

Remind HN: Your Flickr Favourites Are (Still) Public and Searchable   - pessimism

A lot of you probably haven’t used Flickr in ages like I, and maybe Flickr or you have changed since then.<p>In late 2011[^1] (pre-Mayer), Yahoo! allowed users to search in the favourite collections of each other. Here is a basic query for mature content for your own profile to see what people might come across in your collection of favourites:<p><pre><code>    http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves&#38;q=sex+or+boobs+or+butt+or+porn [^2]
</code></pre>
To search within another user’s favourites, retrieve their user ID from idGettr[^3], and paste it in a query like this:<p><pre><code>    http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves-[[ ID ]]&#38;q=sex+or+boobs+or+butt+or+porn [^4]
</code></pre>
I didn’t know this, and I imagine it happened while I wasn’t using the service. Add to this that <i>you cannot opt out of this</i>.<p>I have been in touch with Yahoo![^5], and to summarize their response, public, searchable favourites with no opt-outs are here to stay. To each their own, and I am definitely a bit on the nutty side when it comes to privacy—I just can’t bring myself to ever have a Facebook account, but I totally understand people feel differently about these things. I’m sure other privacy fanatics on HN who check their privacy settings meticulously were as unaware of at least some this.<p>Some things have changed since the last time I and you used Flickr, and many of them are here to stay, so in the spirit of Steve Jobs’s choice words on privacy, at you at least now should have a good idea of what you’re signing up for.
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pessimism
Links/footnotes:

[^1]: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/13/how-
flick...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/10/13/how-flickr-has-
made-it-easier-to-out-pervs/)

[^2]:
[http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves&q=sex+or+boobs+or+...](http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves&q=sex+or+boobs+or+butt+or+porn)

[^3]: <http://idgettr.com/>

[^4]:

    
    
        http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=faves-[[ ID ]]&q=sex+or+boobs+or+butt+or+porn
    

[^5]: <https://twitter.com/pessimism/status/336090432398323713>

------
resu
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't personal favourites made available to the
public in two clicks instead of one in the 'old' design as well? And you could
see all users that added a photo as a favourite when viewing the photo?

It just never occured to me that it was a feature that was not meant to be
'public'.

~~~
pessimism
I just thought of a way to check: archive.org.

It does indeed show that favourites were available from the user page:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20130501115607/http://www.flickr....](http://web.archive.org/web/20130501115607/http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/).

As a result, I removed the paragraph from the OP. This is what it read, to
anyone visiting just now:

    
    
        In addition, your favourites are now a single click 
        away for users in the redesign of your user profile. 
        It’s entirely possible this was the case before, though.

~~~
resu
Thanks for confirming. I haven't touched flickr for a while either, until this
new redesign fanfare :)

------
josephlord
How does this behave when you have marked private photos as favourites (or
those someone has shared with you and a small group)? I assume it doesn't show
those pictures or even any metadata about them.

~~~
pessimism
I would consider it an outright bug, if that were the case, so I wouldn’t
worry about that.

I haven’t added any photos to my favourites, so I can’t test it for you, alas.

@YahooCare are very quick to reach out, if you direct any questions at them,
as shown in the last of my footnotes. It’s actually really weird, albeit a
pleasant surprise, to see a big company respond and reach out to users in
2013. :)

