Anyone else also affected by the latest policy change on Flickr?

[Pterodactylus]

Since a couple of years I upload my pictures I want to share on Flickr.
Free users had up to 1TB space and no significant limitations, the service was Ad financed.

The new owner (SmugMug) now announced that in the future free users will be limited to 1000 pictures total.
Which would be ok, as they can change the terms of service.

What imo is not ok is that they will delete also all old previous uploaded pictures until the limit of 1000 pics is reached.

They argue that you still can get a pro account and avoid deletion as long as you pay.

Imo these are Mafia methods, the people trusted that the pictures will be hosted a unlimited period of time and put a lot of effort into it (tagged them, sorted them into albums and generated traffic for their advertising with the content for the Hoster).

These pictures are also referenced all over the web, e.g. in many forums (like ours).
Deleting Millions of existing pictures will damage many thousands threads in forums.

Basically what their offer is, stay on our site and as long as you pay we will not delete your content (lifelong payments).

Other hosters handle this different, like if you no longer pay you will no longer be able to upload something but your content will remain intact (and still generate traffic and Ad income for the site).
Which is imo a fair agreement.

So for my personal situation.
I have way more than 1000 pictures there, mainly used at FPN and here.
I‘m ok with a change of the terms of service, but I‘m not ok blackmailing their users.
So if they would have said, ok, there is a change, you will no longer be able to upload something as free user as our terms of service changed but your existing content is save, then I would have considered upgrading to a pro account.

But in this situation I would not upgrade to a pro user even it would been the last picture hoster in the world.

As a consequence I will delete mainly older pictures used in threads on FPN (and render them unusable) and try to keep newer ones mainly used here on FPGeeks.



So, is anybody else also affected from the Flickr change?

Where do you host your pictures?



Currently I think I might will move to Instagram.
I also looked at Canon Irista, but there seem to be no real option to share the pictures in forums.

Any suggestion for a good hoster?

[Chrissy]

I use Flickr, but I get unlimited for free due to my having a Yahoo email address.

I never upload really large images though, and am always very careful to crop everything and resize it before uploading to Flickr so that everything is already as compact as it can be. Rather than starting off by deleting images, is it possible to ensure that all of those you currently have are as compact as you can make them?

[Pterodactylus]

I use Flickr, but I get unlimited for free due to my having a Yahoo email address.

I never upload really large images though, and am always very careful to crop everything and resize it before uploading to Flickr so that everything is already as compact as it can be. Rather than starting off by deleting images, is it possible to ensure that all of those you currently have are as compact as you can make them?

Hi Chrissy,
Yahoo sold Flickr to Smugmug some months ago, so it has nothing to do with Yahoo anymore (I also use a yahoo mail address to log in, this is a relict which also will disappear next year).
So I fear you are also affected by the 1000 picture limit as a free Flickr user.
It‘s not a matter of space, the new limit is 1000 pictures, no matter how big or small they are.

[Paddler]

Wait until someone buys The Cloud.

[Chrissy]

I use Flickr, but I get unlimited for free due to my having a Yahoo email address.

I never upload really large images though, and am always very careful to crop everything and resize it before uploading to Flickr so that everything is already as compact as it can be. Rather than starting off by deleting images, is it possible to ensure that all of those you currently have are as compact as you can make them?

Hi Chrissy,
Yahoo sold Flickr to Smugmug some months ago, so it has nothing to do with Yahoo anymore (I also use a yahoo mail address to log in, this is a relict which also will disappear next year).
So I fear you are also affected by the 1000 picture limit as a free Flickr user.
It‘s not a matter of space, the new limit is 1000 pictures, no matter how big or small they are.
That may be the case. However, they are still telling me that my account is a Pro account, so no need to upgrade yet.

[AzJon]

I just use imgur, but that's due to my long time use of reddit.

This wouldn't be the first time an image hosting site has rendered entire threads on fountain pen forums next to useless.

[carlos.q]

This wouldn't be the first time an image hosting site has rendered entire threads on fountain pen forums next to useless.
This is why I prefer to upload directly to the site and avoid third party hosting like the plague.

[AzJon]

This wouldn't be the first time an image hosting site has rendered entire threads on fountain pen forums next to useless.
This is why I prefer to upload directly to the site and avoid third party hosting like the plague.

Sure, but we can't upload directly to this forum, correct? It has to have a .jpg URL for it to show up. Unless you're referring to i.reddit where you can upload directly to reddit, but that's only one image for the post. You would still need a third-party image host for formatting your images into a review or post, yes?

[carlos.q]

Of course you can upload directly to this site. Valid file extensions are: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg pdf png psd txt zip

[Pterodactylus]

Yes you can, but then you don’t have all your pictures in a central place and you can’t use them in different locations (forums).

[Brilliant Bill]

.
"Oh, grow up."

-Joan Rivers

When you began using Flickr you agreed to a set of legally binding terms in exchange for services provided. Part of what Smugmug bought was the rights to those binding terms -- and the right to change them to suit their business model.

They have made you an offer, and you seem to be rejecting that offer. Therefore they can stop providing services to you. There is no more to it than that. It is childish to say they are "blackmailing" you or using "Mafia methods." You have a business disagreement, something that happens in the real world every minute of every day. You find a solution that fits you.

Cloud storage is now dirt cheap. Spend a few dollars a month for the service you want; then you won't have to throw a tantrum.

[Pterodactylus]

.
"Oh, grow up."

-Joan Rivers

When you began using Flickr you agreed to a set of legally binding terms in exchange for services provided. Part of what Smugmug bought was the rights to those binding terms -- and the right to change them to suit their business model.

