better than most other sites. I particularly like collections of albums and the maps of photos. Plus, the overall UI for browsing an album is simple. No annoying sales-catalog style layouts. I have OneDrive for my camera uploads (habit carried over from Windows Phone) and other private uploads, but anything I want to share publicly will go on Flickr. They had a pretty good sale on Black Friday, so I ended up signing up for a year. Still keep backups of my photos locally of course and I am ready to bail if they change it to look like Smugmug :-)

derefr 5y ago
I bet what they actually did, is to only delete pictures from accounts that were clearly created by systems that used images as steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage. (The use of such systems is why Google Photos — originally offering unlimited storage — had to later limit free storage to 5GB.) Flickr had to make it clear that any free-tier user could potentially be impacted; but in practice the impact was limited to users who were actually abusing the system (though in a way that was previously "within the letter of the law.")
- jcun4128 5y ago
  > steganographic containers for arbitrary private data storage I'd be curious how you sell that. I understand you can have some API to take whatever data, put it into the images, upload the images, reverse for use. But some portal somewhere is like "buy secret storage" or something? I guess it is worth the processing/possible data loss efficiency. Or is it just using bandwidth?
  - rocqua 5y ago
    You build an app that will create your backups for you using your free image sharing account. Or maybe instead of backups it's for big filetransfers, or sharing somewhat secret documents. The main point is to make use of the effective endless storage, rather than to store things hidden in plain sight.
    - codetrotter 5y ago
      I remember also back when GMail first became available to people by invitation, and at the time the amount of storage you were given, while not as impressive by today’s standards, was pretty significant at the time. And someone created a system to allow you to backup files from your computer onto your GMail. I wonder if that system inspired Google to build Google Drive. Here’s an article from the time, and an excerpt from said article: > As many of you know, Gmail is Google's free web mail service that gives you 2+ Gigs of free storage for your email and attachments. Now that is a lot of storage; actually more storage than most people really need. So what can we do with all that extra storage you may be wondering? What if I told you that we could use all this extra storage to act as an online hard drive for you to store files? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-as-an-online-drive/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-use-gmail-... And the original page, which is still around too. http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm > GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google Mail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium. Windows XP. Good times :) If Google did take inspiration from it when later creating Google Drive then maybe that’s even where they took the name for Google Drive from. Speaking of Google, storage space, and that time period, here’s a comic strip I remember from back then :) http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/669.html http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/669.html

garbagetime 5y ago

I don't see how your conclusion follows from the text you quoted

derefr 5y ago

It's a self-sustaining online community of paid users. Like an MMO. Who cares about free users? Unlike in a social network, free use of Flickr is not the point of Flickr. It's just a free-tier teaser to get you to understand the site, get used to it, and then start paying once you want to use it for anything "real." Like the free tier of e.g. Dropbox.

acdha 5y ago
Flickr has more of a social-network aspect than Dropbox: it benefits enormously from people uploading high-quality photography or, especially, offering good feedback on other people's uploads. People love to upload photographs and see other people react favorably, and you especially want a way to share your photos with your friends and family even if they never end up uploading anything. There's also a cultural angle: young photographers want to be able to share their work and get feedback but they may not have money — but that high-school kid uploading pictures from their photography class is potentially creating both great content and will turn into a Pro account when they have money. What they want to do is cap that: upload a few things you think about, don't use Auto-Uploadr to transfer 50GB of blurry lunch photos nobody will ever access. I've wondered whether the answer might be something like the old-school BBS ratios: have a free tier but allow people to get more based on the cumulative number of times people look at / star your work (with some care to avoid mutual promotion rings) or gift you a Pro subscription. If there's not a way to get cash out of the system, that could avoid unintentionally turning into OnlyFans while allowing people to contribute to the community.

vr46 5y ago

They said. I never had a single picture removed, going back to 2005.

Aeolun 5y ago
Just checked. Also still have all my pictures going back to 2004. Glad that this was used only for actual abusers. The website does show me a warning now though.
- vr46 5y ago
  I couldn't upload more pictures starting more recently, until I was a Pro subscriber again.

boondaburrah 5y ago

I was a paying flickr pro customer for years but when they basically tripled the price on me for zero extra service I could no longer afford it. Which sucks, because it was one of the few photo places that actually respected the users a little bit. Now I just don't/can't share photos.