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Flickr Starts Culling Users' Photos (bbc.com) 83

Posted by msmash from the FYI dept.
Photo-sharing website Flickr is starting to delete users' photos after changing its terms and conditions. The firm announced in November that it would no longer be allowing its members one terabyte of free storage. From a report: Under the new rules, there is a limit of 1,000 photographs for those who do not subscribe to the service at a cost of $49.99 per year. One terabyte would store around 200,000 photos with an average size of 5MB. Flickr was acquired by another photo platform called SmugMug in April 2018. The price it paid to former owner Verizon was not disclosed. In a blog in November announcing the changes, Flickr said that "storing tens of billions of Flickr members' photos is staggeringly expensive". It also said by introducing the free storage in 2013, Flickr's original owner Yahoo had "lost sight of what made Flickr truly special" as new users were attracted by the storage rather than the photography.
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Flickr Starts Culling Users' Photos More

Flickr Starts Culling Users' Photos

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  • Google photos (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @02:31PM (#58074720)

    This will increase the migration speed from Flickr to Google Photos. I doubt many people will switch to the paid version.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Or it might be that the business model of giving away storage space and bandwidth is not viable, at least it isn't if you aren't part of the Google/Facebook advertising hegemony.

      The patience of investors holds out for only so long. In the near future the wheels will probably come off lot of more of these .com 2.0 models that thought they could pay bills with clicks.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Or it might be that the business model of giving away storage space and bandwidth is not viable

        Flickr Free never did that. As far as we know its perfectly viable --- they always had a limit on the Free one of a certain number of uploads per month, but until now it was never limited in how many Photos you could share with the public.... they provide a service where users can submit and share photos, and in exchange the Photo site can monetize them by showing advertising.

        Its Ashame for all those phot

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Google Photos doesn't have any advertising. The business model is based on users sharing photos adding value, and on supporting Android.

        For example Photos prompts you to share your snaps on Google Maps. That improves Google Maps, and that in turn improves Google's landmark recognition AI.

        Flickr's problem is that their only revenue streams are advertising and subscriptions, neither of which are very sustainable these days.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by macraig ( 621737 )

      I didn't. I jumped ship immediately when I got the announcement. I have no interest in lining new owners' pockets to justify their corporate cannibalism. Aren't corporations supposed to possess personhood? Wasn't cannibalism of other persons supposed to be illegal? I'm confused.

      • Re:Google photos (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @03:11PM (#58074938)

        I never used Flickr in the first place. You get what you pay for, so my photos are on a cloud provider I paid for, or on an AWS virtual machine. Either way, I'm the customer, not the product.

        I just don't trust "free" providers.

        • I just don't trust "free" providers.

          And yet Flickr never deleted my photos and will keep more photos than any sane person would ever go through to look at on my account. Even with this move they have a lot in inherited trust from years of providing the service they do.

          Are they my only storage of photos? Don't be stupid, Flickr is a photo sharing site, not your personal backup, and in that department they offer a better service than any amount of money I could pass in the direction of Amazon.

      • Aren't corporations supposed to possess personhood? Wasn't cannibalism of other persons supposed to be illegal? I'm confused.

        You are thinking of people. Corporations possesses investors and the values thereof: profit, but may involve some other human-like qualities in small amounts where they do not conflict.

        I jumped ship immediately when I got the announcement. I have no interest in lining new owners' pockets to justify their corporate cannibalism.

        So you jumped ship from one big corporation to an even bigger one, that's gobbled up tens (hundreds?) of smaller companies?

        It's a tough argument that Google's a better option. Flickr is a photography-focused business trying to make a profit. Seems like a photographers would want to support that, as opposed to a company that

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by macraig ( 621737 )

          So you jumped ship from one big corporation to an even bigger one, that's gobbled up tens (hundreds?) of smaller companies?

          I didn't say that I jumped onto another boat, did I? I jumped into the water and just swam: I no longer store or back them up in the commercial clouds.

          • I didn't say that I jumped onto another boat, did I?

            You realize you are responding to thread where the OP said:

            This will increase the migration speed from Flickr to Google Photos. I doubt many people will switch to the paid version.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by macraig ( 621737 )

              You do realize that the same post had two sentences in it, and that I was responding exclusively and directly to the latter of the two?

              "I doubt many people will switch to the paid version."
              "I didn't."

              • You do realize that the same post had two sentences in it, and that I was responding exclusively and directly to the latter of the two?

                Here's the entire OP, for your reference:

                This will increase the migration speed from Flickr to Google Photos. I doubt many people will switch to the paid version.

                Can you explain what part of that you were responding to that's not related to switching from Google to Flickr?

      • Wait, wait, are you sure the two companies cooked and ate each other?

        They might have only gotten married, agreed to live as one, combined their accounts, and one of them changed their name.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by macraig ( 621737 )

          Wait, wait, are you sure the two companies cooked and ate each other?