They have made you an offer, and you seem to be rejecting that offer. Therefore they can stop providing services to you. There is no more to it than that. It is childish to say they are "blackmailing" you or using "Mafia methods." You have a business disagreement, something that happens in the real world every minute of every day. You find a solution that fits you.

Cloud storage is now dirt cheap. Spend a few dollars a month for the service you want; then you won't have to throw a tantrum.

I never questioned that they can change terms of service
What I question is how they do it, they did not made a real offer, they stated an ultimatum and a threat for all users in the future, and I cannot see what should be childish to question such bad business behavior.

Social media’s does not work that way.
They are based on the believe and the trust that your content has no expire date.
No matter how you pay for the service (Ad based or directly monetary compensated).
What they actually do now is to significantly damage the trust to the platform, because not only the Ad based users are affected, also the Pro users.

What it means is, that also a Pro user will loose his content, all the work they put into it and all the content which is referencing the stored content the first day they stop paying directly for the service.

E.g. if you take a outtime from your photography hobby you can’t just stop for a while and come back later and continue as your content is still there. Or you focus on different topics, or you can’t afford it for a time, or you are ill,......... 1000 reasons to pause a hobby.

They send a cristal clear message to all users, first day you stop paying them your content is lost.

I can’t imagine that most of their customers, Pro and not Pro will like this Message.

As said, this is not how social media works, and many other platforms clearly state that your content will be save and not lost also when you stop beeing a Pro member, you will only loose your upload capability in case you are above the free membership content wise.

I have no doubt that Flickr as a brand will disappear quite soon and the remaining Pro members will be transferred to the Smugmug service.

And therefore, I keep saying, there business conduct is in my eyes Mafia like.

It‘s not about the money, and I stated that I would have thought about a Pro membership otherwise, it’s about business conduct and trust.

[Chrissy]

This wouldn't be the first time an image hosting site has rendered entire threads on fountain pen forums next to useless.
This is why I prefer to upload directly to the site and avoid third party hosting like the plague.

Sure, but we can't upload directly to this forum, correct? It has to have a .jpg URL for it to show up. Unless you're referring to i.reddit where you can upload directly to reddit, but that's only one image for the post. You would still need a third-party image host for formatting your images into a review or post, yes?
No you don't need a third-party image host. We can easily upload images directly to FPG. I do that all of the time, and have pages and pages of attachments. All of my ink review images and Inktober images are uploaded via FPG. You need to click on "Go Advanced", type whatever you want in the text box, and ensure that your cursor is where you want your image to appear in your post, then scroll down to Additional Options - Attachments - Manage Attachments. Valid file extensions are: bmp doc gif jpe jpeg jpg pdf png psd txt zip

When you click on the Manage Attachments box, a File Upload Manager box comes up on your screen. You click on Add Files, then Upload files from either your computer or your website. Click on Choose File to choose it, then Upload to upload it. Once it has uploaded, you then click on Insert Inline to attach it to your post. It will attach it where your cursor was placed after you finished typing. When you have previewed your post and submitted your reply then click Done in the File Upload Manager box.

If your file is too big and you want to adjust it, then go back to your post and delete it in there, then delete it in the File Upload Manager by clicking on the small cross in the Attachments box at the bottom of the File Upload Manager box. The adjust the size and add it again.

I find it really straight-forward compared with other sites. You can also edit or remove your Attachments. Click on your Settings - top right hand corner, and your Attachments are all down at the bottom of the left hand column. You can delete them there whenever you want. I currently have 633 attachments. :)

If you're in a post and want to change an image, then you use the Manage Attachments box. You need to remember to remove them from the Manage Attachments box below, as well as the File Management box, or you get broken links in your posts.

[milkb0at]

Unlike the photobucket debacle, I think Flickr's pretty fair. Yahoo! have done terrible things to Flickr, ruining the community, making changes to the design etc. Their "free" 1TB ad-supported service (read: we'll sell your data to advertisers) was not a long-term solution.

Smugmug are well-regarded and what they're doing is fair. A reality where you pay for a service (who would have thought) is better than the horrific panopticon that Yahoo!, Google, Facebook etc are providing.

Some people, like Pterodactylus, will lose out (I've heard of some accounts with millions of photos on the free service), but hopefully Flickr will survive as a healthy place to store photos.

I'm not sure there are decent free alternatives. It'll only be a matter of time before imgur and others face up to the reality of paying to host all those photos.

[ethernautrix]

Oh wow. First I'm hearing about this. I haven't been uploading photos much over the past couple of years, even though I paid an annual fee for ten years, or twelve.

When the fee was doubled, recently, I figured... I'm not REALLY using the service, and free accounts (with ads) get 1TB of space.

Huh.

[dapprman]

I've had nothing through from Flickr either. If they handle it as badly as Photobucket then expect the same results, members bailing so quickly that the old CEO is forced out and the new one starts cheaper packages.

[azkid]

Ugh. First Photobucket breaks all the forums and my blogs, now Flickr resorts to extortion? Well my blogs are stagnant anyways.

I use Tapatalk for this and other forums and upload images direct from phone. Convenient though the app kind of sucks. Probably Tapatalk and other hosting sites will pull similar stunts.

Not sure what the other options are besides Imgur.

[dapprman]

Actually, having checked the prices for Pro membership (unlimited photos and 15% discount off Adobe Cloud if paid annually) it works out at £40 per year, which is what I was paying the the smallest commercial package on Photobucket until they changed things around.

[azkid]

Maybe I will start sharing stuff off of Dropbox since I am already paying for a pro acct there.

