Flick's latest account changes - screwing over users and erasing history
When I went to check my Flickr stats last night, I noticed a banner at the bottom directing me to an announcement of upcoming major changes to the way the site’s accounts are set up. As someone who had a pro account for almost exactly a decade now with nary an interruption, my reaction to the changes to pro accounts was a shrug. Flickr is looking to keep all the features I like and add features that I either don’t care about one way or another or fall into “this may come in handy some day” category.
But the part about the changes to free accounts made me do a double-take
Free accounts will soon be limited to 1,000 photos or videos. Flickr isn’t Flickr without the contributions and participation of our free members, and we remain committed to a vibrant free offering.
Especially after I read the part further at the bottom, in the tiny print.
Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit.
For context - back when I joined Flickr in 2007, free accounts were capped at 250 photos. If you wanted more photos, you had to get a pro account. And, if you cancelled your pro account, the images you uploaded would still be there on Flickr’s servers - you just weren’t able to see them until you got a pro account again.
Back in 2013, as part of what I suspect was Yahoo’s effort to more aggressively compete with Instagram and attract more users, lifted the free account cap to 1 terabyte worth of photos (which, incidentally, means that a whole bunch of free accounts suddenly had photos that weren’t visible for years out in the open again).
Back in April 2018, Yahoo sold Flickr to SmugMug as part of the broader effort to streamline what would become Verizon’s Yahoo/AOL “Oath” brand. The November 1 announcement was the first major change (the removal of Yahoo bar and the expected removal of Yahoo logon screens don’t count, since both moves were expected).
To me, the biggest problem isn’t even that SmugMug is now dropping the free account limit way down. It’s that fine print part where they are deleting everything but the last 1,000 photos and/or videos that got uploaded. Like I said - when you had the 250-image cap, at least the images were still there. If you faved them, or embedded them, you could still see them.
Now, the big question, of course, is how much it would ultimately matter. Flickr is full of accounts that haven’t been updated in years, and, as with the old LJs on this here platform, I don’t know if many of them would be too terribly upset if their photos were gone. And, of course, there is the not-so-small fact that Flickr isn’t as popular as it used to be. People who do use it tend to be less casual than the users that migrated to Instagram and other platforms (or, in case of some kids and teens out there, like the Insa|gram just fine and won’t be persuaded to use Flickr even if the 1-terabyte limit still remains in place.
But if I was a free account user - I imagine that this would feel like a slap in the face. And it certainly wouldn’t help attract new people. And the not-so-small part of me is annoyed at all the photos that would be sent to Internet ether. For example, Chicago Transit Authority’s official Flickr account isn’t pro, and it’s full of awesome historic (and, to lesser extent, contemporary) photos. If CTA doesn’t upgrade it, over 2,000 photos would be gone. Or how Katherine of Chicago, an iconic presence in Chicago’s urban exploration community, would have a pretty decent chunk of 10+ years worth of Flick uploads nuked (and I know that she has even less money lying around than I do)
Honestly, if SmugMug wanted to fix anything - can we please, please, for the love of Internet gods, fix the current Flickr site design? Especially the profiles. I know we can’t go back to pre-2013 layout (the web design sensibilities have long since moved on), but post-2013 design have all sucked, and we are long overdue for an improvement.