          No, I'm quite sure that they didn't eat each other. Cannibalism isn't bidirectional like your USB cable. There Can Be Only One flicking the leftovers out of his beard.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I left Google Photos for Smugmug about 2 years ago. Don't know if they've done anything good with Flickr, I never used it. Dunno why they bought it.

      Google Photos is an absolute dumpster fire though.

      • I certainly wouldn't be using a 1TB cloud storage service for $49.99/year when I can purchase a 1TB hard drive for less or a 4TB hard drive for less than 2 years subscription fees.

    • Google Photos is no better since its a Google product.

    • Totally, I'm seeing all sort of posts and helpful hints about this in my Google reader.

    • This will increase the migration speed from Flickr to Google Photos. I doubt many people will switch to the paid version.

      Google doesn't maintain originals, unless you pay or buy a Pixel device (then you get that free for 2? years).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Paxtez ( 948813 )

        Well, kinda. If you take less than 16 MP photos or 1080p video, the free service is the same as the paid. If only limits very large photos/videos.

    • Can I make mine 12000 dpi, sign board size?

  • I mean aside from Lord Vader, is anyone else allowed to do this? Why do people stand for it?

    I would just like, say "Fuck you" to Flickr and leave, if I were a subscriber. Which I'm not. But if I was, I would totally ditch them.

    • I mean aside from Lord Vader, is anyone else allowed to do this? Why do people stand for it?

      The alternative being that they continue for a bit longer with money-losing ToS and shut down their service when they run out of money.

      Do you think that any ToS you click "accept" on are bound to hold true until the end of time? ToS can be altered. You can refuse to accept them and stop using the service.

      • I think a fair compromise would have been to archive photos in excess of the free limit to cold storage, then allow people who later subscribe to have them restored within some reasonable period of time (say, one business day). For example...

        1. All photos in excess of the limit as of the new policy date are archived to cold storage, and will be retained for a minimum of 18 months.

        2. Customers with photos in cold storage have three different subscription choices:

        * $9.95/month auto-renewing. Excess photos are

        • I think a fair compromise would have been to archive photos

          Sure. But that'd cost them more money... to archive, and later restore the photos. I don't know what you mean by "cold storage"? Tapes or optical drives? Sure seems expensive to store and keep track of any physical media. Whatever the mechanism it has to be as fail-safe as whatever "warm" storage they use now.

          And I suspect people would claim they are holding photos for ransom. Which they would be in a way.

    • It is not one-sided (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @03:57PM (#58075250)
      The situation is symmetrical. In a free service, both sides have the same power. At any time, you are allowed to quit using the free service and sign up with a different service. There is nothing the service can do to prevent you from leaving. Likewise, at any time, the free service is allowed to quit offering the service under its original conditions, and re-offer it under different conditions. And there is nothing you can do to prevent this.

      The only way to prevent this is to pay for the service for a period of time specified in a contract. Payment constitutes consideration [nolo.com] - something given up in exchange for receiving something - and thus creates a binding contract. So if you agree to pay for it for a year (with penalties if you fail to pay), you can lock in the terms and conditions for the duration of your service contract. That's why when a cellular carrier changes their terms and conditions, it releases you from any multi-year contract you may have signed up for. Most carriers instead opt to "grandfather" you in under the old terms and conditions for the duration of your contract to avoid this.

      Without consideration, there is no contract, and neither side is obligated to maintain the original agreement terms in perpetuity. (Be careful of this if you let your apartment rent switch to month-to-month. That can be advantageous if you plan to move out in a few months. But if you're planning to stay, it means the landlord can kick you out and replace you with a different tenant. If you wish to stay for a long time, it is in your best interests to negotiate a year-long or multi-year lease.)

    • I would just like, say "Fuck you" to Flickr and leave

      That's the ticket. You see it's your perogative to do just that because you, just like the other party in question don't have any contractual obligations whatsoever to each other.

  • 1TB wow, I missed out! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @02:49PM (#58074816)

    If I had known there was a free service with that much space I would have been backing up to it.

    Why yes, my photos are very large, abstract, and look like noise. That's because they were painted by AI.

      • Google Photos gives you unlimited storage of photos up to 2048x2048 resolution. They also give unlimited storage of videos, though I can't find the current limitations. It used to be max 1080p and shorter than 15 minutes. Each Google account has 15 GB of additional storage for photos/videos which exceed these limits. And you can pay them for incrreased unrestricted storage.
      • If you have an Amazon Prime account, it includes Prime Photos which gives you unlimited storage of photos of any resolution, includ

  • BackBlaze is unlimited storage for 50/yr

  • I did some account pruning at the end of last year, something that will probably become an annual tradition going forward. One of the accounts was the old Yahoo! account that hasnâ(TM)t been visited for about 5 years. I happened to remember that I also had a Flickr account that I used with my N95, so I grabbed a dump before deleting the account. Probably not enough to get purged, but fairly happy I did, some of those pictures werenâ(TM)t in any of my archives.

