Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
51–60 of 93 posts
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#52I keep hearing about this coming up, yet no one ask talked about why the data is irretrievable. What it implies is that the internal tool(s) that the support staff uses was designed to do deletion instead of status changes. I imagine they have a web interface that fires off some backend script which a) runs sql deletes on an account ID and all tables and b) fires off scripts that physically deletes all photos across…
"..but that customer service has no method to resurrect it".
Having seen this kind of effect from a brain drain in the past, I think you're exactly right. Software needs love to survive and this is what it looks like when software and a company becomes unloved.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree - I've recently learned of the importance of diversification first hand. However, I'd argue the ability to take legal action, would actually encourage service providers to diversify their own backup strategies and procedures. If a mistake becomes too costly to consider - I think less mistakes would be likely to occur.
Which would also make the products much more expensive. And I have a feeling that this money does not necessarily go into making the product more reliable, but that it is used to buy a better insurance.
You can't continue to get affordable insurance if you are continually making claims.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "some backend script which a) runs sql deletes on an account ID and all tables and b) fires off scripts that physically deletes all photos across all servers." Neither should happen. You never actually delete rows from your tables. You mark them as deleted, sure, but the data needs to be able to come back. Space is cheap, there are simply very few cases where outright deletion from a DB table is warranted. I have a…
I bet that in cases of copyright infringement a logical delete isn't legally sufficient. Sure, you can leave the database pointers in place... but you're going to need to actually remove the infringing content. In that case, at least, a true delete tool would be needed. Like any Internet discussion about copyrights or other people's backend scripts, this is all purely speculative.
I don't buy it. Simply making infringing data unavailable has to be legally sufficient, except in cases involving removing secret or confidential data (which would likely require a court case) there's no harm in having the data merely inaccessible. Moreover, it simply must be the case that this is how it works in practice.
Consider how deep this rabbit hole goes. If expunging any copies of copyrighted data were strictly necessary, then:
What of data existing on backup media? Should those be re-hydrated, the target data expunged, and then recreated in abridged form?
What of data existing in various content caches (such as memcached)? Should all of those systems be flushed of any possible contaminant?
What of the actual data on physical media? Deleting a file on any modern form of media does not expunge the data, it merely unlinks the location of the data on disk from the file system directory. It might be necessary, depending on filesystem and drive type, to scan all of the unused sectors on an entire disk to find out if the target data or any part of it existed.
As you see, quite quickly you get into absurdities. Nobody goes to that much trouble to delete merely copyright infringing data.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "some backend script which a) runs sql deletes on an account ID and all tables and b) fires off scripts that physically deletes all photos across all servers." Neither should happen. You never actually delete rows from your tables. You mark them as deleted, sure, but the data needs to be able to come back. Space is cheap, there are simply very few cases where outright deletion from a DB table is warranted. I have a…
I bet that in cases of copyright infringement a logical delete isn't legally sufficient. Sure, you can leave the database pointers in place... but you're going to need to actually remove the infringing content. In that case, at least, a true delete tool would be needed. Like any Internet discussion about copyrights or other people's backend scripts, this is all purely speculative.
I can't speak for Flickr, but I can tell you that one of their larger competitors simply does a logical delete. That seems to take care of any legal obligation.
I should note that this not true in the case of child porn. Once the feds give them the signal that is completely purged.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#56I keep hearing about this coming up, yet no one ask talked about why the data is irretrievable. What it implies is that the internal tool(s) that the support staff uses was designed to do deletion instead of status changes. I imagine they have a web interface that fires off some backend script which a) runs sql deletes on an account ID and all tables and b) fires off scripts that physically deletes all photos across…
Indeed. I'd have sympathy for Flickr if this story didn't come up almost monthly in the last few years. Between this and the account deletions of those who spoke loudly over Flickr's other account deletions, more and more Flickr is becoming a hostile system. The lack of a retrieval system could be from a lack of Yahoo wishing to invest in upgrades to the platform in general. The last few years have seen few changes f…
I think that danger is very real. I used to be a Flickr Pro member but I've been taking fewer pictures the last few years (for several reasons) and can't justify the Pro account anymore. However, the side affect of that is that now some of my older pictures are less accessible and my old photo sets aren't browseable. At least to me this seems like a bad business plan for Flickr, especially amidst an abundance of rabid competition.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#57I think this is a huge problem with all cloud services. As we start to rely on cloud providers to look after our data, we need to either become more educated (and proficient) by creating regular backups ourselves (which kind of makes the idea of managed cloud services defunct imo), or be in a position where we can individually sue for damages incurred by negligence on the part of the service company in question. So m…
Well, there's the next startup idea, a backup service for cloud services.
There is a joke in there about putting a cloud in your cloud, but I am not sure how that meme goes.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an engineering decision - Flikr has to host a large amount of data for very little cost, since most users aren't paying. Space isn't cheap by the Petabyte! The design for a system where you had multiple redundant copies of all the data and could roll back any changes to the data set is different - and would cost a lot more.
Here is what I don't understand. They have multiple redundant copies in case of unlikely scenario of disaster, but they have no copies or protection in case of quite likely scenario of operator error. This seems backward to me. EDIT: I don't believe that Yahoo! Flickr does not have a way to recover these things. Or I'm completely wrong.
I think it's likely that Flickr has a way to recover the data but the front line support personnel don't, and they don't want to have some dev spend a few hours to fix a single customer's problem, even if it was Flickr's mistake.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#59What a coincidence. My Flickr pro account expires on Feb. 15 and today I've decided to move away from Flickr and not renew my account. What I've done in the short term is to use FlickrTouchr ( https://github.com/tominsam/flickrtouchr ) to retrieve my ~7 GB of photos from Flickr and upload them to Dropbox. The Dropbox gallery feature works quite well and has the advantage that you can easily backup/modify the underlyi…
This is fine if you're just using Flickr as photo storage and publishing, but (especially for pro photographers) a big part of the reason to be on Flickr is the social networking features. If you've got people linking to your photos and photo stream, you can't easily duplicate that outside the Flickr ecosystem with your dropbox hosted photos.
Re: Flickr Accidentally Deletes a User's 4,000 Photos and Can't Get Them Back
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Would someone really trust Yahoo/Flickr to all their images It's a paid service[1]. So yes. [1] he had a pro account.
I'm not siding with or against you or Flickr or anyone else here, just pointing this out: I see nothing in the FAQ or Upgrade page that indicates a Pro account ensures your files will be backed up. (Point being, nothing site-wide in my quick glance seems to indicate a promise of the integrity and forever-ness of your data.)
I'm pretty sure when I signed up for Flickr Pro, that their TOS said something to the effect that even should Flickr go out of business, they will ensure that your photos are preserved for a reasonable amount of time.
That said, I can't seem to find it now. Weird.