[VertOlive]

imgur for the few pics I post.

[carlos.q]

I really dislike third party image hosting for a simple reason: sooner than later the links will be broken, whether by file reorganization or by closing the account. FPN is a prime example of this: there are literally hundreds of broken links and pictures that have disappeared over the years. There are few things more frustrating than reading a pen or ink review with no pictures because they have disappeared.

As far as storage and image resizing I do the old fashioned way: images are stored in my computer's hard drive (and backup) and resizing is done with a simple image app.

For this reason the images I have contributed to this forum are hosted right here on FPG. And if FPG should someday disappear? Well, then it really won't matter will it?

[rbultman]

Any suggestion for a good hoster?

Have you tried Flickr? The Pro account is pretty cheap (relative to just about any other cloud provider) and there are no limits to storage space.

All kidding aside, Flickr is really pretty cheap. it's probably a better deal than local storage, especially if you suffer a disk crash. If I understand correctly, Amazon has a free and unlimited photo upload service if you are an Amazon Prime member. Maybe that might fit your needs better.

[penwash]

I am a paying pro flickr user, have been paying $29 per year for more than 10 years.
Now they want to upcharge me to $49 per year.

Am I okay with that? Yes. Flickr has been more than useful for me across two hobbies, vintage cameras and now fountain pens.

I like to have a centralized place for my posts here, FPN, Pentrace, and Reddit. Others may have no need of this, I understand that.

So as long as they don't disrupt their current service, I can live with the price increase. Fair is fair.

[usk15]

After encouraging me to use 1TB for free, now they change the terms and conditions. After I have upload, categorized, tag all my photos, they want to charge me for what supposed to be free. NO, it is not fair, and I will not pay. If they stated from beginning that will charge for whatever, then it is a different situation. But no, they want to charge for what I have already done when was for free. Probably is worth the yearly fee, but this is not the point.

In the moment they will delete my old photos to keep ONLY 1000 newest ones, I will close both account on FLICKR.
I'm sorry if any posts I have made here will miss photos due to FLICKR account.

[KrazyIvan]

I had Pro up until 6 months ago. It was upsetting that I paid for the service and free accounts got 1 TB of space. I kept the service though because of the stats. Then I changed banks and let the subscription go. Not sure if I am going to go Pro again but I have until January 8, 2019, to decide. What stinks is I have almost all my blog photos hosted on Flickr. Ugh.

Here is the thing, if they are going to do this, fine, it's their prerogative. It took me years to upload all those photos a few at a time. I don't want to lose them. They should have the decency to provide an easy way to download the photos other than going through my account one-by-one.

[Pterodactylus]

I had Pro up until 6 months ago. It was upsetting that I paid for the service and free accounts got 1 TB of space. I kept the service though because of the stats. Then I changed banks and let the subscription go. Not sure if I am going to go Pro again but I have until January 8, 2019, to decide. What stinks is I have almost all my blog photos hosted on Flickr. Ugh.

Here is the thing, if they are going to do this, fine, it's their prerogative. It took me years to upload all those photos a few at a time. I don't want to lose them. They should have the decency to provide an easy way to download the photos other than going through my account one-by-one.

Hi Ivan,

You can request your data in the Account settings, this will create a zip file with all the pictures and the related data.
According to other users this might take hours up to a week or more depending on how much date you have hosted there and of course as so many users currently request to get their data after their announcement.
As I understood you will get a notification when the zip is ready for download.

I also read that you can select groups of pictures in the camera roll which you can download then (up to 500 per group).

I personally tried neither the first nor the second yet (I have all my pictures still also on my computer)

[KrazyIvan]

I had Pro up until 6 months ago. It was upsetting that I paid for the service and free accounts got 1 TB of space. I kept the service though because of the stats. Then I changed banks and let the subscription go. Not sure if I am going to go Pro again but I have until January 8, 2019, to decide. What stinks is I have almost all my blog photos hosted on Flickr. Ugh.

Here is the thing, if they are going to do this, fine, it's their prerogative. It took me years to upload all those photos a few at a time. I don't want to lose them. They should have the decency to provide an easy way to download the photos other than going through my account one-by-one.

Hi Ivan,

You can request your data in the Account settings, this will create a zip file with all the pictures and the related data.
According to other users this might take hours up to a week or more depending on how much date you have hosted there and of course as so many users currently request to get their data after their announcement.
As I understood you will get a notification when the zip is ready for download.

I also read that you can select groups of pictures in the camera roll which you can download then (up to 500 per group).

I personally tried neither the first nor the second yet (I have all my pictures still also on my computer)

Thank you for the tip. I have been digging around looking for something like that and sent my request.

[Pterodactylus]

For me the question is still open where to move.

I created an Canon Irista Account, today, they give you 15GB free space.
You can upload also big and raw pictures and organize the pictures in Galleries.
This galleries can be shared via a link, and pictures in this galleries can be downloaded.
But the links to the pictures has an expiration date, there seems to be no way to create a permanent valid picture link to be used in a forum (BBCode)
So Irista seems to be fine host your picture collection and even share galleries.
But is seems to be not possible to use the picures in forums.


I also created an Instagram account today, but did not experimented with it yet.
I noticed that you can beyond the standard share mechanism which gives you only a low res version of the picture (which is also shown on Instagram itself) it‘s possible to get a high res link if you search the source code for the high res version or use sites like Downloadgram which takes a share link and returns you the high res link.
As this is not intended by Instagram I‘m not sure how long such high res links would be valid, if they are not long term stable this would be a showstopper using them in Forum BBCode.
I‘m not sure if I will like to use the standard low res Instagram links, as I always posted HD resolution pictures so far.

