I just deleted my Flickr account and now I don't know how I feel

[Yokosuka Mike]

I guess I’m a recluse. I’m not a member of any of the mainstream social media. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Flicker, no MySpace, Myface, Mytik, Mytok, nothing. I don’t subscribe to anything, not even a YouTube channel. I still receive a paper newspaper in the morning and read it while drinking coffee. I do have a smartphone and I don’t like it, but that’s not a problem because nobody calls me except my wife. I do have e-mail, it’s probably my main form of communication with the world - when communication is necessary.

My images reside on Google Photos and my sole outlet is my blog on google blogger and what I post on RFF. Other than RFF and my blog I am virtually an unknown person. Being unknown is not a bad thing; I rather enjoy it.

All the best,
Mike

 

[DownUnder]

Random thoughts...

I was on Flickr for a few years, a long time ago. It suited me then, but as time passed I found I wasn't getting all that much out of it - maybe as I didn't especially put much into it, other than posting a few images - and after several of my shots were copied and posted on other sites without my okay, I opted to pull the plug on my participation in it.

I did the same with all my social media interaction, overlooking two or three photo web sites such as this one, when I turned 65 and left the work force and claimed my freedom from office slavery in 2012.

I'm a retired architect with an interest in colonial buildings in Asia. In 2013 I set up a password protected site aimed at overseas publisher clients (I live in Australia), which I kept going until Covid reared its ugly head in 2020. At that time most publishers put all their book projects on hold for 12-18 months and after a year of almost no business, I decided to close down my site, as a temporary move, until the market improved.

Now, this year, business is picking up again, and I'm redesigning my site, which will be online next month. My needs are for a password protected site (to stop would-be thieves from copying my images or going in just to pick up free data), a few folders with different images, some basic data to do with location, date of building and so on, and of course details on buying my images. Which suits me and satisfies my 30-40 clients.

I also take images for family and friends, mostly of our life at home, travel in Australia, ephemera and nostalgia (old film scans), and our cats. All are sent via emails.

For my client web site I used one of the free Wordpress basic sites which suits me, with a few tweaks and fixes.

So it all depends what your needs and wants are. Mine are best served by having my own site. Others may wish to be more public, so Flickr may be the way.

I doubt I will ever return to Flickr , but this is a case of to each their own. Or different strokes for different folks...

 

[neal3k]

I love my Flickr, post every day, administer a few groups, and love to have my own albums to classify my photos. I don't like the Instagram format but Flickr is perfect for me and worth every penny I spend for the pro account. I spend much more than that on film in a month.

 

[swatch]

Facebook and WhatsApp are what I use for sharing photos with friends who are living in different countries, some give me their comments and we chat about photos as friends. That is.

Flickr is used when website requires links instead of direct upload photos. Upload to Flickr or forum simply is sharing to general public / people I don’t know in person. Once a photo is posted publicly online, control is lost. That is reality.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I deleted most of my images from Flickr when they changed the terms of service, put a cap of 1000 photos for free accounts.

I use imgbb for hosting images, and arrange lenses into albums.

You can post images from imgbb in Flickr discussion threads, but not in group photos.

 

[willie_901]

I bailed on Flickr about 4 years ago. I 5-10 uploaded photos there a week from about 2006 - 2012. I deleted my account because of their terms of service and I lost interest around 2009 when my commercial photography work load increased. I down loaded all my Flickr images and archived them.

Recently I set up a twitter account. Andy Adams (@FlakPhoto) has a loosely curated Twitter Group named Photo People. I post on the Photo People group when I want to share images. The Photo People community is atypically non-toxic. Neo doubt there are numerous other Twitter groups where like-minder people can share their work. Fo course, there is no search function or keyword system for finding images or examples of photos from specific lenses or cameras. However any search engine is almost as effective as using Flickr. There are lots of other useful photography accounst on Twitter. I have separate lists for my favorite photographers, photography art galleries, photobooks, photo labs, etc. The signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter for valid photography accounts is surprisingly high.

