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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We know they're going to have a line about
what they'll host. Just say what it is and save
yourself the headache later on.
They explicitly have done so, right there in the linked article:
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.)
>It seems like maybe you just wanted to tee off on the idea of anybody, anywhere, implementing any sort of community standards?
No, but thanks for the talking down to. I have no problem with them having limits, it's - at the very least - a practical necessity to running their business. Furthermore, for what their business and product are I don't much care what level of control they want to exert.
I mean uncomfortable art. The kind of things that don't fall into their existing categories of "safe to hang in an office", "MPAA R risque" or "fucking".
Apologies. You're right. That was unnecessary, and I actually edited my post to remove the snark right before I'd even seen your reply. Probably at the same time you were typing.
The kind of things that don't fall into
their existing categories of "safe to hang
in an office", "MPAA R risque" or "fucking".
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for. It seems like you want a comprehensive list of what will and won't be allowed?
Have you ever run a community, or attempted to create or enforce community guidelines? Coming up with comprehensive rules to cover the spectrum of human expression is an absolutely intractable problem.
What about photos of casualties of war? What about historical photos that feature Nazi symbols? What about photos of lynchings? What about art based around those things, particularly when it's steeped in so many layers of irony and subtext that it's impossible to tell whether or not they're actually endorsing evil, protesting it, or something else?
> I'm not entirely sure what you're asking for. It seems like you want a comprehensive list of what will and won't be allowed?
No. I'd just prefer they don't lie in their marketing. Because it always gets walked back to "Well obviously that blanket statement had all the exceptions that were obvious to me at the time but convenient to ignore. Plus all the exceptions we've discovered in the meantime."
>Have you ever run a community
Yeah, but it was a community back in the old phpBB and IRC days of the internet.
I have not been in charge of cooperate communication to a product userbase I've branded a "community."
I didn't find myself having to talk out of both sides of my mouth to merge lofty marketing proclamations with the hard "if"s and "buts" of reality. Because we talked about community standards, it wasn't a decision of what worked for our business handed down from on high. It was what we as a group were comfortable with. What personal tastes are fine to be violated regularly in front of your face? What things they were willing to tolerate if it was contained in a different sub-forum? What can't be there at all etc...
Yeah, similar experience here. Never done it on a corporate, internet-wide scale ala Flickr.
I'm honestly confused - what's twofaced about Flickr's approach?
I just sort of assume any host of user-created content will have some restrictions, so it doesn't feel to me like they are "talking out of both sides" of their mouth when they announce/implement such restrictions.
I may be completely missing what you're reacting to, though, apologies if I'm being dense.
Can you come up with an example for hate speech, in the medium of photography, without including written works or photos-of-photos(-of-text)?
Besides, the benefit of requiring pro accounts is that it includes identification of uploaders. They can delegate their content policy to the respective jurisdictions and authorities.
One obvious example is symbols. For example, if a Ukrainian photojournalist took a picture of a member of Azov Battalion who had Nazi insignia on their uniform, would that picture fall afoul of the content policy?
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.
Safe and upvoted on HN, a highly moderated forum with strong community guidelines, no less. The irony.
And yet, any time any community enforces any sort of moderation or community guidelines, an enormous wailing and gnashing of teeth in the HN comments. Funny that.
HN has one of the internet's best communities, but it is also possibly the least self-aware community I've ever known.
The difference is that HN doesn't pretend to be something it's not and AFAIK the guidelines and the things dang has said over the years are pretty straight forward. It doesn't pretend to be a place for any and all opinions to have a home with no getting kicked off or whatever.
I find it bizarre that my comment is being attacked for its venue, when HN has never claimed to be the type of venue which I and GP are criticizing for their doublespeak and hypocrisy.
Unfortunately, any attempt to give unrestricted <anything> to people results in abuse. See:
- Services that offered unlimited cloud storage.
- Social communication tools used to plan crimes.
- OnlyFans
How does one allow NSFW "art" but not let their platform turn into just another cheap porn site? Flickr seems to be taking a stab at answering that. Time will tell if they are successful, but I hope they are.
It's curious that you're posting this on HN, a highly moderated community with strong community guidelines. Much stricter than Flickr's community guidelines.
How do you resolve this contradiction? It must be suffocating for you to participate here.
HN is pretty liberal in terms of the discussion it allows to take place and the breadth of ideas and viewpoints it allows to propagate. It does tend to have guidelines for tone and rules of engagement, however, and strongly discourages outright flamewars and trolling.
HN is pretty liberal in terms of the discussion
it allows to take place and the breadth of ideas
and viewpoints it allows to propagate
It really, really isn't. It's one of the more tightly moderated public communities.
I suggest browsing with showdead on to see how much crap gets silently removed from HN by the mods.
Offtopic remarks are mercilessly downvoted into oblivion by the community.
To be clear, I think the HN mods do a fantastic job. I think HN is one of the clearest examples of why strong and talented moderation is essential for high-quality discussions. Their work goes largely unheralded because they maintain a low profile, in multiple ways.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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?
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].)
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.
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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