Google Fotos is still on my list, but I‘m not sure if it is suitable for me as it’s main usecase is to use it on mobile devices with an App. And my intention is to use it exclusively with a Browsee on a PC.

[Pterodactylus]

Ivan, I see you are already an Instagram user, can you please summarize the pros and cons and your experiences with Instagram for me?

[KrazyIvan]

Ivan, I see you are already an Instagram user, can you please summarize the pros and cons and your experiences with Instagram for me?

It's okay for sharing but even when you have the high res link, the link can change. I have several older posts on here where I posted my photo with the Instagram link and it's broken. I fix them if I see them. It is really good to share on Facebook because you just copy the share link and post it on Facebook. Everywhere else it is more involved. Photos used to show up on Twitter automatically if you copied the link, now it just shows a clickable hyperlink.

I have Amazon photos too but sharing publicly from my Amazon account is hit or miss. I am not sure if it is Amazon or Android that is the problem.

I technically pay for Google photos (I have a 100GB Google Drive subscription) but it does not have a way to in-line photos in my forum posts or I don't know how to do it. It's only $2.99 a month and I get it free because I have a Google Rewards account that makes enough money to offset the cost.

[usk15]

I might stay on FLICKR after all, but create more accounts to split my photos into different categories, like landscape, pens, cars, some others. Just to keep up to 1000. The idea is to create similar names accounts (just change different numbers or letters on the end...), with same password, uploading only one category of pictures for each account.
But that also involve a lot of work, to download, categorizes, upload, tags them, link to different groups, so on.

[Pterodactylus]

I might stay on FLICKR after all, but create more accounts to split my photos into different categories, like landscape, pens, cars, some others. Just to keep up to 1000. The idea is to create similar names accounts (just change different numbers or letters on the end...), with same password, uploading only one category of pictures for each account.
But that also involve a lot of work, to download, categorizes, upload, tags them, link to different groups, so on.

Interesting, I just thought about the same as an option.
If you don‘t care about followers, statistics, favorite pictures this would be a way to use several free Flickr accounts just as an hosting space (e.g. for Forum usage).

The problem when you used references of pictures still remains, deleting them in the first account and moving them into the second, third,.... invalidates the linked references.


They claim to try to prevent users to see the service just as hosting space, but actually it seems that they drive people exactly to just that view, not caring about the community and do not participate there anymore.
Just use the hosting space.

[usk15]

...

The problem when you used references of pictures still remains, deleting them in the first account and moving them into the second, third,.... invalidates the linked references.

They claim to try to prevent users to see the service just as hosting space, but actually it seems that they drive people exactly to just that view, not caring about the community and do not participate there anymore.
Just use the hosting space.

I care most about my pens photos, linked here and to FPN, so I have decided to keep the current account with pens only. All others photos are just hobby, don't really care if the links are broken, if I will try to work out different groups I'm in.

They didn't care about us when change rules, who gives a 2 cent about them?!? We are gonna use them as host...

Planet ME, money driven society...

[dapprman]

I actually remember when the free Flickr account was really restrictive. I used Webshots for my photos and Flickr just for arty stuff, however then Webstuff changed their model and I lost everything online (or rather the uploads and comments, I still had the original images). I then started using Photobucket and subscribed at a lower level .....

All free photo hosting is a risk (actually virtually anything in the cloud is) - even Google Photos (as they regularly drop things, some of which appearing to be popular and well used at the time). For cross posting I suspect most of us will use Imgur (which I moved my generic stuff to when Photoshop dropped the bomb), but even there is not guaranteed long term.

[grainweevil]

Recent image hosting problems rather remind me of forum hosting problems UK woodworkers went through back in the day. As progressive changes in user agreements and hosting decisions changed we became unwilling nomads travelling from Yahoo Clubs* to Yahoo Groups* to something-community-or-other to MSN Groups* until eventually we gave in, threw our lot in with an otherwise failing privately-hosted forum and lost all control. Nowadays I'm not sure any of the original movers and shakers in that forum even contribute to the "new" one, but I suspect it tells a tale. If you want control over your content, you have to pay for the hosting. Could it be that paying for a website might end up the cheapest and most consistent option for image hosting...?

*If you remember any of those, you're probably not a natural at reddit. ;)

[penwash]

If you want control over your content, you have to pay for the hosting. Could it be that paying for a website might end up the cheapest and most consistent option for image hosting...?

*If you remember any of those, you're probably not a natural at reddit. ;)

Which is exactly what I had decided to do years ago. I decided to pay for the services that I use out of flickr.

And as the result, the services have benefited me a lot more than what I paid them annually, and as long as they don't change the quality of the service, I am okay paying the price increase and continue to benefit and skip all these frustrations and heartache.

[grainweevil]

Well, if you're happy, Will, then no worries. But others don't seem to be, and given the degree to which image hosting sites seem willing to move the goal posts at the drop of a hat, I personally don't share your confidence in any of them longterm.

[penwash]

Well, if you're happy, Will, then no worries. But others don't seem to be, and given the degree to which image hosting sites seem willing to move the goal posts at the drop of a hat, I personally don't share your confidence in any of them longterm.

"Others" here means a few people who complained. I think there are just as many if not more people who are fine with the changes.
And when I say "complain", I'm not chiding or being derisive, we all complain about something, I do as well, just not about this particular matter. :)

And it's not about me being confident of their (image hosting businesses) long term policies, but my position stems from the history of service that I experience from flickr.
So far they haven't let me down, and they aid me in my hobbies.
Therefore until that changes, I have no problem with paying. That's all.

