I would feel like giving Flickr people a good kick´n the nuts !!! - Jose Villar

Wow, and they don't ask first? - Jen Kuiper

Truly sad and disappointing. - Carmen wBabby

How much will this bad publicity hurt them? - Rob Sellen :o)

This reminds me as to why I need to grab a backup of my flickr account and also keep it backed up somewhere else, like zooomr. some of the photos on flickr are the only ones i've got after a drive crash...it shouldn't be zero sum, particularly with a Pro account. why couldn't they just lock it from public view and give her time to at least download her pics? - Karoli

Rob, unfortunately not much I'm afraid. Flickr staff has over the past few years taken a holier than thou approach to almost every issue like this. It's been a sort of attitude of if you don't like it then leave. Flickr would do well to take these issues of censorship much more seriously. They are entrusted with one of the single most important online cultural jewels that exists today. It's unfortunate that they do not. - Thomas Hawk

Flickr is congenitally dumb. There are simple ways to handle these issues and they just dont seem to get it. I had a run in with Flickr recently and was not impressed with the way they handled it. - Mel Buckpitt

best start using sommat else. ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Karoli, I'm thinking the same thing. I have 2 years worth of photos on flickr, that I can not find on any of our harddrives. I'd hate to wake up one day to see they closed my account and all my kids baby pics are gone forever. - Anika

Terrence on their staff is pretty much consistently one of the ones doing much of the censoring. If you even mention his name in the help forums you can be censored or banned. They call it finger pointing there. - Thomas Hawk

Rob, using someone else isn't the answer. Rightly or wrongly the community today is largely at Flickr. It is also where the world's most significant organized collection of photos resides. I think pressure needs to be put on Flickr rather to change. To operate with more humility and to give much heavier thought into when such drastic action must be taken. - Thomas Hawk

Pissed off - Michael Fidler

I agree... but I meant...like a second place to store..like karoli did. ;o) - Rob Sellen :o)

And even if drastic action like account deletion must be taken I think Flickr owes it to it's users to back up the data before permanently deleting it and even allow the user and opportunity to get their content off of Flickr's servers. They do not do this today. It's just delete and all of your photos, contacts, comments, faves, etc. are gone. - Thomas Hawk

using someone else isn't the answer, but redundancy never hurts. i use flickr for the community and also for a place other than my hard drive to store photos. There really isn't an excuse for Flickr to delete those photos with no pathway for me to recover them. - Karoli

I'd be livid - RAPatton

Karoli, indeed, redundancy is very important. Personally I'm not so concerned about all of my own images. I've got them all backed up. But a lot of other people do not. But my own stream has thousands and thousands of community comments on my photos that are emotionally very significant to me. I can't actually see Flickr deleting my account but it would kill me if I lost them and it pains me to see them do it to other people. - Thomas Hawk

you use firefox? if so..grab the "scrapbook" add on... the you can capture whole pages. :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

I'd be angry, and probably never use them as a host again, certainly never get another paid account. - Grant Bierman

This is really sad, especially for a paid Pro service and for something there is no undo. I am using a flickr group so my blog readers can showcase their pictures, maybe I should start looking for alternatives to flickr. This is such a horrible way to treat paying customers. - 1001 noisy cameras

I would be really really angry. This really sucks. But I just can't believe that the files "went away". If the government came in and seized someone's Flickr account that had been "deleted", you can be sure that they would be able to "dig" those pictures up. - Laura Zickus

yeah lets see what sort of influence they have then :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

Yes it sucks to lose all of the comments (I'm sure she has all of the images) but perhaps she should build her own website and do whatever she wants to there. - Mattb4rd

why it is so important to have own space or somewhere you OWN.. :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

certainly flickr had every opportunity to try to tell a different side to this story, but instead they just referred to the woman who'd lost her account as the "offended party" OP and locked the thread effectively killing any sort of conversation or protest over this action. Sadly this happens frequently there with no repercussions whatsoever. - Thomas Hawk

I would be a little miffed, but since I don't have alot up there, I wouldn't be too peeved. - Christian (Simply X)

In the light of this disgraceful situation, is there any way to download a complete backup of all of one's Flickr metadata? Especially comments, keywords and geodata? This should be accessible to 3rd party apps, correct? - Neil Creek

use firefox scrapbook add on. - Rob Sellen :o)

Neil, I'm not sure the API allows you to export things like faves and comments. I'd doubt that it does. - Thomas Hawk

that scrapbook captures everything...as a page. - Rob Sellen :o)

