
Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts - renchap
https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/11/01/changing-flickr-free-accounts-1000-photos/
======
Skye
While I understand why they are adding a limit, the concept of just deleting
the photos over the 1000 limit just unsettles me, and will almost certainly
cause link rot, which is both sad and annoying when I encounter it.

I don't know what my dad will do, he's been using Flickr for quite a few years
now, he used to pay for pro, but then stopped doing so after Yahoo bought
Flickr and started breaking the UI. He has over 1000 photos, but I am not sure
if the pro features are worth the price for him. Fortunately he has local
backups of every photo, but it does feel like his photos have been held to
ransom. He probably would be willing to pay some money (but less than the
current pro) just for the extra storage (and none of the extra features), from
what I understand.

To conclude this wall of text, I understand why they're doing it, and
hopefully it will make Flickr sustainable, but I feel the way it was done will
cause problems when it happens (if it only stopped an account from uploading
if it had too many photos, that would help a lot to avoid link rot), and might
also cause problems in the future (while morbid to think about, if a pro user
dies, they won't be able to pay and a bunch of their images will just get
deleted, which could be bad for their families)...

EDIT: fix a few spelling errors and tyops

UPDATE: my dad's response to this is that he will pay for pro to keep his
images online. In general, he doesn't feel like Pro is intended for him
because it has features he doesn't really care about, he only cares about the
storage and community stuff, not the statistics and software stuff.

~~~
kornork
I didn't see any mention of deleting photos that were over the limit.
Hopefully they do what Flickr used to do, which is make only the last 1000
photos publicly visible.

~~~
afterburner
"Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have
until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the
limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to
upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that
contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted --
starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit."

From the home page.

~~~
Gustomaximus
What I find amazing is how quickly they are doing it. You'd think they would
have 12 months type thing after the 'no upload' before they delete to maintain
good will. What if someone is ill or travelling. Seems there will be a bunch
of people who lose photos before they realise.

~~~
sigi45
They waited quite long. 1tb is not nothing and I have backuped to Flickr for
that reason but I'm not doing anything there

Yahoo might have been able to afford it.

Otherwise pro user still paying for it. Everyone else didn't. Why should they
care what people think of them who didn't pay anyway?

~~~
Skye
Well... It would have been nice if they warned people earlier because it is
quite a big thing to happen.

A possible reason why someone running a website should care about keeping
stuff up is to avoid link rot, to me it feels like part of bejng a good
Internet citizen is to ensure that a change to your website doesn't break
other websites or links where possible and reasonable. (if people want stuff
removed, then that's fine though).

However, it might be that it's too expensive to even just keep stuff up, so
fair enough, but if that is the case, I feel more warning would have helped a
bit here.

------
renchap
SmugMug is really bringing back sanity into Flickr, good to see this after the
Yahoo fiasco.

I created Talegraph [1] as a platform to tell stories with your pictures, and
it has been hard for us to explain to users why paying for the product is the
only way to ensure your pictures will stay online and private. Paying for what
you use & privacy is not something normal people are used to, but this is the
only sustainable way imo.

[1] [https://www.talegraph.com](https://www.talegraph.com)

~~~
renjimen
This looks like just the product I need to move away from putting my travel
snaps on Facebook. Instagram isn't suited for albums and Flickr is hard to
build a narrative with. Looking forward to trying it out after my next trip!

~~~
renchap
Thanks, this is exactly why we started working on Talegraph :)

------
superflyguy
They're giving 3 month's notice of the automatic deletion of any photos over
the 1000 allowed free ones. Not much time and sure to catch out people who
don't log in/check their email frequently (including their spam folders) or
who have technical problems (crap upload speeds, no capacity to download and
store gigs of what might be the only existent copies of photos). I wonder if
they'd be better of holding onto the soon to be deleted content for a lot
longer, as they're hardly likely to go bust continuing to host it a little
longer. I guess moving them to a non-free account would feel a like like
extortion but surely this is worse - photos which were uploaded many years ago
lost forever.

Much as I try and avoid using Google, I stick with them for the free email and
unlimited photo storage.

~~~
thimabi
> _Much as I try and avoid using Google, I stick with them for the free email
> and unlimited photo storage._

I'm actually quite fearful of the day when Google will end its generous
offer... We often see cloud providers struggling to cope with “unlimited” free
plans, perhaps we should take all of them with a grain of salt and rely on
local backups precisely to avoid the quasi-extortion that comes when the
“unlimited cloud” mantra goes downhill.

~~~
chiefalchemist
AFAIK -

1)Gmail is free but does have a storage limit.

2) You can have an unlimited # of photos but not at full/original resolution.
If you want full/orig you have to pay.

p.s. "...perhaps we should take all of them with a grain of salt..." Do you
mean you haven't been doing this already? :)

~~~
thimabi
Indeed, Gmail does have a limit, but Google Photos still lets you upload
“unlimited” photos on that lower quality plan — which is more than enough for
a vast majority of users.

I've began noticing the issues of large-scale cloud storage with the OneDrive
fiasco, so I learned my lessons the hard way over there. But unfortunately too
many people remain invested in such ecosystems and have no idea of the risks
involved...

------
robotbikes
So in summary Flickr is giving free users hosting for 1000 photos of unlimited
quality vs. 1TB of free storage to refocus on photography vs. data mining for
advertising. Makes sense to me.

~~~
renchap
When you look at the comments on Reddit, you can see that unfortunately it
does not make sense for many people who put free as their first priority,
versus privacy/sustainability/data concerns. Very brave for Flickr to make
this move and face all those critics, even if this is for the best on the long
term.

~~~
koralatov
Arguably the people who value free over everything else aren't good customers
and aren't a good foundation to build an actual sustainable business on.

~~~
ballenf
Arguably, free tier users are _potential_ customers, not customers.

~~~
crtasm
I'd say if you offer a service and someone takes you up on the offer, they are
your customer.

~~~
user5994461
They are not customers if they don't pay.

------
muststopmyths
Stopped paying for pro a few years ago because of arrogance and hubris that
was common in the web darlings of the last ten years. Couldn't get a simple
customer service request answered without snark or condescension. Garbage
redesigns of the layout and refusal to listen to feedback meant you were
paying for storage and nothing more (pretensions about "community"
notwithstanding).

On the other hand, my limited interactions with Smugmug have been stellar. I
really like those guys and wish them luck.

The joy of Flickr was exploring the random pictures from ordinary people. I
could care less about the heavily Photoshopped "prosumer" stuff that seems to
be more popular on the platform. I liked seeing natural skill at composition
instead of digital post-processing.

Unfortunately, it looks like SmugMug wants Flickr to be more like SmugMug, so
I don't see myself buying back into pro.

Flickr to me was mostly about sharing my photos with friends and family before
facebook killed that use case. I don't use facebook much any more, but no one
else in my circle uses Flickr either.

Deleting photos over the limit is a bit annoying though. I seem to remember in
the past they just made them temporarily inaccessible if you let Pro lapse for
a bit (while travelling or whatever).

Time to whip up something that will compare what I have uploaded on flickr
(4000+ photos over 12 years) to what's on my local backups so I can download
what I have to and forget about the rest.

~~~
onethumb
For what it's worth, we definitely don't want Flickr to be more like SmugMug.
Flickr is amazing and different and that's great. We want Flickr to be Flickr
and that's what we're investing in. We'd be thrilled to have you back as Pro,
and I promise we'll work hard to keep you.

~~~
romwell
One thing that's scary to me as someone who will be affected is the thought
that one day, so much of my work could be just _gone_.

I am not a full-time photographer; there are runs of time every year where I
spend a lot of of time shooting (e.g. live music gigs), and then long periods
of inactivity.

I have over 1000 photos on Flickr. I've been a user for _over a decade_. And
_I found out about this change from this post_ , because I haven't been
reading the associated Yahoo email that often.

So, leaving my account alone for 3 months = losing most of my photos forever.

Great.

Just the service I want to pay for.

I understand the business need, but perhaps could you take it easy on
_irreversible changes_? Sure, make the photos over the 1K limit unavailable
even to the account holders -- but let them _buy the access back_ long after
the change.

Not only you might get more subscriptions from _that alone_ , but there's also
this:

Unlimited storage might not be feasible for a fixed pricd. Photos are growing
larger, dollar is getting cheaper - we're betting on HDD costs going down, but
that's not a given.

You might need to have a change in the future.

Again.

And I don't want to lose data because I'd have missed _that_ announcement -
just like I missed _this_ one.

How you treat your free users indicates what the paying attention ones can
expect.

Please, for the sake of everything that's holy, give your devoted users _some
goddamn peace of mind_ that they can camp in the mountains for a year and _don
't return to see their data gone_.

Yahoo! screwed up there - but two wrongs do not make a right.

Not all of us use the service every day. Take it easy on annihilating work and
memories.

TL;DR: every account whose data you keep is a potential subscription. Every
user whose data you deleted is a _guaranteed_ loss of business and eternal
scorn. _Please_ take care of your intermittent, but devoted users.

~~~
muststopmyths
I actually don't have any email about this in either my linked Yahoo account
or my "primary email" in Flickr which is my main gmail account.

So reading your email apparently wouldn't have helped you at all.

Great job, SmugMug.

~~~
onethumb
It takes time (as in, many days) to notify >100M people. We're working on it.
The blog post and assorted spontaneous coverage, like Hacker News, is faster.

~~~
vthriller
Even then, targeting the most affected ones (those on free plans with more
than, say, 900 photos) first is, I assume, a much simpler job that might save
you from a bit of a public scrutiny and give those people an extra jiffy or
two to act.

------
mherdeg
I have been using Flickr to archive my photos since 2013 when they announced a
1TB limit for free users, and have been paying them $50/year since 2016 when
they limited availability to Pro users for their first-party auto-upload tool
( [http://flickr.com/uploadr](http://flickr.com/uploadr) ).

It did seem like the 1TB limit was too good to last when it was announced 5
years ago.

Still, it's a relatively inexpensive extra archive for my photos (400GB) that
supplements other backups. The archive is sorta searchable and kinda good for
sharing with family and friends.

I haven't really used their social or community features (the Explore
experience, the magic donkey, and the pandas are all alien to me --
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/361974994](https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/361974994)
, [http://code.flickr.net/2009/03/03/panda-tuesday-the-
history-...](http://code.flickr.net/2009/03/03/panda-tuesday-the-history-of-
the-panda-new-apis-explore-and-you/) ).

~~~
onethumb
Thanks! I'd love to know how we can improve on "sorta searchable" if you have
some feedback?