[Pterodactylus]

Well, if you're happy, Will, then no worries. But others don't seem to be, and given the degree to which image hosting sites seem willing to move the goal posts at the drop of a hat, I personally don't share your confidence in any of them longterm.

"Others" here means a few people who complained. I think there are just as many if not more people who are fine with the changes.
And when I say "complain", I'm not chiding or being derisive, we all complain about something, I do as well, just not about this particular matter. :)

And it's not about me being confident of their (image hosting businesses) long term policies, but my position stems from the history of service that I experience from flickr.
So far they haven't let me down, and they aid me in my hobbies.
Therefore until that changes, I have no problem with paying. That's all.

Perfectly fine.

I even would have considered a Pro membership by myself if they would not have threatened to delete millions of photos of you don‘t pay.

This change is not only affecting current free users, it affects also all future users/customers.
A couple of months ago the CEO still claimed all current uploaded photos on Flickr are save and will be save in the future.

But this was a lie as we see now.

What it really means is that they only keep content of actively paying users in the future (1000 remaining pictures are peanuts).
It also means the first day a Pro user is not paying anymore he is loosing his collection and all his work put into it.

Imagine you miss to prolong your Pro account for various reasons (forgot, illness, death, pausing the hobby, can’t afford a Pro account temporarily, vacation,.......) , you will loose your stuff.

This paradigm change simply means, lifelong continuous payments or you will loose your stuff immediately.

This is not good business behavior in my eyes.
This is a simple strategy to minimize the efforts (bandwidth and storage) and maximize the profit, all history will be cut off.

It is told that Flickr has the largest photography collection with a lot of historic valuable pictures and a lot of pictures under Creative Commons licence.

Many of those will be lost.

All users have to live with the new paradigm, pay or loose your content when you stop paying (no matter why).

If they would have chosen a different approach, like, Ok we change the terms of service, free users are limited, but existing stuff will not be deleted (also from Pro users which fall back to the free status).
If you are above the limit you can’t upload anymore and can’t use specific features until you are under the limit or gain Pro status again.
Then I would also had considered upgrading to a Pro account as the current stuff would be save also for the future.

They claim themselves to be a social media and the importance of the community and that they also share the passion for photography, but they act and behave like a pure plain storage hoster (as long as you pay you get some storage and bandwidth, when you stop it will be removed immediately).

This is not what users expect from a social media, this give not trust that the content (with all the emotions, passion, work and possible social and historic value) will last a long time.

So imo they spoke the death sentence to the community with the recently taken actions.

[Brilliant Bill]

There's an old saying. It comes from a time when adults populated the world and people understood there are consequences to their actions:

"You may not get everything you pay for in life, but you're surely going to pay for everything you get."

The internet seems to have fostered a mindset among some that everything should be free. I used to read content at The New York Times until some years ago. They created a paywall. They said I could pay and read content, or I could keep my money and not read their content. My choice. There was no coercion. I wasn't being held hostage. They were not acting like the mafia. They have bills to pay too. They have every right to expect compensation for services rendered. You don't walk into a bar and tell the guy who bought you a drink last week that he has to pay for your drinks from now on because you've become an alcoholic.

We've done a disservice to people who have learned a mindset that Internet services should be free. When the "free" runs out, some of them fall back on petulant ranting about their claimed victimhood; it can get pretty ugly. Parents supply everything for children -- up to a time when they have to be adults. Then they are expected to earn and pay their own way.

Nobody owes you anything.

Finally, I'll suggest something Winston Churchill said: "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

Personally, I've found life a lot more satisfying when I focused on what I could give rather than what I could get for free.

[Jon Szanto]

The bottom line is this: have they violated the Terms of Agreement that you signed and/or agreed to when you signed up for their service, or have they not? If they have violated that agreement, then you have a case to complain; if they have not, you are whistling in the wind.

I expect *nothing* from the people/companies who promise *everything*. It is what is agreed to that is of paramount importance.

[Pterodactylus]

It’s not about the expectation getting everything for free, and it’s not about terms of service.

Social media is based on the the idea that the data has no expiration date, i think this is part of the success.
Many of these are of course without direct monetary compensation for the user, what is advertised as “free”.

But free does not really mean free in the traditional understanding.
It’s not anymore as simple as: I give you money you give me a service.
We live in the data centric age, data is more valuable than anything else.

Free in the meaning of social media really means, I give you digital data, you provide the service.
It’s all about the value of the data.

This is what all the big social media players like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and co. follow.

Flickr is a social media and people joined there because they traded data for service, additionally they accepted Ads to keep the lights on.
The provided data beside everything else also meant to be more attractive to users, generating more traffic, more paying users, more Ad volume.
And for sure the expectation was that the data will last longer than you pay for additional premium features.

Now they changed this and imho the people for sure have reason to be pissed, no matter if they had the right to do it or not (and they have the legal right to do it for sure).

But this does not mean that doing this changes will not damage their business model significantly.
There treasure is the immense amount of data (pictures) and the vivid active community.
Imo they damaged both significantly with the recent decisions.

People expects that social media data lasts forever (whatever this means) or at least a lifetime or more, this is part of the idea.

Beside that such data might also have or will have historic or common social value.

Itˋs not anymore about the simple approach: provide something - pay for it like in ancient times.

Welcome to the 21 Century ;)

[usk15]

After reading comments here and there regarding FLICKR changes, plus the new log-in system to new FLICKR, I will probably close my account.
The most important change for me is how they decide to approach this. Deleting old photos until reach 1000 is pure stupid, and that will affect huge amount of post on different forums everywhere.