  • umm, customers? (Score:3)

    by kamakazi ( 74641 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @03:00PM (#58074868)

    So, they buy Flickr, then intentionally take away what they themselves say was attracting new users.
    Somehow I don't think you can successfully monetize an internet platform by taking away people's reason for using it. I will admit I have no idea how to monetize a big pile of everybodies photos, but I would definitely be brainstorming ways to convince people to pay to do cool stuff on the platform with all those photos rather than scrapping the thing that got them in the door.

    • Yeah someone didn't look at the books in enough detail before they bought the company

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by epine ( 68316 )

      So, they buy Flickr, then intentionally take away what they themselves say was attracting new users.

      It's a simple phase change. For a while the company thinks it can make all the relationships work by selling a growth story. Then one day, the senior management look around the room and decide they need to transition to a revenue story (target subgenre: revenue exceeds expense).

      Popularity might get you a hot ticket on prom night, but it won't ultimately fuel the band.

      That's also a common phase change: one min

    • So, they buy Flickr, then intentionally take away what they themselves say was attracting new users.

      But for a site like Flickr, they do not benefit from a sheer volume of new users.

      They want users who are more serious about photos, not just people there to backup random photo libraries.

      I personally have got back into using Flickr more again in recent months, and I think the quality of photos has increased.

      Somehow I don't think you can successfully monetize an internet platform by taking away people's reason

      • To me Flickr provides by far the best way to view photos - where I can see the photo really well, in as best a quality as possible - but at the same time also have quick access to see important EXIF data containing technical details about the photo. There's no-one that does this better than Flickr.

        Yep, especially if you're Pro.

        Flickr Groups are also quite useful, and Flickr handles comments better than most other sharing sites.

        Flickr's also screenshot friendly, as long as you label/tag them as such, having originated in screenshot sharing tools created for a game.

        I've been Pro since 2007, jumped to flickr from Picasa web albums IIRC which was nowhere near as polished as flickr was, even in 2007.

        Yeah, if all someone wants to do is archive their phone photos, then Flickr isn't really for them. But if

  • I have a hard time generating sympathy for people upset about losing access to a service they weren't actually paying for.

  • The 1TB upload changed Flickr from a community to a (free as in beer) photo backup service. It's a good cautionary tale about "you get what you pay for" and "the cloud is someone else's computer". The photo sharing aspect drowned under the data hoarders.

    SmugMug has been around a long time, and built a solid business around photo sharing and sales. I'm hoping they can reinvigorate Flickr, since I don't use mobile-focused/only platforms (looking at you Instagram).

  • Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like photos on flickr.

  • It would be funny if everybody stopped paying $50 year for the service too. I'd laugh.
  • I use to post a TON of photos on Flickr, but have taken all but the last 6 months OFF before they started dumping them. Now, I just keep the latest 6 months worth, and offload the rest to Adobe cloud, included with my photoshop subscription.
  • Aside from the 'access anywhere' thing, I see no reason for people to just go get their own external 1TB (or larger!) drive and just store your own photos and other data. Seriously.

    • I mean, there are other benefits to cloud storage than just access anywhere. It's offsite, where most people keep their backups in the same building. It's on media that periodically gets replaced. Yes, you can rebackup on newer drives, etc, but this is done for you. Okay, that's two reasons.

      • Really, I should just put this sort of thing in a textfile and copypaste it when necessary rather than exercising my fingers every time..
        I really do think 'the cloud' is just a scam. More of a culture-shift being pushed by The Rich and the corporate world to discourage people from actually owning anything themselves towards a culture of 'pay, pay, pay forever' monthly fees to rent everything: 'streaming' media instead of buying copies of what you like; 'leased' cars instead of owning one (but you're still

        • If it's a backup, and the price goes up, you tell them to pound sand. I'm not saying the cloud should be your primary storage. Heck, I'm not even saying the cloud should be your only backup. But, it works for some uses. Yes, you pointed out a lot of issues. Although I would point out your safety deposit box has all the same issues the cloud does. It's not space you own, you cannot access it whenever you want (the bank is closed during hours, or could just deny you access) they can raise the rates, etc

          • I respect what you're saying; the average Joe or Jane more-or-less thinks that what's inside their computer or phone or tablet is Hogswarts magic spells, fairy dust, and Unicorn farts, meanwhile people like you and I were building computers and playing with them back before the IBM Model 5150 hit the market. That being said, 20 years ago 'backing up the computer' when a 60 megabyte HDD was considered big for a consumer end-user, I struggled to back the thing up, at first trying to use crappy streaming-tape

  • Anyone else getting a kind of Photobucket vibe from this?

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