9 ms·

Flickr forever

70 points by jscheel 5y ago

jscheel 5y ago
I posted the blog article's title, but the real lede should be that Flickr is limiting free accounts to 50 private photos and nsfw to pro accounts. As a pro user, I'm not affected, but I'm guessing this is going to be a pretty big change for some people.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  Honestly, when the OP title is as opaque as this one, I wouldn't mind of the submission title just summarized the key point.
  - jscheel 5y ago
    Yeah, the title of the post felt pretty... meh
- knighthack 5y ago
  The way they described private photos as 'non-public photos' surprised me. I had to really re-read the paragraph to get at what they're going for. From what I understand, free users now only get to store 50 photos. Any more, and they're at risk of being deleted. I've been with Flickr since 2006-2007; this is an extremely surprising move.
et-al 5y ago
Hopefully onethumb (Don) can comment, but I'd like to naïvely assume that existing private photos are grandfathered in. E.g. if you have 100 private photos from 2014, those are still private, but starting today you won't be able to set any other photos as private until you're below the 50 photo threshold.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  The text As we begin to roll out these changes officially, we’ll be communicating directly with free account holders who are affected, including sharing timelines, details, and resources to make sure your account stays in good standing. suggests to me that they won't be grandfathered in (i.e., will be deleted), as otherwise existing free account holders wouldn't be affected
dr_dshiv 5y ago
Flickr was one of the best things to happen to the internet. Not quite to Wikipedia level but its in my top ten.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  Exactly on the same level as Yahoo Groups or Yahoo Answers, wonder what happened - oh wait, yahoo bought flickr and the internet changed. I don't know, I still feel saddened about alot of yahoo changing for the worst. Geocities, Search and the groups and group rings were some of the best features of it. But guess that's what happens with social media companies. Community changed forever and what remains has to be super generic and bleak to survive.
  - coolso 5y ago
    Honest question from someone who wasn’t an active participant in the community: Was Yahoo Answers ever good? My only memories of it was that was it was inevitably the top of every single Google search result and I always found most of the answers to be incredibly low effort and of questionable nature.
    - drcongo 5y ago
      No, it wasn't. It was a valiant attempt I think, but Yahoo users as a whole are definitely not the people you want answering any question. Then again, look at Quora which doesn't have that handicap but is still a dreadful experience.
    - 1024core 5y ago
      Yahoo Answers is what gave rise to communities like StackOverflow, Quora and StackExchange and other *Exchanges out there. They were the first Q & A site out there.
    - rootsudo 5y ago
      It was good depending on what sort of question you asked. I saw many technical answers related to general programming, computers, reinstalling Windows/Linux to dating 101 general advice, cheating and more, it was general so it was fun. It was def geared towards a younger audience. I made many a friend from Answers onto Messenger/email penpal, it was a great funnel from one Yahoo service to another - back in the heyday Yahoo really was a walled garden that "didn't" feel like a walled garden, many services to tie you in the ecosystem but it didn't feel as insidious as adtech/google is today. If anything, it was a great learning curve and introduction to General computing as you still had to be somewhat technical - flickr, know how to edit photos, metadata, and more. Geocities, html, css, design photos, psd html templates, etc. The User Experience was quite the limitation, and I'm sure looking back via rose tinted glasses makes it seem glamours, but it's really something concerning when you remove all friction and barriers and allow Everyone to participate. On StackOverflow, people are generally nice, but ask a very newb question and not with a mentor and you'll have a bad experience. The other fun one was Expert Sex Change, - no wait, Experts-Exchange. The later was great for technical questions if you knew to scroll down past the paywall. tl;dr it was good in the beginning, around 2010-11 yahoo answers really went down, alongside most of Yahoo but was probably because it was so successful.
agilob 5y ago
>In 2018 we announced that free accounts containing over 1,000 photos and/or videos would have content actively deleted. In the years since, we haven’t deleted a single photo that was over the limit. Not ONE. I joined Flickr then they gave everyone 1Tb for pictures, I became paying customer, but when I saw people leaving Flickr and my groups getting empty days after the announcement, I left too.
vzaliva 5y ago
Flickr lost my trust when they did not deliver on their promist to store my photographs forever even if I stop paying. That what they were promising paid members back then. I understand there was the change of ownership, but the obligations to users should have been transfered to the purchasing company. Whoevever uses this domain now not gonna get my business. And this posts shows me that I was right. Now they telling their users that they are allowed to store only 50-non public photos!
- ipaddr 5y ago
  They never deleted any photos and they never offered free unlimited non-public photos.
  - vzaliva 5y ago
    When I had paid account, they promised that all public photos uploaded during my paid subscription will be hosted forever, even if I stop paying. They did not delivered on this promise.
beefman 5y ago
If anyone at Flickr is reading: Please update your Apple TV app (slideshow doesn't work and many links still point to Yahoo domains). You regularly update your iOS app so this shouldn't be too difficult. Regarding this announcement, I think it's perfectly reasonable. But I may be biased since I've been a paying Flickr user since 2005.
- nsfmc 5y ago