[Jon Szanto]

it’s not about terms of service.

It most certainly is. If you can point to a violation of what YOU agreed to when you signed on to their service, I'll be more than happy to listen and commiserate.


Flickr is a social media...

That is completely erroneous. At it's basic, core function, it is an onlilne storage place for your images. All other aspects flow from that, from sharing them to creating groups, etc. What costs them money, what is the main drain on their side of the equation is the stored data and the hardware necessary for that, as well as the bandwidth to service all the various calls to your data.

Really, not understanding that is a bit odd. Facebook was designed as a social media site that additionally allows one to store data; Flicker is a data storage platform that added other sharing services after that. I'm willing to be that is all clearly stated in the Terms of Agreement.

Flickr Terms of Service (current version) (https://www.flickr.com/help/terms)

Note the following:


"PLEASE READ THESE TERMS OF USE CAREFULLY. BY ACCESSING OR USING THE SERVICES, PURCHASING PRODUCTS OR FLICKR PRO SERVICES, OR CLICKING THAT YOU AGREE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS OF USE."

[Pterodactylus]

It most certainly is. If you can point to a violation of what YOU agreed to when you signed on to their service, I'll be more than happy to listen and commiserate.


Flickr is a social media...

That is completely erroneous. At it's basic, core function, it is an onlilne storage place for your images. All other aspects flow from that, from sharing them to creating groups, etc. What costs them money, what is the main drain on their side of the equation is the stored data and the hardware necessary for that, as well as the bandwidth to service all the various calls to your data.

Really, not understanding that is a bit odd. Facebook was designed as a social media site that additionally allows one to store data; Flicker is a data storage platform that added other sharing services after that. I'm willing to be that is all clearly stated in the Terms of Agreement.

Ok, fair enough, let’s agree to disagree.

Time will show if Flickr can survive as pure storage hoster selling storage for a small amount of time (annual Pro membership time slices beside the big players which can afford to give you huge amount of storage for free (like e.g. Google)) :)

Storage, bandwidth and processing capacity is getting massively cheaper every year, this is not a sustainable business model, and this will continue.
E.g. what was a valuable amount of storage and bandwidth five years ago is now water under the bridge.
Companies which trust on this as business model will imo not last very long.

E.g. I also work for an big IT company which e.g. also works on the internet of things. Idea is that everything can get, store, process data and is connected.
Bandwidth and data storage capacity are treated as given things, companies which stick to such an approach will be history sooner than later.

[amk]

What I value on Flickr is the fact that it's a photography forum. It has a number of interesting groups dedicated to particular subjects, such as Buddhist temples, Orthodox church architecture, carnivals, particular places. It has a lot of serious photographers as members. It's not, generally, full of pictures of what people ate last night, the bar they're in this evening, lolcatz or political memes, or if it is, I'm not seeing them.

I think they've mishandled this situation by not communicating first with account holders. However what I see from direct contact is that free account holders (I'm a Pro account holder) will get given time to decide what to do - pay up, rationalise their images or move them elsewhere. That's very different from what Photobucket did, pulling the plug overnight on links and displaying their blackmail messages. (The $49 annual fee is also a lot less than the $300 Photobucket demanded from me.)

I'll stick with Flickr. It does deliver me some good things including being able to offer specific licences and being able to put photos up in high resolution. But if you're mainly interested in hosting for photos for this forum, then something like Imgur might be cheaper and easier.

[dapprman]

Lets get some basic facts down.

When Flickr started the free option was very limited, there were extreme restrictions on how much data you could upload and even back then when sensors were still mainly 4Mb and less and phones only took small images, you were still looking at a hundred photos or so if you were lucky.

Flickr were bought out by Yahoo and over time the free service improved, to such an extent that for most people there was no point in the Pro subscription unless there were specific features you wanted to use. During this time Yahoo were losing money (and still are) with no end in sight. Over time they have sold off components outside of their core business that have been losing them money, including Flickr.

Pictures require space. Forget about the cost of a hard drive for your PC, when you get on to commercial storage, with resilience, cross data centre protection, backups, etc, you start looking at $3-400 per TB. Also forget about economies of scale, more disks means more intelligent cabinets and more networking. Also forget about cloud reducing costs. From commercial experience I have seen just how expensive moving servers from your own data centres to the cloud can be. Even Gartner (who I've never really trusted) have moved their position from promoting complete migrations to the cloud to warning that an estimated 40% of all cloud migrations will be reversed back to being complete onsite due to cost.

Basically the days of the large capacity free subscriptions are coming to an end and we can expect most, if not all, of the other hosting companies to cut back their free options else the companies themselves face commercial collapse.

Flickr have actually been quite fair about this, giving plenty of warning, the ability to download and recover your photos through their own batch processing, and having a decent cost unlimited subscription service with other benefits (such as pay annually and get 15% off your Adobe Cloud subscription).

Oh on the Terms of Agreement - these also will always say thy can be changed within reasonable means when required, plus the actual subscription details will never be covered in them but will be just a vague concept.

[Pterodactylus]

As said for me itˋs mainly not a question of “free” or paid.
I could easily afford a Pro account, but why should I settle on a site which will delete my content the first day I stop actively paying for their premium features (which I by the way not need, but this is not the point)?

I want to settle on a place where my stuff (from today’s perspective) will outlast the relatively short period I would pay for premium features.

And every user on a site sooner or later will fall back to the free user state (this is what will happen with 100% confidence to each account).