Rob, that's a cumbersome and time consuming way to do things when one might have hundreds of photos on Flickr. Not to mention wasteful, when all the other guff unassociated with the image would get captured as well. Geodata wouldn't be captured this way either. - Neil Creek

why would it? can you not have a long page with lots of the pics on with all the comments on them? I dont and never have used flickr..so i dont know....just trying to help. :o) - Rob Sellen :o)

I'd be happy if they deleted my account, but only if they gave me back a prorated amount of what I paid for it. I've gotten so many nasty and immature comments on my photos at flickr. I'm very tired of the vapid community there. Zooomr is way ahead in this department, if nothing else, but it's what matters most, to me anyway. - scherbi: bottom dweller

OP generally means "original poster". - Anika

Thanks for the suggestion Rob :) Unfortunately Flickr doesn't work that way. - Neil Creek

sorry not a help. :o( - Rob Sellen :o)

I would be so unbelievably pissed. So much time and work. - Alex Carpenter

Flickr also deleted the account of Spanish National Treasure - Qwurky (aka David) of Barcelona. The Spanish version of Honoré Daumier, he is a wry observer of the human condition and a satirist who poked his sharpest Photoshop barbs at his own artful self-portraits. - David Newman

Guess I should download a backup of my Flickr archive and not assume it's a good backup? - sean808080

This is totally garbage. If you're a paid user, a Pro account holder, you are a paying customer. Deleting without warning, is just harsh. But again, don't use Flickr as a backup... you clearly want to use it as a showcase, and it shouldn't be the only place your images are kept... - Colin Charles from twhirl

I'd be livid! - Jeff P. Henderson

"I think the best solution is host your own version of Flickr then you can't be shut down". What would your "own version of Flickr" actually do -- just host pictures? - Brian Sullivan

There must be more to it than that. Heather has pictures of herself in her photostream. If the whole exchange was saved, why are Heather-the-admin's comments the only ones shown in the post? - Kevin Fox

I would CRY!!!!!! This is SOOOOOOOOOOOO WROOOOOOOOONG!!!!!! AUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHH! - Susan Beebe

This sucks. Does this mean the pix of lolcats (thjat I didn't take) will be deleted too. If not - isn't that discriminatory?? -[ - Chris Loft

Things similar to this have been happening on flickr regarding accounts from other countries as well. A large number of people boycotted flickr for a year or so, but nothing has changed. Many people tried to go to another service, but never found anything as good. I agree with Thomas that somehow the staff needs to be held accountable. - Rachel Lea Fox

Why is Flickr so popular? Is it all because of the community, or is there something else? Smugmug (and even Picasa) seem much nicer to me. - Paul Buchheit

I am thinking of switching after reading this post... Flickr's draconian behavior is unacceptable! A paid account can be deleted without even contacting the user first?! whoa!! Not cool... really poor customer service - Susan Beebe

Paul, I believe it has everything to do with the community. I've made friends, found photography I never would have, and the rooms often provide challenges that I never would have found. Oh, I also use smugmug - but I use it in different ways. - Rachel Lea Fox

I really do like Flickr, but I would never use them as a reliable storage facility. From their TOS: "5. FLICKR'S RESERVATION OF RIGHTS Flickr expressly reserves the right to immediately modify, delete content from, suspend or terminate your account and refuse current or future use of any Yahoo! service, including Flickr pro, if Flickr, in its sole discretion believes you have: (i) violated or tried to violate the rights of others; or (ii) acted inconsistently with the spirit or letter of the TOS, the Community Guidelines or these Additional Terms. In such event, your Flickr pro account may be suspended or cancelled immediately in our discretion, all the information and content contained within it deleted permanently and you will not be entitled to any refund of any of the amounts you’ve paid for such account. Flickr accepts no liability for information or content that is deleted. - Kevin Fox

Social Media networks Fascism SUCKS. I had My Twitter account suspended all of a sudden. I had over 500 followers. I put in a support ticket, but got no response from Twitter. We Netizens have no rights when it comes to Social Media Networks. VERY BAD - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Smugmug and Picasa are for sharing photos with your friends, who already care enough to look. Flickr helps people discover your photos. A musician in Brazil used my photos in his CD liner notes, and a physics textbook might use one in their new edition. Part of the joy of posting photos is seeing feedback, and Flickr provides an opportunity for that. The others just let you post your photos. - Seth

Thomas: What are the procedures or guidelines at Zooomr for such infractions that would cause Flickr to hit the Delete button? - Nils Sandin

I use flickr for sharing with strangers. If I just wanted to share with friends, I'd use Smugmug (or maybe Picasa). - Amit Patel