I planned on starting to post regular to the new RFF Gallery. But several attempts over about a month gave me an error message that the image was too big even though the pixel dimensions I tried to post (as a test) were four times smaller than the stated maximum. I think I should try again now that some time has gone by.

 

[bluesun267]

I'm curious, are you running any ad blocker software in your browser? I'm not a paid member and I am not seeing any ads when logged in (or out for that matter).

No I wasn't. Every page looked like this whether signed in or out, but on some computers when I was signed out, I would not get the top ad.



And yes that's my image in the center.

Based on your comment It seems there is some inconsistency as to how they format the page based on user status or even different browsers perhaps.

Thanks for all the comments.

It is interesting that no one (so far) seems all that bothered by the increasing ad revenue going to the site's owners. Not like I was even asking for actual money, just to maintain some semblance of the experience I'd been having. But I encountered this attitude in their help forum as well. I don't know if Flickr's marketing dept intended to craft the narrative that they are always struggling, and that it's just such an impossibly large and difficult job to run a photo website, and we should be so thankful they are still in business, etc. But it seems a majority accept that or similar story as a foregone conclusion.

I wonder if it isn't time for Amazon to start telling their suppliers that products will now be supplied to Amazon gratis because they have such a big, difficult website to run?

 

[raydm6]

Wow, sorry you’re seeing that. That is horrible and intrusive. I am not seeing that during my logged in (or out) sessions.

 

[bluesun267]

Also I should add that I really appreciate all of you taking the time to write such detailed notes sharing your opinions and solutions. I still intend to put my photos on the web in some way and this thread will become my guide

 

[ranger9]

I used to have a Flickr account once upon a time, but dropped it in 2005 or so because I did not like their privacy terms and conditions. I have been using SmugMug ever since then. While it costs me about $80 per year and terms and conditions are not ideal, I find it preferable to Flickr

Edit: Flickr is a good venue if you want to get a lot of exposure to the public for your work. I am not a professional photographer or anyone who has a need to get their images and vision out to the larger world, so SmugMug works for me.

Coincidentally, Smugmug owns Flickr now.

I don't know anybody who looks at Flickr except photographers, so the only exposure your work will get is to other snappers, not to "civilians." That's the only thing that keeps me on Instagram... people I know who are not photographers use it and sometimes see my photos on it, especially if I tag them.

None of these seem like really good options; what we'd all really like is some system that would psychically identify strangers who would appreciate our photos and make those photos visible to those discerning souls. But the point of Insta et al isn't to make photographers feel good, it's to make already-incredibly-rich social media barons even richer, so in that respect it's 100% successful.

 

[JohnWolf]

.... I don't know anybody who looks at Flickr except photographers, so the only exposure your work will get is to other snappers, not to "civilians." That's the only thing that keeps me on Instagram... people I know who are not photographers use it and sometimes see my photos on it, especially if I tag them....

Same here. My friends and family are on IG and I enjoy sharing with them. As well as selected photographyers there. Sharing exclusively with other photographers is an odd proposition, it seems to me.

John

 

[Archiver]

Coincidentally, Smugmug owns Flickr now.

I don't know anybody who looks at Flickr except photographers, so the only exposure your work will get is to other snappers, not to "civilians." That's the only thing that keeps me on Instagram... people I know who are not photographers use it and sometimes see my photos on it, especially if I tag them.

None of these seem like really good options; what we'd all really like is some system that would psychically identify strangers who would appreciate our photos and make those photos visible to those discerning souls. But the point of Insta et al isn't to make photographers feel good, it's to make already-incredibly-rich social media barons even richer, so in that respect it's 100% successful.

The utility of flickr and similar sites comes down to what we want from them. Do non-photographers look at flickr, or is it primarliy photographers? Many flickr accounts suggest a strong enthusiast or professional behind them. I joined flickr because I enjoy looking at the photography of others, there were quite a few users of cameras I was interested in, and it was helpful to interact with some of them. I'm not concerned about my personal work getting a lot of exposure, although mainstream media often searches flickr for photos they can use in articles.