~~~
pwenzel
@onethumb Flickr Pro user here since 2007. There used to be an "Archive" view
that had a calendar you could click through and see pictures taken or uploaded
on a specific date. I haven't been able to find it since the Camera Roll
feature launched.

Camera Roll is certainly useful, but I'd love if I could just quickly click on
a calendar and see photos from a certain date rather than waiting for Camera
Roll to load up and scrolling/filtering through the huge list. I realize
Camera Roll has this feature as well, but I miss the old "Archive" version.

~~~
onethumb
Thanks for being a customer, and thanks for the feedback. I'll look into
whether we can revive this or not. Were you using it to find your own photos,
or photos from the community, or... ?

~~~
type0
I've been a Pro user for a long time before Yahoo started to screw things up
badly. Flickr is only alive today because of the communities that use it. A
lot of bloggers used and still use it to share pictures that are freely
licensed (CC-BY-*), you should at least consider to keep those in some form or
another or provide the means to redirect the links from the search result.

~~~
onethumb
I love Creative Commons and I'm actively involved in thinking about and
solving this problem. See their blog post today:
[https://creativecommons.org/2018/11/01/flickr-2/](https://creativecommons.org/2018/11/01/flickr-2/)

------
blueadept111
This is the death knell for Flickr. I've relied heavily on Flickr advanced
search to find nature photos of particular plant and animal species. This new
policy will undoubtedly results in many photos being deleted, and therefore
limiting the search results. Their large archive of photos is/was a real
asset, albeit one they haven't been smart enough to monetize effectively.
Deleting these photos is just another small step in the slow disintegration of
the site, sadly.

~~~
type0
I wish they would at least leave creative commons licensed pictures, so many
will likely disappear - it's such a shame.

~~~
blueadept111
My thoughts exactly, those are the images I typically search. Wikimedia
commons does seem to have a bot (and/or some kind of manual process) that
collects some of the creative commons photos from Flickr, but not all of them,
even if they are good photos that are well-tagged. I usually search both
sites, so I have a good sense of how often a photo appears one on site and not
the other. Incidentally, it would sure be nice if Wikimedia commons allowed
you to filter by license type.

I do hope some bot out there is collecting and archiving Flickr's creative
commons photos before they disappear for good.

------
shittyadmin
> In 2013, Yahoo lost sight of what makes Flickr truly special and responded
> to a changing landscape in online photo sharing by giving every Flickr user
> a staggering terabyte of free storage

Well, that's one way to make the only remaining feature of your product sound
like a bad thing...

~~~
danso
Flickr's main feature is being a service that prioritizes photography as a
portfolio, rather than photos as a visual social blogfeed. Limiting free users
to 1,000 photos effectively kills the ability to use it as a clunkier
Instagram. As long as there's enough revenue from ads and the pro accounts,
this may be the best way forward for Flickr as a long-term service.

I've been a pro user for awhile. I guess the downside of this is that I now
feel locked in, having well over 1,000 photos. I think previously, had I
downgraded to the free version, I'd be able to keep all my photos but no
longer provide them as full-size downloads. I don't have a particular
complaint with Flickr as a service, it's just I don't do a lot of photography
other than casual uploading to Instagram these days. That said, that Smugmug
is committed to taking a different, coherent direction provides me with a lot
more confidence than the years of Yahoo doing virtually nothing.

edit: maybe I'm grandfathered in for unlimited photos, if I were to downgrade
to Free? The wording in the announcement is unclear.

~~~
mnsc
Do you have more than 1000 photos that are portfolio level quality?

~~~
danso
No, I probably have a 100 if even that. But the other ~9,900 are a nice
archive of living in New York, and I get occasional requests from people (who
can't find the buried download button) to use or copy a photo from some random
street.

------
kerneltime
I am quite happy about this. I have been a paying user for a long time, after
verizon bought yahoo, I scrambled to figure out an alternative plan. Flickr
was my sole backup after my laptop.

Summary, use flickr/smugmug to host and share pics that are curated (get rid
of unwanted pics when uploading there). Use iCloud (paid), Google(free) and
client side encrypted amazon drive to backup all pics (yes 3 backups and I do
not trust amazon's free picture tier not sure what they will do with it,
already bitten by them changing plans). Yes, I know Google gets what it wants
ability to process my pics.. sigh.

I want to have an honest relation with my service providers, I pay them for a
service they give me and I am their customer. Not going to reiterate what has
been said numerous times about not being a customer if the service is free..

Flickr is giving up on "growth at all costs and monetize later" model to "we
have a good quality focused service but you have to pay..". I would rather
pay. The only problem I am now paying for both flickr and smugmug..

~~~
onethumb
Thanks so much for being a customer and for the vote of confidence. We should
figure out something for Flickr + SmugMug, pricing wise. Any ideas?

~~~
davidcuddeback
Business and pricing are not my areas of expertise, so feel free to ignore or
improve on this idea. My suggestion is to use Flickr to upsell Portfolio and
Pro SmugMug plans (maybe with a nominal discount of $1/mo for Portfolio and
$2/mo for Pro). Flickr could be the place where photographers get feedback on
their photos and improve their skills, and then SmugMug is where they build a
more curated portfolio of photos to sell based on what resonates with people
on Flickr. When a photographer has reached a tipping point of positive
feedback on Flickr, they may feel ready to start selling their photos, and
that's your opportunity to upsell an appropriate SmugMug plan.