I'm not a fan of Flickr. So - Why not boycott Flickr for a week (just one week): no uploads, no comments, no favorites, nothing! - Or leave Flickr there are plenty of alternatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Philipp Mertens

Terrible PR for Flickr. I don't use Flickr and don't particularly like there UI, but have been tempted for the social aspect to the site. I think I;ll find an alternative, but they are so big I doubt they'll care about losing 1 or 2 users. - Alistair (alpinefolk)

Nils, Zooomr doesn't censor or delete accounts except in very rare cases. Childporn is the only example where I've ever seen it happen. But this isn't about Zooomr and I'd rather not the conversation go in that direction. Zooomr's a nice site. So is SmugMug. But no site has as large a community and audience as Flickr. Nor is any other site likely to in the future. Flickr is not just about storing photos there. Photos can be stored almost anywhere. - Thomas Hawk

The thing is it's about the community and audience of Flickr. That's just where it's at for better or worse. Flickr though ought to be thought of as more than just a business by Yahoo. It should be regarded with the cultural significance that I really believe it is. Flickr is the single largest well organized collection of images on the internet today. It's the largest community in the world built around serious photography and not just image hosting. Flickr needs to be there. - Thomas Hawk

But there needs to be outrage when they do stuff like this I believe so that they don't just keep doing it again and again. Flickr has talked about having a way to reverse photos deleted for years, something that would be simple to build and yet they just won't do it. They talked about doing this after they made the "mistake" of deleting one of their most popular user's photos over a high visibility case of censorship over two years ago, but they still won't build that functionality. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2... - Thomas Hawk

@Kevin. Kevin I do hope that there is more to it than just this. And I'm sure Flickr may try to put some sort of spin on this if it gets large enough like they did with Rebekka in the link above. But anyone can read through that help forum thread and they had every opportunity to respond but instead just chose to shut the conversation down. I suspect this will likely turn out like Rebekka's case to be another unfortunate non-reversable "mistake," if they own up to it at all. - Thomas Hawk

Gosh! That ain't good! - Neya

Flickr doesn't need your business, and they know it. They can do what they want, when they want, and even if they lose a few $25 accounts, who cares? They know enough people will stick around regardless. Flickr has never really impressed me, and there are definitely better photo hosting/sharing sites out there. - Dave Roth

There has got to be a better way to handle this, why not block the photos in question, talk to the flickr account user and settle the issue. I have family pictures on flickr that go back to 1904, the people who took them are all long dead. why I have pictures on multiple applications - Kim Landwehr

Ugh, bad form from Flickr. I didn't know they did stuff like this... :( - Tyson Key

on reddit here: http://www.reddit.com/r... - Thomas Hawk

Lots of people post other peoples pictures and screenshots. I'm sure they will re-instate. Probably. Reminds me of when Scoble got his Facebook account shut for running the Plaxo script. - james rock from twhirl

Raises the never ending issue of whether a machine can determine fair use or how quickly folks will demand clearer brightlines - certainly a great opportunity to figure out attribution & where "value" originates ... - Scott Moskowitz

I'd feel sick - Shey

Hello, BBB? Or better yet, a lawyer. This kind of thing does not add up at all. I feel disgusted by this, especially after paying for Pro, myself. - Chris Charabaruk

i would be irate. but it wouldnt be the end of me. i have 3x backups w/ 1 copy off site. and nothing could ever stop me from taking pictures. - Plug1

@Chris, the BBB can do nothing. They are allowed to do this to you in their TOS. Allowed, but shouldn't in my opinon. @james rock. The thing is that Flickr says that they *can't* re-instate accounts. Once your photos, comments, etc. are gone, they are gone for good. They should fix that too. - Thomas Hawk

I cannot arrive at a informed opinion on this just from the comments posted in this thread, but it is very interesting to me. I'm reading a lot of assumptions and I still have questions like; Was she in violation of the Terms of Service for paid accounts? Was her account deleted due to copyright violations or was it due to content violations (porn or whatever). - Mattb4rd

Mattb4rd. Her account was admittedly of an erotic nature. Both the shots that she took and the shots posted of her. But that's why Flickr allows you to self tag your photos as "restricted," which she was doing. This way they are hidden from everyone on Flickr who hasn't signed up to see restricted content. I suspect that there is more to the story as well but in typical Flickr fashion rather than discuss it Heather simply killed the thread on the issue. - Thomas Hawk