  i believe the slideshow issue is actually a limitation of the apple tv's apis having changed around the time that the aerial screensaver came out and not getting updated to support the old screensaver functionality
- jscheel 5y ago
  Yes, 100%! It's infuriating.
IAmEveryone 5y ago
It still is leagues better than any large alternative. Just asking people to decide on a license, and suggesting CC-licenses, made it into a vast repository of Free content. Compare and contrast to, say, instagram, where i guess everyone is hustlin' all the time, anyway, and giving things away for free would get you laughed out of the room. Flickr at least allows NSFW work, which is an essential part of culture. That invites all sorts off problems, obviously, and restricting it to pro accounts sounds like a fair compromise. It's better than the Facebook empire, again, with its Disneyland vision of human life. Flickr has, to this day, an API that lets you do almost everything at scale. I've used it quite a bit and my free account never ran into any usage limits. Compare to twitter, where you can barely start without a credit card on file. Or Instagram, where API is a four-letter word.
- drcongo 5y ago
  I'm baffled as to why this is getting downvoted. I agree with every word.
post_break 5y ago
"Flickr has been a home for all photographers, no matter their subject." as long as you're a paying photographer moving forward. Imagine if Reddit said NSFW content will stay, but you need to have Reddit premium to access it.
- jmole 5y ago
  Imagine if people used Reddit to store their photo libraries… This move seems like common sense to me. The question you’re asking is really whether you can view this kind of content without a paid account.
- drcongo 5y ago
  I'm struggling to see the problem with that. Disclaimer: I despise Reddit so I never use it anyway, but I can't imagine that change could make it any worse.
  - the_lucifer 5y ago
    As an avid Redditor moderating communities with million+ subscribers, trust be when I say that it’ll decimate the scene. NSFW is huge on Reddit
    - drcongo 5y ago
      But what's the downside?
- riffic 5y ago
  someone from Reddit is reading this comment, furiously scribbling down notes.
tomc1985 5y ago
I yearn for the days when a policy change was written as a policy change, without looping in as many political dogwhistles as possible
Markoff 5y ago
Flickr? Is it that service which offered 1TB forever and then after few years only it shrank to 1000 photos and they delete your photos unless you paid ransom? What a toxic website...
logicalmonster 5y ago
This sounds great, but I'm just curious how their claim to support unlimited types of art here.... > Photographers have long faced bans and deletion from nearly every online photography community for creating or sharing the “wrong” type of art. We’re rolling out changes to Flickr that welcome all photographers to discover, share, and interact with photography, period. Photographers who craft and create work that might be considered risqué by some will have a safe place online to interact with one another, share mutual interests, and put their art into the world without the fear of it being removed or them being banned entirely from the communities they love. ....isn't in conflict with their stated rules page on restricted content? Here's just some stuff from their guidelines. > Don’t use hate speech. Flickr has a zero-tolerance policy towards attacking a person or group based on, but is not limited to, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  At this point, the doublespeak and blatant contradictions are expected. We all know what this means - as long as you kowtow to the kind of blasé, Bay Area, lefty twitter, woke scold, "polite society" zeitgeist, you're good to go. If you have...really, anything at all to say in opposition, look elsewhere - because that's not very safe.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
    And yet look at you, so over-the-top in opposition it might be parody, and here you are, all safe and upvoted.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      It is a fair comment. When open to all becomes open to these safe groups the speak becomes restricted no matter how inclusive one says they are.
      - JohnBooty 5y ago
drcongo 5y ago
I wish Flickr would focus on their mobile app. At the moment it's 99% pointless and does a really terrible job of everything it's supposed to do. It's easy to forget, and a lot of younger people probably have no idea in the first place, but Flickr was ground breaking back in the day and gave birth to most of what we now consider standard features for social media - even "Likes" were a Flickr first. I met some amazing people through the early Flickr days and hung with them in far flung places, it was a beautiful community. These days though, I don't feel any kind of community on there, it's just photo storage. Community and socialising online has moved to mobile, and Flickr didn't move with them.
- ramses0 5y ago
  Flickr started the trend of devowel-ing to get a "cool" domain, and was basically _the_ example API used for web development, along with a bias towards extremely high quality content (your lens must be this-$$$ to qualify). Then came the "upload 1000 vacation photos at a whack" people, and general mismanagement. It lost its brand value and cachet, and has been clunking along trying to recapture the magic. https://www.flickr.com/explore https://www.flickr.com/explore
KineticLensman 5y ago
> The ability to share restricted and moderate content will be reserved for Flickr Pro members...This ensures all Flickr photographers, free and Pro, will have access to spaces filled with the kinds of content they want to engage with. No, it prevents free users from accessing restricted content.
- crtasm 5y ago
  I believe they mean free accounts can't upload moderate/restricted content but will still be able to view it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
mikotodomo 5y ago
I am glad they took effort to make sure unsafe pictures do not inadvertently get shown to users who are vulnerable to it.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  You already have to sign in with an 18+ account to access any marked content. This has no effect on that.
chanandler_bong 5y ago
I was a Flickr user from 2005 until 2016, most of that time as a paying customer. For some reason in mid-2016, Flickr locked my account. I mean, a hard lock. Couldn't login, public photostream was "account locked", the whole thing. My photostream was pictures of airplanes, random street photos, and general middling-quality randomness. Nothing NSFW, political, or otherwise. I contacted Flickr support and after a few days finally made it through to an email exchange with what I assume was a live person. They said that the account was under a "support lockout" and there was nothing they could do to release it. No reason given, just a "support lockout". That was the last I heard from them, ever. They stopped responding to any emails or other support requests. Sad, really, as I enjoyed some of the groups there.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Since our founding, Flickr has been a home for all photographers, no matter their subject. This has been especially valuable for community members creating restricted and moderate content that would be unwelcome or even incur bans or have their content removed from other photo sharing platforms. > But we’ve been lax in truly defining a space for these photographers, until now. To support these creators, and ensure that their communities continue to thrive, the ability to share restricted and moderate content will be reserved for Flickr Pro members. What do they mean by "moderate content"? I assume "restricted content" means porn, but the "restricted and moderate content" pairing doesn't make sense if you interpret "moderate" in a straightforward way. So, reading between the lines, are they reacting to that PornHub fracas from a few years ago by requiring people who upload porn to flicker to identify themselves and pay for the extra moderation effort involved with that?
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  They link to the answer to your question in the second paragraph of the article. The two terms are even bolded. >The first change relates to restricted and moderate content. (You might call it NSFW, or explicit, or other terms, but we’ve gone ahead and defined them for Flickr here[1].) [1] https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404064374164-Set-the-Safety-Levels-of-Your-Flickr-Content-or-Account https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404064374164-S... > * Safe - Acceptable to a global, public audience > * Moderate - Partial nudity, like bare breasts and bottoms > * Restricted - full-frontal nudity and sexual acts; photos only–videos cannot contain restricted content and are deleted if reported
ladyattis 5y ago
Well this is going to be a huge blow to the Second Life photography community. Especially those who do NSFW content. It's really going to be a big migration as a result. I'm not sure if this will be work out well for Flickr (personally, I hope it does) but the fact is I don't know what their costs are versus their revenue.
jdeibele 5y ago
John Gruber's podcast recently had an episode[1] devoted to a photo-sharing app/website called Glass[2]. I'm not planning on joining it but I would be much more inclined to do that than pay money to Flickr. I was using the horrible Flickr interface to share photos with family. I had about 1500 photos with them, all family. They announced that they were going to cut off access for non-paying customers to anything over 1000 photos. I promptly moved and have no intention of ever going back. The fact that they weren't capable of implementing the restriction for years, just threatening it, gives them less credibility than if they'd been able to do what they said. [1]https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/340-billionaires-have-beefs-with-tom-watson-and-daniel-agee/id528458508?i=1000553489120 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/340-billionaires-have-... [2]https://glass.photo/ https://glass.photo/
atc 5y ago
t0bia_s 5y ago
Space for digital data has limits. Offering unlimited space even for money is impossible in long term. So these steps not surprise me. Eventually all "space hungary" platforms like YouTube or Instagram will limit free offers in future. Which is not bad thing. Decentralised, self-hosted solutions would be more practical and big tech control free.
- tinalumfoil 5y ago
  Not if the cost of storage keeps decreasing over time.
  - t0bia_s 5y ago
    Well... Sources are limited. Also data centres produce a lot of heat.
stevenicr 5y ago
The posted changes when the buyout occurred really left a bad taste in my mouth and made we realize that we need a open keybase type ID thing and decentralized groups. Flickr was a gem for groups that would be censored with the growing fcbook ways.. and smughub acquisition seemed to be set to destroy those small communities with new upcoming rules.. now it seems they are choosing to be more nude/porn friendly.. kudos. So what happens if you are a pro user for 3 months and part of several nude communities and then you cancel your pro / paying for it? Any nude photos you've uploaded become history? If I remember correctly flicker actually had a good export option, so that's a plus. There are some other things you all could do to make it more attractive.. tip jars seem to the way of the currents. mixin a little patreon like functionality with some penthouse promos and such I guess. I wonder if there could be a way to keep contacts/groups if you leave flikr - like an @flickerrefugees address on a matrix server ID kind of thing. People are tired of creating connections to have them destroyed from random and changing winds of (often unequal) moderation policies - so give them a place to meet and share that does not also try to silo and keep from connecting even when the meeting place is cancelled. - Then I think you can get your $7 / month no problem.
AnonC 5y ago
Curious if this is already done or will come in the future: will Flickr start selling public photos of the free accounts as stock photos? The move to restrict private photos to 50 for free accounts seems to suggest that such a move could happen as monetizing Flickr becomes more and more difficult.
SM_Stewart 5y ago
Does anyone know when this takes effect? Thankfully I already have a pro account, but the announcement never stated an effective date. Not everyone pops onto Flickr daily, so thousands are unaware of this at the moment. Simply curious...

