Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/24/flickr-offers-the-best-social.html
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I’m not sure it’s ‘nine types of lovely’ to have a site where you accrue thousands of photos over many years, only to have at but 1K unceremoniously deleted if you don’t pay a fairly expensive annual subscription.
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Yup, this is pretty much my experience too. I’ve been a member for more than a decade, and while its feature set and usability has waxed and waned over that time it still does what it says on the tin. A few years ago, in the midst of Yahoo’s ownership, I was seriously looking for an alternative but nothing quite met the mark.
Now Flickr is as good as it’s ever been. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PHOTOS, STUPID. Oh, and their iOS app doesn’t suck.
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I was silly enough to let my membership expire. Now I can’t get it back. I’ve tried, but knowing my username and password is not enough. Even the details of how I used to pay for membership don’t help. I’ve moved country since lapsing (EU, not that far), and Flickr find that so suspicious that they won’t believe I’m me. After very much frustration, I’ve given up. You can’t give money to some companies.
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I feel like I’m getting the best social media experience by not really engaging with any of it.
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It went like this:
- Pay for lifetime free unlimited
- actually, everyone gets a TB for free, have a refund
- thanks for putting a TB of photos here, now pay monthly or lose them all
- u mad bro?
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You can’t download them?
Because that would suck.
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I agree. And it’s strange that we received the best advice on social media 35 years ago, from a computer.
The only winning move is not to play.
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Flickr was great until 1) Yahoo bought it. 2) Yahoo made me create a Yahoo email address in order to sign into my years old account. 3) I never used said Yahoo email account because it’s a Yahoo email account. 4) A year later I tried to sign into my Flickr account but couldn’t remember the password (And wasn’t all that sure I remembered the handle for Yahoo email address I’d created.). 5) Yahoo sent my password reset to my Yahoo email address. 6) I couldn’t remember that password either. 7) Yahoo sent the password reset for my Yahoo email address to my Yahoo email address (see #6 for why that wasn’t helpful.). 8) I contacted Flickr support and they helpfully provided instructions for downloading all my photos and deleting my account (Something tells me I wasn’t the first to get locked into this Yahoo nightmare scenario.). 9) The only good thing in all of this was that I was able to download my photos. The not great thing is I can’t add any new photos to my account but such is life on the ever changing internet.
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I’d love to take another pass at getting your account back to you. I’m sorry it’s been difficult. It’s not that we wouldn’t love to have you back (or we won’t take your money 
), it’s that we deeply care about the security and privacy of everyone’s photos, and don’t want to get that wrong. Please contact us via https://help.flickr.com and reference this comment and we’ll try again.
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did you try the forums
my first image load
Was odious! Triple-click through on each individual pic, not kidding. However, there was a heavily buried backup feature where you could request assistance that ultimately bundled my account into fifty-odd willy-nilly downloads.
I would never trust Flickr again after that crap. I only read this article because I was looking for the #sponsored #ad tags and wanted to laugh at the pile-on. I’m shocked that this is not a sponsored post.
FWIW, I use Amazon photos now, least of all evils I guess.
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So - you got a free service that you found valuable for years & didn’t lose anything?
Wow - that really sucks.
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In the most deliberately obtuse interpretation: yes; exactly. 
You should sue.
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Or keep your own local backup? Why wouldn’t you do that?
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I had lost mine as a box died. But then I downloaded from there & all was fine. I really do need to put the important family history stuff on archival optical as well. Send copies to the family.
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How nice is this? Kudos Don.
Optical media has a relatively short shelf-life. The media degrades on the order of years to low numbers of decades. You’re better off putting them on 2-3 online services for safekeeping for your most important / valuable photos.
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