Or if you're confident that you can identify photographers whose photos will
sell based on engagement with their photos on Flickr, offer an introductory
rate for the first year so they can test how well their photos sell. If they
sell enough photos to cover the cost of an upgraded plan, paying for an
ongoing plan is a no-brainer.

At least, that's my use case as a hobbyist. I currently pay for a basic
SmugMug plan. I daydream of upgrading to a Portfolio plan to sell some photos
(just for fun), but I don't know that I would manage to sell any. I'm now
thinking Flickr might be a better place for me to start testing the water.

As an aside, thank you for removing the Yahoo login. That's been more of a
barrier than you would expect for me every time I've wanted to use Flickr in
the past. I don't use Yahoo for anything other than Flickr. I think I have
more than one account, but I'm not sure, and I don't remember which account
has my Flickr albums. It's just a mess. I'll definitely be giving Flickr
another chance in January.

~~~
onethumb
Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed feedback. Lots to think about.

And you're welcome on Yahoo login. Hard at work, but should be soon.
Definitely want to let people access Flickr in whatever way they prefer.

------
yesimahuman
I'm a fan of Flickr, and for me the community is the reason I upload my photos
there. If this makes Flickr sustainable and lets the team invest in improving
the product and fostering the community, I think it's a great move. Plus,
seeing highly curated feeds is what people want, not just a dumping ground for
every frame in your roll/SD card.

~~~
justjash
Yeah, same here. I was fairly active on it > 10 years ago but haven't really
kept up with it since I got locked out of my original account once they
switched to Yahoo. I can only imagine the amount of trash that would get
uploaded with everyone getting essentially and unlimited amount of space. I
always enjoyed the quality I could find there and it seems like they are
trying to get back to that.

------
andyjohnson0
_" First, and most crucially, the free terabyte largely attracted members who
were drawn by the free storage, not by engagement with other lovers of
photography. This caused a significant tonal shift in our platform, away from
the community interaction and exploration of shared interests that makes
Flickr the best shared home for photographers in the world."_

I don't have a problem with their decision, and I'll certainly upgrade to pro
in the next few weeks. But I also don't use Flickr for "community interaction
and exploration of shared interests" \- I just want to be able to create
albums and put photos in them. So the storage was useful and the ostensible
reason for the change (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't entirely convince
me.

But this isn't unexpected, and I think the purchase by SmugMug was a good
thing. I just hope they can stop randomly losing my photos after this...

(Edit: s/convince/entirely convince/)

~~~
ysavir
> So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change
> (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't convince me.

What are you not convinced about? They were pretty clear that people who use
Flickr as a storage space rather than a photography community are not their
target audience, and therefor will not be the focus of their efforts and
goodwill.

~~~
andyjohnson0
> What are you not convinced about? They were pretty clear that people who use
> Flickr as a storage space rather than a photography community are not their
> target audience, and therefor will not be the focus of their efforts and
> goodwill.

I suspect that the change is more to do with the cost of storage than with re-
creating some photographic community that may have existed before 2013. But
I'm also happy to be proved wrong.

Yes, I am just using Flickr for storage. And while most of my albums are
public, my photographic skills are fairly average compared to many on Flickr,
so they are unlikely to be able to monetise my efforts. But I'm not interested
in being part of a "photographic community" because, while I enjoy
photography, I don't do it to be in a community. And I suspect that they see
community participation as basically user-generated content creation, and I'm
not into that either.

I'm happy to accept that I'm not a user they can support for free. I like
Flickr, wish it well, and am happy to pay for pro.

~~~
ysavir
> I suspect that the change is more to do with the cost of storage

I think you're right about that, but they did address it up front:

> Second, you can tell a lot about a product by how it makes money. Giving
> away vast amounts of storage creates data that can be sold to advertisers,
> with the inevitable result being that advertisers’ interests are prioritized
> over yours.

 __*

> I'm happy to accept that I'm not a user they can support for free. I like
> Flickr, wish it well, and am happy to pay for pro

That's great! And I want to say that I highly respect the maturity and
understanding you demonstrate here. I wish more people adopted this attitude.

------
2sk21
I really like this. I want to have an honest relationship with a service
provider. I pay them for their service and they don't steal my data or reuse
it in any way.

------
owenversteeg
So I've had a Flickr for a while, and not just for the free terabyte - I just
started using that about a year and a half ago. But it's now a pretty
ingrained part of my life, particularly using the Flickr app pretty much like
my photo gallery. I've got tens of thousands of photos there, and I've
encouraged my friends to use it too because it's a great app, the uploading
works fast and well, and it's better designed and easier to use than other
photo apps in my opinion.

The rapid phase-out period unnerves me, personally. If I hadn't seen it, and
bam, all but 1000 of my tens of thousands of photos were deleted, I don't know
what I'd do. Yes, I know, have backups - but moving and organizing tens of
thousands of photos takes time and energy. I've also got miscellaneous friends
and family that I now have to tell about this change, to download their photos
and keep them somewhere else.

I just wish there was a cheaper option for those of us who want to keep our
photos on Flickr. $50/year is pretty high; you can get a 1TB hard drive for
$38 on Amazon. If there was some kind of intermediate tier I'd really
appreciate it.

I know that you want to increase community engagement, and I think that's a
noble goal, but consider this: you've got a great photo tool, and some people
want to use it for their own personal photos without engaging in the
community. In my experience, the uploadr works faster and better than Google
Photos or other apps I've tried, and I prefer the interface to other apps. Why
not just charge what it costs to run? According to Backblaze [0] disk space
now costs them about 2 cents/gigabyte. So about $20 for a terabyte. Now I
realize there are costs associated of course - bandwidth etc, maintenance,
whatnot - but I'm sure you could profitably offer a limited plan for less than
what the current Pro plan costs.

In any case, good luck with Flickr, I'm rooting for you guys.

~~~
tedd4u
Regarding pricing: you rate $50/year as pretty high in comparison to a USB
backup drive. I think a better comparison might be to other cloud storage
services.

Quick survey of cloud storage pricing:

Dropbox personal 1TB: $120 / TB / year

Google "One" 2TB: $100 / TB / year

Microsoft OneDrive 1TB: $ 70 / TB / year

Apple iCloud 2TB: $ 60 / TB / year ($120/year)

Flickr "unlimited": $ 50 / year

So, I think Flickr pricing seems in-line (and significantly cheaper than
Dropbox.) Of course it depends a bit on what unlimited really means in
practice.

------
tzfld
I'm an active free user with over 10000 photos. Not had intention yet to
upgrade to pro. It's simply more cheaper to buy two-three external hdd-s for
multiple backups than paying annually for a backup service.

I somewhat expected this decision, because 1TB free storage sounds to good to
be true from the very beginning. I know, I will loose all my edited photos,
geotags, edited descriptions and all my additions on flickr. I've uploaded
publicly thousands with them of points of interest and with free to use
licence, but seems that there is nothing to do. All the photos will remain
buried in a forgotten hdd, somewhere in the bottom of a case.

------
tokyodude
I'm all for these changes and went to go sign up for Pro (was since Flickr
started until about 2 years ago)

But, .... it seems like they're jumping the gun here. I went to go resign up
for Pro but you still have to do it through your Yahoo account!!!

I don't want yahoo even associated with my flickr account but I could find no
way to disassociate the yahoo account.

Shouldn't they fix that before rolling out this change?

(or maybe I missed how)

------
sfilargi
$50 annually just to store and share photos is a bit too much for _my_ use
case. Half of that would definitely justify it. But I am a very light user.

But other than that I am 100% on-board with this strategy. Get done with the
"free" accounts already.

Haven't bother to go through the T&C but I hope they have clause that say they
are _not_ allowed to use your data for data-mining/advertising.

~~~
bscphil
This was my thought exactly. There are hundreds of services out there that
make your life just a little better or easier, and I can't afford them all.
$50 just isn't worth it.

I think there's a strong case for creating an intermediate tier. $10 a year
for 10k photos, but none of the other pro perks would be a pretty fair offer,
I think. I'd sign up (well, not right away... I don't and won't have a Flickr
account until I don't need a Yahoo address to get one.)

------
httpsterio
As a hobbyist photographer 1000 photographs is not a whole lot and I can't
justify a pro account when I mostly just use it for storing my edited photos.
A terabyte on the other hand is too much to give away to free users.

Then again, from a business standpoint I welcome the decision. I'd rather have
a free place to host a 1000 photos than no Flickr at all. I welcome their
stance alleged stance of treating users as priority rather than as just
advertisement data generators.

I say alleged because I don't know how well these promises of users first are
applied in practice but I'm hopeful.

At least they are upfront about it so kudos to Flickr for that.

~~~
dingaling
I guess I won't have any option but to pay for Pro but I wish they had am
intermediate tier that just gives expanded storage.

I have no interest in their Pro Statistics or the list of 'partner discounts'
they bundle into Pro. Nor the ability to upload 10 minute videos.

Strip out that crap and just sell a Flickr Subscriber account for less money,
please.

------
ocschwar
I have to admit around the time they went to 1TB free, I stopped taking
serious pictures and just used Flickr to be the default backup for my phone
camera.

Now whe I go to Flickr I see a lot more photo plagiarism by throwaway
accounts, to say nothing of dank memes.

If Flickr offers better integration of their photo storage with blogging
platforms and the like, it would be very well worth the Pro account. And by
concentrating on helping peopel who gather photos for public presentation,
they'd be offering a service that isn't quite like the shutterbug demographic
they want, but is still on the same tenor.

------
chewz
Personally I have put on Flickr thousands of photos from my seven years of
travels in Asia which are very dear to me. And suddenly I had been given a
month's notice to leave or pay.

I had sympathy for Flickr as community like 8-10 years ago but haven't been
using actively Flickr for couple of years - as it became slowly unusable. I
had to write my own scripts to import all my photos as their tools stooped
being developed 10 years ago. [1]

At the moment Flickr webpage is quite unusable (if you block aggressive
tracking from Yahoo and other 3-rd parties on DNS level), Flickr app is
unusable for privacy reasons - installation on Android requires access to
identity, contacts and microphone) and logging to Flickr requires giving some
weird permissions to Oath (whoever it is).

So with all the sympathy for the new owners of Flickr I think it is a bit
premature to ask loyal users for ransom before putting it's house in order and
showing what the new Flickr would be. It is just asking me to pay for the
development in unknown direction.

I got the message and I will not be using their services in the future as they
cannot be considered by me as serious and trusted.

[1] [https://github.com/chew-z/Flickr3](https://github.com/chew-z/Flickr3)

~~~
sigi45
5$ per month on a monthly plan.

Sry but that is not 'ransom'.

And srsly you used it and never paid? Do you think they want you?

------
k_sze
I commend the Flickr team for making this move. It takes courage to make this
kind of change, when you know you'll take some flak for it (e.g. this very HN
thread). At the end of the day, you'll piss off some people, but you know that
the decision makes sense and you forge ahead.