70 points by jscheel 5y ago

I posted the blog article's title, but the real lede should be that Flickr is limiting free accounts to 50 private photos and nsfw to pro accounts. As a pro user, I'm not affected, but I'm guessing this is going to be a pretty big change for some people.

tablespoon 5y ago
Honestly, when the OP title is as opaque as this one, I wouldn't mind of the submission title just summarized the key point.
- jscheel 5y ago
  Yeah, the title of the post felt pretty... meh
knighthack 5y ago
The way they described private photos as 'non-public photos' surprised me. I had to really re-read the paragraph to get at what they're going for. From what I understand, free users now only get to store 50 photos. Any more, and they're at risk of being deleted. I've been with Flickr since 2006-2007; this is an extremely surprising move.

et-al 5y ago

Hopefully onethumb (Don) can comment, but I'd like to naïvely assume that existing private photos are grandfathered in. E.g. if you have 100 private photos from 2014, those are still private, but starting today you won't be able to set any other photos as private until you're below the 50 photo threshold.

KineticLensman 5y ago
The text As we begin to roll out these changes officially, we’ll be communicating directly with free account holders who are affected, including sharing timelines, details, and resources to make sure your account stays in good standing. suggests to me that they won't be grandfathered in (i.e., will be deleted), as otherwise existing free account holders wouldn't be affected

dr_dshiv 5y ago

Flickr was one of the best things to happen to the internet. Not quite to Wikipedia level but its in my top ten.