Iˋm aware that there is no guarantee how long data on a provider will last really, but I see not a single reason to keep on using a provider where I already know that he won’t keep my data any longer than I would pay for his premium service.

[Deb]

Since Photobucket did what it did I've been using Fotki which gives a decent service. The lesson to be learned here is that you can trust no online company to safeguard your stuff, even if you pay for their services ( which I do). Sooner or later you will be faced with blackmail and if you don't pay up your historical photo contributions to boards and blogs will disappear.

[titrisol]

I'm very happy to see flickr being less of a photo-dump and more of a showcase as it was 15 years ago.
I keep between 150 and 300 pictures in there and only try to upload ones that are worth sharing; the free account was bound to be limited at some point and Yahoo! screwed up by trying to compete with google (who screwed picasa). I'm a bottom feeder, however $4/month it is not unreasonable to share large amount of pictures.

[Pterodactylus]

For me I‘ve found a new approach.

I‘ve created an DeviantArt account for my drawings:
https://www.deviantart.com/ptero-pterodactylus
Still beeing busy to bring it up to speed (still more than 1 year behind).

There I will publish all my Art related pictures, like drawings but also (in my eyes nice) pen or writing related pictures (e.g. what I post in the quotes thread).
Long story short the good ones will be located there.

As for Flickr:
I will delete all the old pictures which have no aesthetically value for me from my account (and damage mainly old FPN threads with this action).
Mainly keeping the newer stuff posted here I hope to reach the 1000 picture limit.


I create also new free Flickr accounts, as it is now still easy to get some before Smugmug will take over the registration process next year and it will most likely be harder to create them.
I will use these accounts only as storage space to post „ordinary“ things for forum usage.
If one is full I will just move to the next.

So finally they drove me away from using Flickr as my main content hoster.
I will use them in the future only als storage Provider for ordinary daily pictures, not the (in my eyes) good stuff anymore.
And of course not participating in their community anymore as well.


So mission accomplished Flickr management :deadhorse:

[Empty_of_Clouds]

As for Flickr:
I will delete all the old pictures which have no aesthetically value for me from my account (and damage mainly old FPN threads with this action).
Mainly keeping the newer stuff posted here I hope to reach the 1000 picture limit.

I did that just before I got banned from FPN. All of my pictures were on Flickr at that time. I got slammed by the stupor moderator team because it does tend to mess up a lot of threads. Having said that though, the recent debacle with photobucket has created its own share of mayhem in that respect.

[Chrissy]

There was a time when I only selected all of my very best photos and uploaded them onto Flickr, but as time went on, my going out birdwatching hobby waned slightly, and staying in with fountain pens overtook it to become my first hobby. :) I didn't seem to upload anywhere near as many photos onto my Flickr account anymore.

When I started my "inkyfountainpens" free Wordpress web-site, "KrazyIvan" recommended that hosting my images on Flickr would save me space on my web-site, so that's what I've been doing. I'm nowhere near to 1000 images on Flickr as most of my images that I place on this forum are uploaded directly from my computer and are hosted on here. This system is currently working. :)

It's true that most of the images I'm now uploading onto Flickr are ink review images, so all of my birdwatching friends will get a bit of a shock if they see them. :facepalm:

[adhoc]

It’s funny how many people say “just upload to imgur”, as if they can’t do the same thing later down the line.

And yes, you are right. Flickr will not be the only service that has done this. It sucks, but there’s nothing to do about it besides keeping a physical backup.

[titrisol]

That is a fact.
This whole "cloud" idea is extremely dangerous for longevity of your stuff; and it is also incredibly more vulnerable to hacking than a external HDD


It’s funny how many people say “just upload to imgur”, as if they can’t do the same thing later down the line.

And yes, you are right. Flickr will not be the only service that has done this. It sucks, but there’s nothing to do about it besides keeping a physical backup.

[Pterodactylus]

So mission accomplished, I’ve finished upload all the art related content I wanted to move to DeviantArt.
New such stuff I will upload there in the future.

Iˋve also deleted more than 1100 pen related pictures on Flickr.
All of those I initially created for threads on FPN, so this damaged quite a lot old FPN threads.

Iˋm pretty sure that almost none FPgeeks threads are damaged by this action (maybe single ones where I reused old content, but this is marginal).

My Flickr account is now right below 1000 pics and therefore only a static dead store of the remaining stuff.
As said I will use Flickr in the future to post common things I do not want to have on my DeviantArt account, using new free accounts I just created, but with no intend to participate in the Flickr community anymore.
I will miss some of the posters there as they upload really good stuff there as well (at least till now, maybe this will change as some of them also used an Ad financed account so far).

[ethernautrix]

I deleted more than 1000 photos, about 900 to go. Feels like I wasted $25 a year for 12 years. Didn't really use flickr as well as I could have. Moja winna.

Maybe when I get serious it'll be worth $50/year.

[calamus]

I used to use imageshack, and they deleted all my images when they changed their policy. I've been using Imgur for a while now, and so far so good. I figure if it's free, I'm getting more than I paid for. Before using Imgur I had my own website, and I'd put photos up on it with an ftp client (cyberduck, which used to be free but is now for pay, but cheap) and hotlink from there. If you already have a website, you can just add another page but not link it to the rest of the site, and that way you can use it for storage without visitors seeing it. Domains are cheap and Web hosting can be also. You can even get it for free, but as we all know, that can change in heartbeat.

[KrazyIvan]

Well, this is not looking good. I finally received my email with a link to download my photos. It just takes me back to the Flickr page where you can request the link to download your photos. :crazy_pilot:

[azkid]

I got an email too. I suppose I should search my blog for Flickr links. What a pita.

