Slashdot Mirror
Flickr Starts Culling Users' Photos (bbc.com)
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.
This will increase the migration speed from Flickr to Google Photos. I doubt many people will switch to the paid version.
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.
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.
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.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
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.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
I have a hard time generating sympathy for people upset about losing access to a service they weren't actually paying for.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
54.99 will buy me a 1TB hard drive, and my photos will not be indexed , compromised, used without permission, etc.
Heck, I can buy two, and keep one off site.
Why use the cloud?
I can get an encrypted key I can carry around with me, if I *need* to have constant access to those photos.
This was an obvious marketing technique from the beginning.
And it is a technique that people continue to fall for.
FOR EXAMPLE: Wyze Cam (https://www.wyzecam.com) has a great deal that supports their $20 security camera with free hosting. It seems obvious that they are just waiting until the size of the installed base hits some magic number and bingo. With an installed base in the millions and a $4.99 per month service fee, the real cash will come pouring in. Right now they are just investing in the future.
There are so many other clear examples, but people just cannot resist "a great deal".
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).
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 - 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.)
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.
Well, I take so mny dick pics that I might actually need 1tb of storage. I would not want them licensing it out to third parties though. Thatâ(TM)s my cock!
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.
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 for using it.
They didn't take away everyone's reason. Just the ones that were not as much into photography.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...which says "TAKE THAT, COCKFAGS!!!" These people probably also use BSD, so it's OK.
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.
Anyone else getting a kind of Photobucket vibe from this?
Can I make mine 12000 dpi, sign board size?
The unilateral major chages in terms and conditions once a realtionship has been established is absurd. They have been going on behind the scenes (inscrutible privacy changes, etc) for so long that now it's happening across the board.
Yeah it's just a few photos and a switch to another service, but it's the mindset that is poisoning the well.
https://xkcd.com/1150/