As for psychically identifying strangers who would be interested in our work, one way is to join groups (flickr or otherwise) that revolve around those interests. We're conversing on RFF for this reason, to chat with likeminded folk. Post images to those groups, likeminded people will see them. Comment on their images, too, as it goes both ways.

 

[ranger9]

There's that, but my photos run toward subject matter such as deserted parking garages and crushed flowers, and it's hard to find interest groups for those.

TikTok, supposedly, has an algorithm that does an amazingly good job of analyzing the videos that a 14-year-old currently is watching, and then (using clues such as viewing time, interaction, and subject category) can suggest other videos that the same 14-year-old would find interesting... one user quoted in an article I read said, "the TikTok algorithm knows me better than I know myself." Eventually this can lead users down creepy rabbit holes, but judging by the success of the TikTok platform, it seems to work. (One interesting angle, from a leaked document: if the user interacts strongly with videos by a particular creator, TikTok shows more videos from that same creator... but not TOO many more, so the user doesn't get tired of them.)

It would be interesting to see a photo-sharing service that would use similar logic to look at a viewer's image interactions and conclude, "This person would like to see some deserted parking garages and crushed flowers right about now."

 

[Archiver]

There's that, but my photos run toward subject matter such as deserted parking garages and crushed flowers, and it's hard to find interest groups for those.

TikTok, supposedly, has an algorithm that does an amazingly good job of analyzing the videos that a 14-year-old currently is watching, and then (using clues such as viewing time, interaction, and subject category) can suggest other videos that the same 14-year-old would find interesting... one user quoted in an article I read said, "the TikTok algorithm knows me better than I know myself." Eventually this can lead users down creepy rabbit holes, but judging by the success of the TikTok platform, it seems to work. (One interesting angle, from a leaked document: if the user interacts strongly with videos by a particular creator, TikTok shows more videos from that same creator... but not TOO many more, so the user doesn't get tired of them.)

It would be interesting to see a photo-sharing service that would use similar logic to look at a viewer's image interactions and conclude, "This person would like to see some deserted parking garages and crushed flowers right about now."

To a certain extent, Instagram already does this. The more you like certain types of images, the more of such images Instagram recommends.

If you were on flickr (are you?) I'd follow your account for the deserted parking garages.

Parking Garage
https://www.flickr.com/groups/14584229@N00/

Flowers and Vintage
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1714325@N25/

Flowers Fine Arts
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1696942@N20/

 

[DownUnder]

Also I should add that I really appreciate all of you taking the time to write such detailed notes sharing your opinions and solutions. I still intend to put my photos on the web in some way and this thread will become my guide

To repeat myself (at my age I do this a lot), preserve your sanity and go with Wordpress, one of their free basic sites which I opted to go with in 2013. You can then fix and tweak your site to suit your needs as much as W will let you - they let you do (or used to allow) an amazing number of changes if you take the time to research them.

Then find a reliable web provider and go with them.

For me password protection has been a godsend. Gone are those time-wasters who just want to go into my site to steal images and repost them as their own orwant free data to exploit as their own. Me, I've done a great deal of historical research into the architecture I photograph, and while all This info is available online (although much of it was obtained from reading books, some of them very old, on Asian colonial history), I resent users who only want to avail themselves of what I took the time and made the effort to learn. Password protection rids me of these parasites.

I have a link to an email address so anyone who wants to contact me to get the password for the site can contact me. Interesting to note I get several queries a week but most of them are from non-buyers who just want to peep at my images.

I get a few comments, not often relevant to much of anything, which I sometimes respond to but then delete. Never post.

Some creative imagination and a little leg work can produce amazing results. The learning curve is endless but it's fun and it helps me to pass the time in my dotage. As well, who knows, I may get future sales, so win-win all the way.

Do let us know how you go. Sharing all this is a good way to help others to plan their own sites. As the Brits say, "best of".