rootsudo 5y ago
Exactly on the same level as Yahoo Groups or Yahoo Answers, wonder what happened - oh wait, yahoo bought flickr and the internet changed. I don't know, I still feel saddened about alot of yahoo changing for the worst. Geocities, Search and the groups and group rings were some of the best features of it. But guess that's what happens with social media companies. Community changed forever and what remains has to be super generic and bleak to survive.
- coolso 5y ago
  Honest question from someone who wasn’t an active participant in the community: Was Yahoo Answers ever good? My only memories of it was that was it was inevitably the top of every single Google search result and I always found most of the answers to be incredibly low effort and of questionable nature.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    No, it wasn't. It was a valiant attempt I think, but Yahoo users as a whole are definitely not the people you want answering any question. Then again, look at Quora which doesn't have that handicap but is still a dreadful experience.
  - 1024core 5y ago
    Yahoo Answers is what gave rise to communities like StackOverflow, Quora and StackExchange and other *Exchanges out there. They were the first Q & A site out there.
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    It was good depending on what sort of question you asked. I saw many technical answers related to general programming, computers, reinstalling Windows/Linux to dating 101 general advice, cheating and more, it was general so it was fun. It was def geared towards a younger audience. I made many a friend from Answers onto Messenger/email penpal, it was a great funnel from one Yahoo service to another - back in the heyday Yahoo really was a walled garden that "didn't" feel like a walled garden, many services to tie you in the ecosystem but it didn't feel as insidious as adtech/google is today. If anything, it was a great learning curve and introduction to General computing as you still had to be somewhat technical - flickr, know how to edit photos, metadata, and more. Geocities, html, css, design photos, psd html templates, etc. The User Experience was quite the limitation, and I'm sure looking back via rose tinted glasses makes it seem glamours, but it's really something concerning when you remove all friction and barriers and allow Everyone to participate. On StackOverflow, people are generally nice, but ask a very newb question and not with a mentor and you'll have a bad experience. The other fun one was Expert Sex Change, - no wait, Experts-Exchange. The later was great for technical questions if you knew to scroll down past the paywall. tl;dr it was good in the beginning, around 2010-11 yahoo answers really went down, alongside most of Yahoo but was probably because it was so successful.

agilob 5y ago

>In 2018 we announced that free accounts containing over 1,000 photos and/or videos would have content actively deleted. In the years since, we haven’t deleted a single photo that was over the limit. Not ONE. I joined Flickr then they gave everyone 1Tb for pictures, I became paying customer, but when I saw people leaving Flickr and my groups getting empty days after the announcement, I left too.

vzaliva 5y ago

Flickr lost my trust when they did not deliver on their promist to store my photographs forever even if I stop paying. That what they were promising paid members back then. I understand there was the change of ownership, but the obligations to users should have been transfered to the purchasing company. Whoevever uses this domain now not gonna get my business. And this posts shows me that I was right. Now they telling their users that they are allowed to store only 50-non public photos!

ipaddr 5y ago
They never deleted any photos and they never offered free unlimited non-public photos.
- vzaliva 5y ago
  When I had paid account, they promised that all public photos uploaded during my paid subscription will be hosted forever, even if I stop paying. They did not delivered on this promise.

beefman 5y ago

If anyone at Flickr is reading: Please update your Apple TV app (slideshow doesn't work and many links still point to Yahoo domains). You regularly update your iOS app so this shouldn't be too difficult. Regarding this announcement, I think it's perfectly reasonable. But I may be biased since I've been a paying Flickr user since 2005.

nsfmc 5y ago
i believe the slideshow issue is actually a limitation of the apple tv's apis having changed around the time that the aerial screensaver came out and not getting updated to support the old screensaver functionality
jscheel 5y ago
Yes, 100%! It's infuriating.

IAmEveryone 5y ago

It still is leagues better than any large alternative. Just asking people to decide on a license, and suggesting CC-licenses, made it into a vast repository of Free content. Compare and contrast to, say, instagram, where i guess everyone is hustlin' all the time, anyway, and giving things away for free would get you laughed out of the room. Flickr at least allows NSFW work, which is an essential part of culture. That invites all sorts off problems, obviously, and restricting it to pro accounts sounds like a fair compromise. It's better than the Facebook empire, again, with its Disneyland vision of human life. Flickr has, to this day, an API that lets you do almost everything at scale. I've used it quite a bit and my free account never ran into any usage limits. Compare to twitter, where you can barely start without a credit card on file. Or Instagram, where API is a four-letter word.

drcongo 5y ago
I'm baffled as to why this is getting downvoted. I agree with every word.

post_break 5y ago

"Flickr has been a home for all photographers, no matter their subject." as long as you're a paying photographer moving forward. Imagine if Reddit said NSFW content will stay, but you need to have Reddit premium to access it.

