I’ve recently open a blog about shoes with 8 (woman) friends of mine, called shoesisterhood.com. Mainly about woman shoes.
Well, our editors went to some parties and in order to select which pictures to post on the blog they created an free flickr account to post those pictures. Well, first the account was placed as “Unsafe” content. Most of the content is in this post.
Last week was Lisbon’s Vogue Fashion Night Out the girls decided to do a contest about who was wearing the best shoes and upload those into flickr as well. Today I’ve noticed that the content was still flagged as unsafe. Most pictures are a bit sexy, but not risqué, are mostly woman on high heels. So I appealed to flickr so explaining that most of the pictures are about shoes and are not sexual in any way.
Well, half an hour ago I’ve received an email explaining me that Voyeur content was not allowed on flickr:
Hello, Voyeur content is a violation of the Flickr Community Guidelines and Yahoo! Terms of Service. You can also read the following help forum discussion about voyeur content on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/ Specifically this comment from staff: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/95223/#reply625343 -Flickr staff
Voyeur??? What the …!!?? So I’ve read the post in question and it that the following is their definition of Voyeur is says:
… practice of secretly photographing women (and men, and children) and posting them to Flickr for the purposes of sexual gratification…
So it seems that their problem is with pictures being taken without the explicit consent for sexual purposes? Ok, I reply to this email explaining once again that the people in the photographs were asked for permission before a picture being taken. The account is related to a blog about shoes, and no one in those pictures are being victims of sexual exploitation. I can’t understand the connection.
After sending the email I’ve decided to check the account to see if everything is ok. To my amazement, the account was deleted. Not only that, after logging in, I wasn’t given a choice to download the pictures. That means, my friends, that maybe some pictures were lost because of this. I don’t know what kind of show flickr is running but after the founders left the company I don’t know who ever is left there has the users interests in mind. The site is stagnant for years! And This was an free account but I do have an paid account. After Carol Bartz being fired, the board being considered the worst in the US, and hearing about people loosing entire collections, I’m done with flickr. I’m gonna wait until my subscription is over and I’m gonna move my stuff to other services. I don’t know if picasa is any good, or if I have to write a photo management service from the ground up, but one thing is for sure, in one year I’m not going to be using flickr. Something is roten at yahoo and I have a feeling that flickr might die with them.
Comments
6 responses to “Yahoo, Flickr can go to hell!”
Sure you paid for an account but why wait on making the change?
I am sure you already do but make sure you have backups of all your photographs!
I recently did the same thing, wait out my pro account. I never really had problems with Flickr, I just got sick of the stagnation.
If you care strongly enough about this consider the remainder of the pro account a sunk cost and start trying out other strategies now and not after the account runs out. Spend the year uploading some photos to another service and gradually start transitioning to it.
Damn… flickr is indeed very slow to evolve… I’ve been looking for an online collection and backup but I haven’t found anything decent…
Stuff like 500px is for great stuff only… picasa has limits like 1GB or whatever… and I don’t really like the thing…
On Jan 1st I paid a subscription to flickr and uploaded a lot of content and not the account basically a mess… I won’t be renewing…
Next month I’ll start a paid job and I’m thinking about paying like S3 or something and get some sort of a gallery that connects to that… sometimes all I want is backup…
If you find another service for your photos, do spread the word.
Have a look at OpenPhoto – inspired by Flickr but you host your own photos.
http://theopenphotoproject.org/
hi Artur. very sorry to hear you ended up a victim of Flickr’s unreasonably unexplicable crp. to be honest with you I dropped my Pro account more than a year ago, and just because I was paying so much for nothing. me and also my friends had pictures flagged. we’re all designers, illustrators, hackers, we’re not voyeurs, but sometimes you and your camera can face an unexpected moment and that’s what makes a photo. it’s a bunch of bull*, many world’s famous photos have been taken without the subject knowing, and it’s why they’re so special. to me the deal breaker has been another, though. when Yahoo bought Flickr they forced every (including PRO) user to switch to a yahoo mail account. are we serious? it’s like I go and buy a car and you (the dealer/manufacturer) tell me I can only park it in a garage 50 miles away from home. I personally know one of the people involved in Flickr fromt he beginning, and whatever spirit Flickr had is long gone. it’s just another stupid Yahoo service to me, and that’s why I downloaded all my pictures a few days before my Pro account expired and let it expire. they can sincerely go ** themselves. I hope you’ll find the right service for you. let me just give you a hint: there’s one coming, and knowing the developers, I can tell you it’ll be huge 😉
Shoe Sisterhood is too sexy for Flickr!