~~~
onethumb
Thank you! (Disclaimer: Blog author, CEO & Chief Geek here). I clearly
believe, deeply, that focusing on photographers who care about photography is
the right path forward, and I'm excited to see others feel that way, too.
Please feel free to ask any questions I might be able to answer, and thanks
again.

~~~
Nrbelex
I just want to express my gratitude for finally, fully embracing wider gamuts.
I've been eagerly awaiting this day (and have a group all set up to show them
off -
[https://www.flickr.com/groups/2234658@N22/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/2234658@N22/)).

Questions:

1\. To the extent reprocessing is necessary, will that be done automatically
(e.g. as it is for photos originally uploaded at full resolution, and now
being displayed at 5K)?

2\. Do all mobile OSs provide the color profile management necessary for the
app to properly display photos? I know this was a challenge in the past.

3\. Will there be any indication a photo is outside of sRGB, aside from EXIF?

P.S. - I'm sure you're aware, but there's a (closed) group of alpha/beta users
([https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrbeta/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrbeta/))
always eager to help provide feedback.

~~~
onethumb
1\. Should be automatic. Still testing, but looking fantastic so far.

2\. The coverage across modern OSes, browsers, and devices is incredibly high,
and increasing daily, or we wouldn't be finally pulling the trigger. (I've
wanted to do this for 16 years!)

3\. Hmm, hadn't thought about this. What did you have in mind?

~~~
Nrbelex
That's all great to here. I was thinking that the color space could be listed
within the little section below the photo summarizing the EXIF data (with
little pictorials for aperture, lens, shutter speed, flash, etc.). That would
make it a lot easier to know if you're seeing a photo as intended.

------
kornork
If community == accounts with fewer photos, and revenue == people willing to
pay for more photos, how does getting their revenue from the people who use
Flickr in a way Flickr is trying to pivot from support furthering the goal of
community?

------
patorjk
I really like Flickr. There's a wealth of beautiful images, great groups (even
though a lot of the ones I used are dead/dying), and I really like that I can
upload uncompressed images. A lot of what this post says rings true, and
hopefully they can right the ship on the engagement front, because right now
it feels pretty dismal. When I post to Instagram, I get 20 times the
engagement. I'm not sure how they fix that, but I'll stay on board as long as
they keep trying to improve things. I'd have no problem going pro if I hit the
1000 image limit (right now I'm at 574).

------
holychiz
Well-written product announcement! clear explanation of "bad news" for a lot
of users, but encouraging for target customers. I hope when I grow up I too
can write something like this. :)

------
theplaz
@Onethumb: I have ~150k photos on Flickr and a 10 year paid account but I
stopped using it ~1.5 years ago when I got sick of their video upload
timestamp issues. I have not checked recently if fixed.

When I upload photos, Flickr looks at the taken date of the photo and sorts
them that way. When I upload videos from the computer (using the upload tool),
Flickr does NOT look at the metadata to set the taken date. Instead, then
taken date is set to the current date meaning the videos are out of order of
the photos.

~~~
onethumb
Thank you so much for being a customer! I would love to help track this down
and fix it, especially since I'm writing the new photo & video services. :) I
will add this to my list.

[http://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/10/31/putting-your-best-
photo...](http://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/10/31/putting-your-best-photo-
forward-flickr-updates/)

------
vldr
WIth the auto upload feature of flickr I can imagine people using flickr as
their main photo storage/backup.

And if they happen to not pay attention to announcements like these they might
find their photo's irreverably gone in a few months.