jmole 5y ago
Imagine if people used Reddit to store their photo libraries… This move seems like common sense to me. The question you’re asking is really whether you can view this kind of content without a paid account.
drcongo 5y ago
I'm struggling to see the problem with that. Disclaimer: I despise Reddit so I never use it anyway, but I can't imagine that change could make it any worse.
- the_lucifer 5y ago
  As an avid Redditor moderating communities with million+ subscribers, trust be when I say that it’ll decimate the scene. NSFW is huge on Reddit
  - drcongo 5y ago
    But what's the downside?
riffic 5y ago
someone from Reddit is reading this comment, furiously scribbling down notes.

tomc1985 5y ago

I yearn for the days when a policy change was written as a policy change, without looping in as many political dogwhistles as possible

Markoff 5y ago

Flickr? Is it that service which offered 1TB forever and then after few years only it shrank to 1000 photos and they delete your photos unless you paid ransom? What a toxic website...

logicalmonster 5y ago

This sounds great, but I'm just curious how their claim to support unlimited types of art here.... > Photographers have long faced bans and deletion from nearly every online photography community for creating or sharing the “wrong” type of art. We’re rolling out changes to Flickr that welcome all photographers to discover, share, and interact with photography, period. Photographers who craft and create work that might be considered risqué by some will have a safe place online to interact with one another, share mutual interests, and put their art into the world without the fear of it being removed or them being banned entirely from the communities they love. ....isn't in conflict with their stated rules page on restricted content? Here's just some stuff from their guidelines. > Don’t use hate speech. Flickr has a zero-tolerance policy towards attacking a person or group based on, but is not limited to, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, disease, age, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.

rjbwork 5y ago
At this point, the doublespeak and blatant contradictions are expected. We all know what this means - as long as you kowtow to the kind of blasé, Bay Area, lefty twitter, woke scold, "polite society" zeitgeist, you're good to go. If you have...really, anything at all to say in opposition, look elsewhere - because that's not very safe.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
  And yet look at you, so over-the-top in opposition it might be parody, and here you are, all safe and upvoted.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    It is a fair comment. When open to all becomes open to these safe groups the speak becomes restricted no matter how inclusive one says they are.
    - JohnBooty 5y ago

drcongo 5y ago

I wish Flickr would focus on their mobile app. At the moment it's 99% pointless and does a really terrible job of everything it's supposed to do. It's easy to forget, and a lot of younger people probably have no idea in the first place, but Flickr was ground breaking back in the day and gave birth to most of what we now consider standard features for social media - even "Likes" were a Flickr first. I met some amazing people through the early Flickr days and hung with them in far flung places, it was a beautiful community. These days though, I don't feel any kind of community on there, it's just photo storage. Community and socialising online has moved to mobile, and Flickr didn't move with them.

ramses0 5y ago
Flickr started the trend of devowel-ing to get a "cool" domain, and was basically _the_ example API used for web development, along with a bias towards extremely high quality content (your lens must be this-$$$ to qualify). Then came the "upload 1000 vacation photos at a whack" people, and general mismanagement. It lost its brand value and cachet, and has been clunking along trying to recapture the magic. https://www.flickr.com/explore https://www.flickr.com/explore

KineticLensman 5y ago

> The ability to share restricted and moderate content will be reserved for Flickr Pro members...This ensures all Flickr photographers, free and Pro, will have access to spaces filled with the kinds of content they want to engage with. No, it prevents free users from accessing restricted content.

crtasm 5y ago
I believe they mean free accounts can't upload moderate/restricted content but will still be able to view it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

mikotodomo 5y ago

I am glad they took effort to make sure unsafe pictures do not inadvertently get shown to users who are vulnerable to it.

LordDragonfang 5y ago
You already have to sign in with an 18+ account to access any marked content. This has no effect on that.

chanandler_bong 5y ago

I was a Flickr user from 2005 until 2016, most of that time as a paying customer. For some reason in mid-2016, Flickr locked my account. I mean, a hard lock. Couldn't login, public photostream was "account locked", the whole thing. My photostream was pictures of airplanes, random street photos, and general middling-quality randomness. Nothing NSFW, political, or otherwise. I contacted Flickr support and after a few days finally made it through to an email exchange with what I assume was a live person. They said that the account was under a "support lockout" and there was nothing they could do to release it. No reason given, just a "support lockout". That was the last I heard from them, ever. They stopped responding to any emails or other support requests. Sad, really, as I enjoyed some of the groups there.

tablespoon 5y ago

> Since our founding, Flickr has been a home for all photographers, no matter their subject. This has been especially valuable for community members creating restricted and moderate content that would be unwelcome or even incur bans or have their content removed from other photo sharing platforms. > But we’ve been lax in truly defining a space for these photographers, until now. To support these creators, and ensure that their communities continue to thrive, the ability to share restricted and moderate content will be reserved for Flickr Pro members. What do they mean by "moderate content"? I assume "restricted content" means porn, but the "restricted and moderate content" pairing doesn't make sense if you interpret "moderate" in a straightforward way. So, reading between the lines, are they reacting to that PornHub fracas from a few years ago by requiring people who upload porn to flicker to identify themselves and pay for the extra moderation effort involved with that?