And the other question: did the photographer in question actually complain? I mean there's no chance they could find these images at random, so someone must have complained. I suspect Flickr lives in terror of a copyright lawsuit of the kind that kills online services, and I bet there are industry bodies out there waiting for an excuse case. It doesnt excuse the abrupt way they go about it, but the penalty for receiving a complaint and not deleting the material is huge compared to the penalty for deleting everything at the least hint of a complaint - Iphigenie

Anyone from Flickr is of course perfectly welcome to chime in at any time and tell a different side to the story. In fact I think that they owe the community at the very least some sort of response over this rather than simply shutting down the thread the way that they did. Then again maybe they are just hoping that this will blow over and go away. - Thomas Hawk

Joelle, even if this is a copyright issue and someone complained. The correct way to handle this would be to mark the disputed photos as private temporarily and enter a discussion with both parties. This would shield them from any liability. Instead they just delete accounts without any appeal process or recourse, and not just the disputed photos, your *entire* account. - Thomas Hawk

I totally agree with you on that one - they dont seem to have a process to handle things gracefully, and they really should, because it must happen in some form every day! - Iphigenie

One extra-large FAIL for Flickr coming right up! - Michael Forian

I am late responding to this thread so apologies if it is out of context. Deleting someones account in a "its gone for good" way immeadiately seems extremely unfair. Freeze the account, have direct dialogue with the account holder, ask them to remove what ever is in breach of the T&C's then unfreeze if they correct whatever it is that caused the freeze. If no suitable compromise can be found then continue to freeze the account. - Rob Brammeld

There seems to be more and more reports where if the particular online services you subscribe malfunctions in any way it is difficult for the user (often a fee paying user) to get a quick solution or even in some cases even be able to raise the issue with someone. My broadband provider for example. I recently had a problem with my uploads (as were other users of the service) and the only option available to me as call a premium line and pay £££ per minute to raise and seek a solution to a problem. - Rob Brammeld

Thomas: Last summer TWiP interviewed Heather. Any chance the guys over there would want to bring such censorship topics up with her in an open forum or interview? Or provide a contact to Heather directly? E-mails and locked forums don't get very far with her, it seems. - Nils Sandin

@Rob: We don't know that Flickr didn't have a direct dialogue with this user because Flickr has clammed up. The issue then is; should the community have access to the private communications that may or may not have occurred between the service and the user? Even if the user were to divulge portions or "all", discerning parties not directly involved would still be left with raised eyebrows. - Mattb4rd

Terrifying thought. - susan mernit

It's sad the Heather doesn't even have the common courtesy to respond to e-mails from the premiere photography podcast. In my post, I didn't mean for the public to contact Heather directly, but instead that TWiP or others who do know her contact details to do so. But as your wrote, it wouldn't seem to help. - Nils Sandin

The scary thing is that I perceive fee paying as giving me rights to an SLA and a process, which is one of the reasons I use a pay for service for, say email. But when the T&Cs are a bit too broad which means they can just terminate everything saying you breached the terms, with no process or option of appeal, then what is the point of paying? - Iphigenie

Is there any other photo service offering unlimited space at a comparable (read: ± $5.00 USD) price point? Perhaps if there was some direct competition at that level, we might see less nastiness out of Flickr. Would Google purchasing Yahoo! help make Flickr less evil, too? - Chris Charabaruk

It's not just the storage, though, it is the community. I get some connections and feedback on my photos, and that is due to the large number of people - Iphigenie

I would be terrified to find my account deleted. I guess it's time to fire-up Fusion and try Downloadr - http://lifehacker.com/5125257... to backup all of my pics. - bch12

I wonder if it's a Yahoo culture problem, I see similar sorts of attitudes with respect to delicious - Andy Davies

The issue isn't so much the photos - I don't even keep the high res versions on Flickr. It's the 20,000 faves and 10,000 comments I've left over the years, as well as the countless thousands I've been fortunate enough to receive and the many bloggers who've used my photos and linked to me. That Flickr would take such a drastic action with no warning or recourse is simply unconscionable. - Eric P

I think Apple or Google should buy Flickr, Delicious, and/or Zimbra. Yahoo doesn't really give these services the love they deserve. - Glenn Batuyong

And Thomas is right. With all due respect to Zooomr, Flickr is just the 800 lb gorilla in this space. I'm a member of a half dozen photo sharing sites all valuable in their own right, but none come close to the reach that Flickr has. It has the largest audience, community, and it's increasingly the place you need to be to get "discovered". Jumping ship doesn't seem like an option, and I don't see Flickr being unseated in the foreseeable future. - Eric P

It's also clear that Flickr is fairly set in its policies regarding censorship and deletion and seems unwilling to change them. They cannot, at this juncture, be unaware of the user complaints in these areas. Which begs the question of why do they insist on these draconian policies? - Eric P

@Nils I doubt getting TWiP involved would help anything at all, as those guys are just as guilty of causeless summary executions as flickr is. It would be way too hypocritical for TWiP to call flickr out on this, as they're just as evil. - Dave Roth

Wow, first time I heard TWiP called evil! Any comments, Scott, Frederick, Alex? - Nils Sandin

I think TWIP is the best photography related podcast on the internet. Certainly there is a debate about moderation in any group on Flickr. I have no problem with private groups on Flickr choosing to moderate comments for any reason at all. I happen to admin an "uncensored" group there and things can get very ugly very fast there for better or for worse. But I think moding a group is a far cry from deleting a user's account without good reason or warning which I think ought to be the core issue here. - Thomas Hawk

There's a difference between moderating a group (public or private) and the Flickr staff essentially shutting down discussion about their deletion and censorship policies. It's like speech in China - you're free to talk about anything except stuff that makes the government look bad. - Eric P

Eric, one of the truly odd things is that you are not even allowed to mention Terrence's name in the help forums. You can mention Heather's name but no one is allowed to mention Terrence's name, even though Terrence seems to be involved in an awful lot of the protested cases of censorship. I just don't get that. Flickr closed the thread I'd opened the other day about my five censored images. They close threads down almost every time they become critical of them. - Thomas Hawk

Scott, Flickr will be dethroned by services like FriendFeed, but it will take 3 years. FriendFeed has better social networking features than Flickr, and provides a place where people can establish an audience regardless of how/where they host their photos. It just doesn't have the user base yet. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Bruce - think you are right that FriendFeed might replace the social part of Flickr. I see so much more Flickr photography since friendfeed. I love that I get to see my friends favorites, I never have time to go sift through it on flickr. - Rachel Lea Fox

I'll kick their servers i guess - Murat Bişkin

I will say that FF has taken a chunk of my time away from Flickr and is very social like Flickr is. I'd love to see more and more photography tools built into FF over time. I also really like the fact that I've seen very little censorship on FF as in none. If you don't like something you just hide it. Easy enough. If you don't like a person, you just hide them as well. Or a service. I really appreciate the censorship free environment on FF. - Thomas Hawk

I think Friendfeed is too diluted to ever really replace Flickr or any sites like Flickr - there's no sets, not tags, no way to search for photos, no groups centered on certain photographic subjects, techniques, or equipment (and no easy way to add particular photos to rooms, should someone create such rooms). FF would need a major feature overhaul to really work for that purpose. - Eric P

Also Friendfeed doesn't really have to deal with censorship because other sites already handle it. It won't show Flickr photos marked restricted, for example, because they're not in the RSS feed. Which excludes 90% of the nipples on Flickr. - Eric P

I could also, if I was so inclined, upload my art nude photographs to a public Smugmug gallery and have them come up in people's feeds as great big thumbnails. I'd wager that people wouldn't be too happy with that and start clamoring the FF developers to do something to block nudity. Eventually it'll be a real issue, and then and only then we'll see how FF addresses censorship. - Eric P

Eric, if you did that people would just use the Hide feature and/or move you out of their home feed. As for tags, I don't have any inside info, but it's my hunch that FriendFeed will implement them some time in the latter half of 2009. Other sites will implement feeds that pass through tags/keywords that specify equipment, techniques, etc. Filtering noise is a core FriendFeed function, so it won't stay dilute long. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Maybe Eric. It will be interesting to see if/how FF deals with censoring images if/when that becomes a problem. So far here it seems that the community is pretty responsible. But certainly having the ability to use the hide functionality greatly empowers the user to get rid of things that they don't want to see. Flickr doesn't have that sort of functionality. - Thomas Hawk

"Hide" is wonderful, but it still winds up on your screen before you can click it, a no-no for people surfing at work and can get in trouble. Which is why so many places on the net have some form of flagging and filtering of such content (which is what Flickr does). It's not a big problem yet but I do see Friendfeed having to deal with it sooner or later. - Eric P

This was so handled improperly and unprofessionally and with total disregard to ALL of us as users. Everyone who feels this way should, at the very least, leave a comment stating such at her retribution post here: http://bit.ly/18d2Ct This copyright bullshit is going way too far. - Ian Maffett

this is ridiculous - mjc

I'd be enraged. So high-handed, it makes you wonder why you pay them? That kind of poor behavior is that of a fat bureaucracy, not a private sector company. - Rick Cogley