Moves like this, so soon after the acquisition, with 0 lenience for existing
users makes me not trust Flickr/SmugSmug anymore. What will be the next step
when they will randomly delete your photo's?

~~~
chewz
The $5 is OK but a month to decide is too short. Plus I would rather see what
am I paying for before I decide. At the moment Flickr isn't much of use to me.

------
a012
If I remember correctly, Flickr used to hide free user's over 200 photos and
they'll show up one upgraded to pro. But now they'll delete exceeded photos.

------
meesterdude
I'm not going to complain about a company refocusing their profitability and
adjusting things - good for them.

but i think this was horrible messaging. I would have much rather appreciated
a more straightforward approach, instead of trying to get me to be excited for
being limited to 1,000 images and video. I think it shows flickr still has a
ways to go in building trust - because being disingenuous in messaging doesn't
build it.

------
saaaaaam
Flickr was probably the first service I paid money for. I seem to recall
shelling out $5(?) a month years back - maybe around 2009, possibly earlier -
when I hit the 200 photos limit. I was more than happy to pay that back then,
because they were doing something I valued. It was a frictionless way to share
photos, and the community was nice. I used to actively go and flick through
people’s photos, spending a few minutes each day looking at beautiful
photography. I’ve not even attempted to log in to Flickr in years. Yahoo made
a royal mess of it - in particular when the Flickr ID had to be tied to a
Yahoo ID, I just gave up even attempting to log in. Rubbish. Will I pay again?
Probably not. The web has moved on and there are easier ways to share photos
now. The communities that were once those little communities like Flickr,
united by a common passion and desire to show something special have been
poisoned by the meme-driven, glib-comment-ridden everything-in-one-place race
to the bottom of bigger social networks. Flickr was the product of a gentler,
more innocent time.

------
Markoff
funny guys, so instead 1TB of space you are giving me now roughly 5GB on par
with dozens of free cloud storages and you think for the money you ask for pro
account i won't rather set up my own paid cloud where i have complete control
over my content instead of some smugs?

flickr app it's absolutely horrible, impossible to organize or share photos
which i would like to do, but it's pretty much impossible so i just used it as
backup, so good luck with your business if you think you will turn those free
users into paid with this strategy and i will keep my public photos there for
people to see, just going to delete account (10yo+) and finally get rid of
yahoo account (at last one benefit from this mess), because apparently
photographer enough if i am not willing to pay for sharing few photos andyou
think 1000 photos it's enough for years

and if someone is into real photography they are already long time on 500px,
so once again who needs paid flickr? might as well shut it down instead of
this slow death and blackmailing users who dunno any better how to transfer
photos and set their own cloud

------
pjsg
I wonder how many people even use their Yahoo accounts any more. This thread
was the first that I heard about flickr changing T&Cs. I don't ever log in, I
just have some scripts that add particular photos to my photostream -- I.m up
to 1,700 now. These then get shown on particular web pages on a web site that
I run.

I'll probably end up paying for a couple of months of Pro before deleting
everything (as it'll take some time to migrate onto another service).

What frustrates me is that this is the second service that I use that changed
it's T&Cs on me this year which needed a lot of work to redo my websites (the
other was Google Maps which went from free to $2k/month).

Flickr needs to make money, but I'll bet the fallout will be bad as this
change affects a bunch of users who have no idea that it is coming. Presumably
the 3% of free people with more than 1k photos are causing significant costs
and Flickr wants to dump them.

------
AaronNewcomer
It took me awhile to figure out my old Yahoo login for Flickr. But I finally
found it! (had to dig way back into my gmail archives). I definitely will be
switching my login when that is rolled out.

As a paid SmugMug user, is there is discount for signing up for a paid flickr
account? I saw that there is a discount to become a SmugMug user listed on
Flickr Pro Perks.

------
enimodas
Hope they'll be contacting archive.org before deleting those pictures of the
free users with more than 1000 photos.

------
dreamling
I think this is a positive step forward, actively planning to keep the service
sustainable is a solid game plan.

Having more than 1000 pix means I'm now a pro member again, which I let lapse
when storage went to 1 ter. Though, my ~38,000 pics only take up 5% of that
terabyte. Some of those 2004 pictures are really tiny. Photography may not be
as much of a focus for me now, but those early days were really engaging,
here's hoping SM brings some of the magic back.

Having lots of pictures, and albums has made sorting, managing them much
harder with the Organize browser tool. I'm interested how Smugmug will be
improving the experience of managing photos and albums.

Will Organize be getting some of the new direction focus?

------
dotBen
As someone with way more than 1000 photos on Flickr, I hope they provide an
easy way to export the photos and metadata out.

I mostly agree with the direction they want to take, I just don't want to be
part of the journey and so want to get my photos out.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
In the time it took to write this comment you could've logged in and spotted
the big "Export my data" button right there on the Account Settings page...

~~~
dotBen
Does it include the metadata too?

------
patrickg_zill
It's actually a good idea. It forces the user to do some curating of their
images, encouraging them to only put their best images online. Which in turn
should result in more browsers engaging with the site and photographer.

------
maxxxxx
I am fine with going to Flickr Pro but this is also in the price range of a
regular SmugMug account. Does anybody know how to decide between the two?

Also: this is is not the only criteria, but do any of them allow a custom
domain?

~~~
scblock
Smugmug allows custom domains, including support for https. It also allows for
custom branding and layout design (your name here, powered by Smugmug).

I wasn't able to get a bare domain (e.g. domainname.tld) to work directly, so
i set up a redirect to www.domainname.tld from there and it's been good for
me. I don't know if that has changed since I set it up.

~~~
maxxxxx
Custom domains only seem to be available from the "Power" plan upwards as as I
can tell.

Besides custom domain: what are the pros/cons of Flickr vs SmugMug?

~~~
scblock
I guess it depends on your use case. I'm interested in having my own gallery I
can share, rather than a Flickr page. I prefer "my photo gallery site" to "my
pictures on Flickr", so for me the custom domain and branding is important. I
don't particularly care about the community aspects beyond viewing the photos
of some of my friends, so that piece of Flickr holds little interest to me. Of
course when I set it up I was also very disillusioned about Yahoo and wanted
to get away from that and into something that felt more sustainable.

------
munificent
I love everything about this announcement.

I've been a Flickr Pro user for ages. Flickr was one of the things that got me
into photography and improved my skills. I learned how to take better pictures
by looking at other photos and seeing what kind of feedback mine got.

Then Yahoo aquired it and Flickr just fizzled out. I kept taking pictures but
it wasn't the same without a community to share them with. It really made me
sad.

I truly hope Flickr can return to the fantastic site it used to be and
everything about this announcement reads like they have their head on
straight.

------
inetknght
> you can tell a lot about a product by how it makes money. Giving away vast
> amounts of storage creates data that can be sold to advertisers, with the
> inevitable result being that advertisers’ interests are prioritized over
> yours. Reducing the free storage offering ensures that we run Flickr on
> subscriptions, which guarantees that our focus is always on how to make your
> experience better.

If one thing were to make me want to consider Flickr's services, this
statement alone would be it.

------
ripsawridge
Paying customer for years. I got 7000 photos up there -- memories of the best
times of my life. Extremely worthwhile service. All these folks talking about
"death knell" should maybe think about paying for it if the feelings are so
strong. They must really value what is on offer, and how about showing
appreciation for what is valuable in your life?

------
josefresco
I wonder if the comment about "selling our users" is a swipe at Yahoo!, Google
([https://www.google.com/photos/about/](https://www.google.com/photos/about/)),
or both.

Does anyone have data on how Google Photos generates revenue? Is it just a
mechanism to upsell Google Drive storage quotas? Or are they also mining the
photo meta data?

