digital photography, learn photography, photo tips

Flickr Out of Control?

Damien Franco | Oct 13, 2009 | Comments Comments

There’s an 800 lb Gorilla in Flickr and it’s called censorship.  No really.

The latest? Flickr Nukes DMU!  One of the (if not THE) most active groups on Flickr.  Seriously.

None of this should be too surprising if you’ve been following along.  But just in case you haven’t here’s a rundown of Flickr’s bad behavior:

Flickr deletes photo from prolific Flickr Photographer

Flickr deletes another account

Etsy artist has Flickr account deleted

Flickr blindly obeys DMCA take down notice without verification

Flickr gets into politics

Flickr issues threat to delete account

More politics from Flickr

Don’t oppose Flickr staff…or else

Banned from Flickr!

Another Flickr account gone

Rest assured there are many many more blog posts and articles throughout the Interwebs of Flickr accounts being deleted as well as forum threads and posts or photos.

Flickr technically has the right to do this according to their Terms of Service but having the right and being right are two different things.

That being said, Flickr is in a rather tough position whereby they have more photographers than almost every other website in the world and they follow copyright laws and DMCA and follow up on harassment complaints, pornography, and other legal and illegal matters.

It’s a tough job no doubt, but too many of these stories are about people who shouldn’t have had their comments, photos, or accounts deleted.  Most of these stories include folks who didn’t do anything illegal or against Flickr’s Terms of Service insofar as I can tell.  There are many more out there with the same story.

Funny thing to note; many of the personal blog posts start out by saying “I love Flickr, but…”

So is Flickr out of control?

Photo 366 – 350 by yoshiffles


Popularity: 3% [?]

  • Share/Bookmark

Related posts:

  1. Weekend Perusing: Beginner Tips, Bad Flickr, and Camera Phones
  2. Utilizing Flickr as a Photoblogging Tool
  3. Flickr Love
  4. Tagging. Flickr Style.
  5. 35 Outstanding Images From Our Flickr Group

Filed Under: Featured • Photography Discussions

Tags: • • • • • • •

About the Author:

  • This week by chance my wife discovered a photograph of hers had been stolen by another flickr user. This user had received several complimentary comments for 'her wonderful' image.

    My wife could not believe her eyes and complained about the blatant copyright infringement. She included proof that the image was hers. We also noticed that the copyright thief had several other images plainly scanned from magazines.

    Within 24 hours the copyright thief's account had been removed by Flickr.

    Believe me, when you are the victim of this copyright infringement you are very thankful for Flickr's robust and quick action.

    This is just our experience. I would hope that Flickr would treat all users fairly and when you sign up for an account you agree to the TOS.

    More detail on the story here http://www.flickr.com/photos/9550033@N04/403659...
  • Hey Damien,

    This is something which is expected, since it worked as a platform that is somewhat like open source, there are some bright chances that it will get exploited by the ill users.

    Applying censorship to Flickr is something that will check this further ill behavior of Flickr.
  • It is a shame that Flickr is making all of these mistakes. It is a huge task to monitor all of those photos and photographers. So it is understandable that there would be some mistakes made along the way. I just wonder how many of these mistakes are being made by lower end employees and which are made by tight company guidelines meant to avoid problems.
  • Hi! That photo you have up there is mine. I see you got it from consumerist.com, and I gave them permission to use it as long as they linked back to my photo on flickr, and I'm happy to allow you to use it in the same way. You can find that image here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutiemoo/3111207407/

    Thanks :)
  • Done
  • Name
    the first three posts you link to are from the president of a "competing" photo share site.
  • Actually, Thomas Hawk doesn't work for Zooomr anymore and he's always been an avid Flickr user.
  • cb1122
    I was about to sign up for a pro account but now I am reconsidering. I'm sure the Flickr staff is overwhelmed with their duties but deleting entire groups and accounts is over the top.
  • If they're overwhelmed perhaps they should consider hiring a few more people.
  • Ian
    I wrote one of the blog posts you liked to above. Fortunately it wasn't I who was deleted but a Flickr-friend.

    And that's Flickr's strength - it's huge community of users. Whatever your photographic interests there's a group and a community for you. I have not seen anything approaching it.

    I sympathize with Flickr's staff. They have a thankless task. I have no inside information but i am sure the staff is heavily loaded and cannot spend much time on each "case" that comes to their attention.

    This inevitably means they are reactive and make snap, hasty judgements. If somebody complains abouut a user it is easy to delete their account and there is almost no chance of serious repercussions.

    That being said I am sure that the troubled users and accounts are a tiny percentage of Flickr users. Insignificant in the numbers they deal with.

    But it is troubling nonetheless. Especially in Western countries we have a strong sense of fairness and justice. When we see Flickr doing things that appear arbitrary we get incensed. They could handle things so much better and it's disappointing that they don't. Understandable but disappointing.
  • Yes, Flickr has only deleted or affected a small percentage of it's users with these practices, but they have to be very careful they don't do this to those with bigger voices.

    They're latest stunt was pretty bad. DMU was a very vocal group with many members who have blogs, and are associated with many websites. I'm interested to see what, if any, will be the result.
  • KimPace
    I was an avid user of Flickr about a year ago..but stopped using them so much because of the lifting that was going on over there.. I need to brush up on these posts you linked too..
  • Yeah, there's a lot more stories than just the ten I shared. Plus, consider how many people were deleted or censored and don't have a "digital voice".
blog comments powered by Disqus
Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity.