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Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

petapixel.com

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Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#91

Hey, owner & CEO here. Reading this now, but AMA.

Hello. I just logged in for the first time in a while and it asked me to verify my age, despite the fact that my Flickr account is 22 years old. I've been paying for Flickr Pro as long as that has been possible, if I remember correctly, my Flickr user number was ~620. Surely, with an account that's 22 years old you don't need to hand my personal information to Peter Thiel?

To some degree I only still pay for it out of nostalgia for what it was. I stopped using it when it started trying to upload my entire camera roll every time I opened the mobile app - Flickr was never about storing all your photos on someone else's server, it was about curation and community. It somewhat lost that as phone photography got more popular, and instead of empowering users to do that directly on their phone, it presented itself as a mere backup utility. The app seems to be entirely non-functional now, no content loads at all for me. Flickr's failure to move with the rise mobile photography feels like its biggest misstep - age verification for an account that is 22 years old though might actually convince me to stop paying. I'm not using it, the mobile app is broken, and now it wants to hand my PII to a third party.

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't understand you want us to be happy that they take our work? so that their machine can reproduce it?

"They" don't "take your work", your work is still there, and it only reproduces said work in the way that anybody writing a fantasy novel inspired by Lord of the Rings is plagiarizing Lord of the Rings.

The only way the “using LLM to create derivative works is the same as human being inspired” kind of argument works is if you consider LLMs to be conscious human-like beings with free will and capable of being inspired.

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#93
In the last few years I've tried multiple photo hosting options. 500px, Flickr, Unsplash.

In the end, I just built my own photo blog on Hugo with SveltiaCMS (thanks Claude). I don't care much about the social part per se, just want a place to host my photo journeys.

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#94

It's very single purpose, but there's Furtrack for fursuit photography. One of the few sites that leaves photos in full quality rather than compressing them down to 1-2 megapixels. It's been such a tragedy that we now have such good quality cameras, yet all the media we consume is incredibly downscaled and compressed to save money.

Furtrack seems to suffer from the same problem a lot of photo sharing sites do: the only people who visit are the subjects and other photographers.

For example: https://www.furtrack.com/index/species:fennec_fox

Tens, hundreds of photos for each suit, but almost no views.

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#95
post #59

Hey, owner & CEO here. Reading this now, but AMA.

Hey, long-time Flickr user who migrated to Google Photos for a somewhat specific use case. ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/perardi ) I do a lot of event photography as a creative outlet. I want my friends to be able to download individual photos and photo albums easily. As an example, I just photographed a fundraiser for my rugby team last week, and I made all my shots available in a Google Photos album: https://phot…

Thanks for the feedback and feature request. I don't hear this request often for Flickr, but it's a core and beloved feature on our other platform, SmugMug, which you might want to check out if you haven't.

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#96

Hey, owner & CEO here. Reading this now, but AMA.

FYI - I loved reading your blog posts ~20 years ago about how you were building your server infrastructure (hardware, dedicated, onprem, etc). If any more recent post exist on similar topics, I’d be fascinated to read more. https://don.blogs.smugmug.com/

Thanks! I get asked to write again frequently, but finding the time is tough. I'll see what I can do. :)

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#97

Hey, owner & CEO here. Reading this now, but AMA.

whats the current censorship level? I seem to recall a buyout and some kind of 'certain things are no longer allowed' changes. Similar thing happened with tumblr, then they semi-reversed a little but not a lot I think. Stopped using both because losing content and accounts with no customer support is the internet way apparently.

We rely on self- and community-moderation. As long as content is flagged appropriately, we allow and embrace content that's often banned on other platforms, such as artistic nudes.

Not everything is allowed, though - here's the list: https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/20529310987796-...

We do have real, human, in-house customer support. It's good and fast.

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#98

Hey, owner & CEO here. Reading this now, but AMA.

Have you considered offering free storage for freely licensed (cc-by & cc-by-sa) works? I want to share my photos under a free license, but the one thing that always put me off Flickr was that I would have to pay an indefinite subscription to contribute to the commons.

As far as I know, we haven't considered that, but it's a good idea. I'll noodle on it. Thanks!

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn't pay recently, they deleted most of your photos anyway. They deleted all but the newest 100 or so for the free accounts

> If you didn't pay recently, they deleted most of your photos anyway. > > They deleted all but the newest 100 or so for the free accounts The photos are still there. I don't have PRO and my 2772 images can still be seen, even by logged out visitors. I can't upload anything though.

Thats weird. They deleted almost all my pictures.

(I am not really mad at them btw.)

Re: Flickr: The first and last great photo platform

#100
post #91

Hey, owner & CEO here. Reading this now, but AMA.

Hello. I just logged in for the first time in a while and it asked me to verify my age, despite the fact that my Flickr account is 22 years old. I've been paying for Flickr Pro as long as that has been possible, if I remember correctly, my Flickr user number was ~620. Surely, with an account that's 22 years old you don't need to hand my personal information to Peter Thiel? To some degree I only still pay for it out o…

We have a lot of mobile usage and the app works fine, so I'd love to know more about what you're experiencing with it. Can you contact our Support Heroes so we can assist? https://www.flickrhelp.com/

You make a fair point about the age verification thing. I'll look into it. It's probably based on a legal requirement that we have to deal with, even if the solution is silly. Sorry about that.

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