~~~
icebraining
_" The information gleaned from analyzing these photos does not travel outside
of this product — not today. But if I thought we could return immense value to
the users based on this data I'm sure we would consider doing that. For
instance, if it were possible for Google Photos to figure out that I have a
Tesla, and Tesla wanted to alert me to a recall, that would be a service that
we would consider offering, with appropriate controls and disclosure to the
user."_

\-- Bradley Horowitz, Google VP of Streams, Photos, and Sharing (2015)

So yes, using info from the photos is definitively on the table. But I doubt
they made Photos with a specific income stream in mind; they want to know
everything about everything and everyone. The possibilities (for monetization
and much more) are tremendously higher when you can leverage the connections
between datasets, even if they are kinda lame by themselves.

~~~
josefresco
"if it were possible for Google Photos to figure out that I have a Tesla, and
Tesla wanted to alert me to a recall, that would be a service that we would
consider offering"

That sounds terrible. He attempts to soften it by using an example that seems
very important/critical (a vehicle "recall") instead of saying something like
"If Google Photos can tell you like Starbucks and Startbucks wanted to show
ads to you, that would be a service that we would consider offering"

------
matt_the_bass
As much as I’m bummed about this, I do have to admit I’m getting what I paid
for. I’m currently anaazon prime member so I’ll probably migrate to that
solution for added photo backup.

------
wrs
Pre-2013 Flickr was a really fun place and I want to go back to there. So I
love the initiative and direction here.

However, I lost the thread of the argument at the penultimate paragraph. If
the “vast majority” of current free users will still qualify, why will this
change the community in a significant way?

~~~
danso
The users in the free tier are now given a hard ceiling of 1,000 photos, so it
would seemingly dampen their future ambitions to use Flickr as a social stream
or bulk archive.

~~~
wrs
I get that, but apparently they weren’t hitting that limit anyway. So is this
a purely psychological tactic? That’s fascinating...kind of leveraging the
psychology of an “unlimited” cellular plan but in reverse.

~~~
danso
It might be psychological on Flickr's end too, as developers no longer have to
propose new features that have the requirement of scaling with a high-
resource-consuming free tier.

~~~
wrs
But that's my point — how is the resource consumption changing if hardly
anybody is kicked out? Is there a tiny number of people storing a terabyte of
photos each? But if the number of people is tiny, how can that be affecting
the community feeling?

~~~
pkaye
Those few people who store petabytes of videos was enough for even Amazon to
boot them off their storage product.

------
ryanmccullagh
Well honestly, any service for which one derives value from should have a
monetary value for one. $49.99 per year, or about $4 per month is about the
cost of 2 cups of coffee. Totally reasonable if you ask me.

~~~
GoToRO
$4 is more than 16 cups of coffee here. Would you pay $32 a month for the
service?

------
jgh
Is there a way to download all of my photos? I have 25k in a bunch of albums,
and it seems like albums over 5k photos in size they wont zip up to
download...wtf? Come on Flickr.

------
nakedrobot2
I'm glad I got grandfathered in with my UNLIMITED storage. Wondering when it's
going to end ;)

~~~
tjr
Is it still a grandfathering policy? This says that paying professional
accounts get unlimited storage:

[https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead/?utm_campaign=flickr-
loo...](https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead/?utm_campaign=flickr-lookingahead)

~~~
superflyguy
Whoosh.

~~~
nakedrobot2
Ah, but my pro account is for free, forever :)

------
gchokov
Goodbye Flickr. :(

------
proneb1rd
Raise your hand if you use Flickr today. :-)

------
gdhbcc
Tl:dr: storage is expensive, and we aren't going to be giving it away when
you're not giving us enough revenue

~~~
preinheimer
I think this is a bit unkind.

Maybe: Storage is expensive, and we'd rather collect money from you, rather
than sell you to advertisers.

~~~
landcoctos
Are we sure they still won't sell you to advertisers in addition to
subscription fees?

~~~
onethumb
I promise this won't happen. I hate customer-hostile business models.
(Disclaimer: Blog author, CEO & Chief Geek here)

------
transpy
Wow, Flickr is still around

------
notananthem
Flickr's stupid front end is what turned me off from them in the beginning. I
built my own sites and hosted my own photos because it was cheap and easy.

------
Double_a_92
And that's why you don't use (free) cloud services as your only backup. I
thought about storing all my family photos on flicker a few years ago... Would
have been useless now.

~~~
scori
I did that and I am happy about this announcement b/c I had lost faith in
Yahoo a while ago and Verizon deal sealed it for me. I have over 80K pics
there and no easy way for me to delete them, now they will do it for me.

~~~
onethumb
Flickr is under new ownership (mine). We would _love_ the opportunity to keep
your 80K photos safe and let you share them with those you care about most.
Please let me know if there's something we can do to help with this.