[KrazyIvan]

I just checked it again today and now I see links to seven zip files waiting to be downloaded and another zip file with my account data.

[shorthandtypist]

Just over ten years ago I opened a lifetime flickr junior account for my daughter which I helped her with and a couple of years later I started a pro account for myself. My daughter has nearly 12000 photographs and has had hundreds of thousands of views. Ownership of flickr has changed several times and our pro accounts were no longer honoured but they were changed to accounts with unlimited storage. With the other changes on flickr which made many leave we decided to try ipernity but we returned to flickr. I have removed around 5000 of my photographs leaving 900 odd but since so many of the groups have been abandoned and so many of our flickr friends have left I am not sure that I want to continue posting on flickr. Tonight my daughters photostream was blanked out by a message giving her a choice of 'mark 11,375 photos for deletion' which is all of them or 'save photos' by buying a pro account. I feel this is very threatening and totally out of order. She pointed out on her last post on flickr that she has already rendered unto Caesar what was due and that as a photography student she could neither afford nor felt inclined to pay for something that was paid for in the first instance. Does this now mean that flickr has moved the goal posts and now not going to continue with the free accounts and limit storage to 5000 photos? flicker can change its terms at any time to suit themselves, fair enough, it's their game and their ball, but my daughter and I don't have to play. I think it's game over:wave: I was going to post a link to her photostream but I don't know if we are allowed to do that here.

[usk15]

A big stupid decision from FLICKR. Myself I delete 3300 photos, kept pens related and few others.
You can link you're daughter photostream here.

[dapprman]

I've just checked my account - it clearly says I have a limit of a thousand photos, which if you read the first post in this thread, was the limit they announced for free accounts at the start of last November. I can but assume your daughter has 12375 photos on her stream at present.

[Brilliant Bill]

After two months on the new flickr, I'm disappointed. Unless Smugmug has a rabbit to pull out of their hat sometime soon, I think they're throwing good money after bad. I don't see this as sustainable.

When I left six or seven years ago, flickr had dynamic interaction; groups were vibrant and discussions were plenty. Images were posted and often talked about by people you had come to know over some years. Then that awful yahoo woman took over, ruined it all, and I deleted my images and left. Having 10 years or so experience with Smugmug, I hoped they would make it better, so as soon as 2019 came on scene I paid for a pro account. Sorry now that I did, and I won't be renewing it.

Interaction in groups is not happening. The last discussion post in most groups is years old. Starting new discussions gets you nowhere. Apparently, people are finished talking photography. Comments on images are minimal and often as not some meaningless "emoji." On the positive side, they have some of the finest black & white images published anywhere I've ever seen. One thing that surprised me is they seem to have probably the largest collection of still image sexual porn to be found anywhere. If they cleared all that junk out, they'd have room on their servers to host images for free!

While I'm currently giving them the benefit of the doubt because of the changeover, the computer glitches are too commonplace and frequent for any service asking to be paid. As the transition matures, I'm hoping they get that worked out. Currently, it's unacceptable.

[penwash]

I am not a flickr crusader nor advocate, just a satisfied customer. But I thought this thread could use some balance in its content.

I paid for their service since years ago, maybe 10 years or something. And yes, as I mentioned either in this thread or a similar one to this, I'll keep paying them as long as they provide the current service. That hasn't changed, I'm happy with their service at the level and type of usage that I am doing currently and in the near future.

Downtime: Yes, I've encountered "Bad Panda" screen a few times, but not frequent enough for me to raise my eyebrow.
Usage: I use flickr *extensively*. I post pen photos (used to be camera photos) at least once every few days.
Photos: I have 7K photos hosted on flickr, and I have zero problem accessing any of them, even my oldest ones from 2006.

[KrazyIvan]

In checking my blog that has most of the photos hosted on Flickr, I have not found any missing photos yet. Admittedly, I have not gone back to my earliest posts to see if the photos still link properly.

[ethernautrix]

The price increase made me realize that I hadn't been using Flickr sufficiently to justify continuing paying for the service, which I'd been paying for since... 2006, I think.

So I deleted a couple thousand photos to bring my total under the limit. That actually felt good.

If I had made good use of the service (nods to long-neglected blog), then the price increase, while -annoying-, wouldn't have compelled me to opt for the free account.

[shorthandtypist]

I've just checked my account - it clearly says I have a limit of a thousand photos, which if you read the first post in this thread, was the limit they announced for free accounts at the start of last November. I can but assume your daughter has 12375 photos on her stream at present.

Yes she does indeed at present and I did read the first post in this thread but hit the 5 instead of 1 on my previous post!! She has also received some requests from groups that she posts on to add some photographs as flickr does not delete photographs on groups. Whether this is so I don't know but I think it is a little academic as she says she cannot be bothered with flickr anymore and is too busy with modelling and photography.

[Brilliant Bill]

Another current problem with flickr is slowness. No other site I use is so painfully slow loading pages. Not just image pages, but data pages also. Hopefully as they get the servers unclogged and sort things out, speed can be addressed.

[dapprman]

Another current problem with flickr is slowness. No other site I use is so painfully slow loading pages. Not just image pages, but data pages also. Hopefully as they get the servers unclogged and sort things out, speed can be addressed.

Photobucket is far, far worse and always has been really slow - which is why I dropped my paid subscription on there and removed a load of photos to keep within the limit. TBH I've had no problems with Flikr in recent times, but then I have not tried uploading to it (which imgur has now really bad for). There have been performance problems in the past though.