LordDragonfang 5y ago
They link to the answer to your question in the second paragraph of the article. The two terms are even bolded. >The first change relates to restricted and moderate content. (You might call it NSFW, or explicit, or other terms, but we’ve gone ahead and defined them for Flickr here[1].) [1] https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404064374164-Set-the-Safety-Levels-of-Your-Flickr-Content-or-Account https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404064374164-S... > * Safe - Acceptable to a global, public audience > * Moderate - Partial nudity, like bare breasts and bottoms > * Restricted - full-frontal nudity and sexual acts; photos only–videos cannot contain restricted content and are deleted if reported

ladyattis 5y ago

Well this is going to be a huge blow to the Second Life photography community. Especially those who do NSFW content. It's really going to be a big migration as a result. I'm not sure if this will be work out well for Flickr (personally, I hope it does) but the fact is I don't know what their costs are versus their revenue.

jdeibele 5y ago

John Gruber's podcast recently had an episode[1] devoted to a photo-sharing app/website called Glass[2]. I'm not planning on joining it but I would be much more inclined to do that than pay money to Flickr. I was using the horrible Flickr interface to share photos with family. I had about 1500 photos with them, all family. They announced that they were going to cut off access for non-paying customers to anything over 1000 photos. I promptly moved and have no intention of ever going back. The fact that they weren't capable of implementing the restriction for years, just threatening it, gives them less credibility than if they'd been able to do what they said. [1]https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/340-billionaires-have-beefs-with-tom-watson-and-daniel-agee/id528458508?i=1000553489120 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/340-billionaires-have-... [2]https://glass.photo/ https://glass.photo/

atc 5y ago

t0bia_s 5y ago

Space for digital data has limits. Offering unlimited space even for money is impossible in long term. So these steps not surprise me. Eventually all "space hungary" platforms like YouTube or Instagram will limit free offers in future. Which is not bad thing. Decentralised, self-hosted solutions would be more practical and big tech control free.

tinalumfoil 5y ago
Not if the cost of storage keeps decreasing over time.
- t0bia_s 5y ago
  Well... Sources are limited. Also data centres produce a lot of heat.

stevenicr 5y ago

The posted changes when the buyout occurred really left a bad taste in my mouth and made we realize that we need a open keybase type ID thing and decentralized groups. Flickr was a gem for groups that would be censored with the growing fcbook ways.. and smughub acquisition seemed to be set to destroy those small communities with new upcoming rules.. now it seems they are choosing to be more nude/porn friendly.. kudos. So what happens if you are a pro user for 3 months and part of several nude communities and then you cancel your pro / paying for it? Any nude photos you've uploaded become history? If I remember correctly flicker actually had a good export option, so that's a plus. There are some other things you all could do to make it more attractive.. tip jars seem to the way of the currents. mixin a little patreon like functionality with some penthouse promos and such I guess. I wonder if there could be a way to keep contacts/groups if you leave flikr - like an @flickerrefugees address on a matrix server ID kind of thing. People are tired of creating connections to have them destroyed from random and changing winds of (often unequal) moderation policies - so give them a place to meet and share that does not also try to silo and keep from connecting even when the meeting place is cancelled. - Then I think you can get your $7 / month no problem.

AnonC 5y ago

Curious if this is already done or will come in the future: will Flickr start selling public photos of the free accounts as stock photos? The move to restrict private photos to 50 for free accounts seems to suggest that such a move could happen as monetizing Flickr becomes more and more difficult.

SM_Stewart 5y ago

Does anyone know when this takes effect? Thankfully I already have a pro account, but the announcement never stated an effective date. Not everyone pops onto Flickr daily, so thousands are unaware of this at the moment. Simply curious...