Topic: Well, there goes Flickr...

[AJShepherd]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/02/flickr-delete-millions-photos-reduce-allowance-free-users

Flickr is to delete millions of photos from the internet, as its new owners attempt to sustain the photo-sharing site after its purchase from Yahoo earlier this year.

Free users of the site will be limited to storing 1,000 photos and videos, with any excess being deleted from February 2019.

So in my case that'd be over 4 and a half thousand shots deleted off Flickr. To be honest these days I only use it when I want to post a link to stuff, but those links are now going to break eventually.

[Francois]

I just never put that much stuff there anyways, so it's not much of an issue to me.
But in a sense, it might be a blessing in disguise. People will be forced to curate what they put on there, so quality will probably improve (I just wish instagram did the same, there would be fewer pointless selfies and plates of bacon...

[Faintandfuzzy]

Seems like a blessing.  Thousands of photos of fluff deleted.  Anyone who thinks they have thousands of shots worth sharing has much to learn

[chris667]

We're going to continue running into problems with "free" services.

[Francois]

Only way to get a free internet hosting solution that I know of is to host your own at home.... Or make your own site using Google sites and Google drive....
But then you don't have the community to go look at your stuff.

[Jeff Warden]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/02/flickr-delete-millions-photos-reduce-allowance-free-users

Flickr is to delete millions of photos from the internet, as its new owners attempt to sustain the photo-sharing site after its purchase from Yahoo earlier this year.

Free users of the site will be limited to storing 1,000 photos and videos, with any excess being deleted from February 2019.

So in my case that'd be over 4 and a half thousand shots deleted off Flickr. To be honest these days I only use it when I want to post a link to stuff, but those links are now going to break eventually.

I remember when this happened with Photobucket and all those photo links were destroyed. I made an article here that had that fate, but now I see Photobucket has fixed the links, albeit with my images now watermarked as "Proudly hosted" >>

http://www.filmwasters.com/forum/index.php?topic=4854.0

[Indofunk]

Only way to get a free internet hosting solution that I know of is to host your own at home.... Or make your own site using Google sites and Google drive....
But then you don't have the community to go look at your stuff.

I don't know about the Free Socialist Republic of Canada, but generally hosting your own public webserver from a home is frowned upon. Meaning, illegal Not to say that I haven't done so myself (although, I can neither confirm nor deny that, if the NSA is watching this post )....

[moominsean]

My guess is they are having trouble maintaining the site and are losing money by the bucketloads. This is an attempt to lower the overhead of all those server costs and make extra money in the process from those that are willing to pay. I give Flickr another year or two before it get sold off again. Sad part is I've been on there since 2005 and have almost 6,000 film and Polaroid shots on the site, most to be deleted if I don't pay the ransom. And that probably means all the linked sites will also lose them, like Tumblr. And currently there aren't any particularly viable similar alternatives. It is kind of a scummy corporate move, particularly with the promise of "no changes to your photos" when smugmug bought the site. I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet. Maybe just continue to take photos for myself and someone will find them under my bed when I'm dead some day!

[cs1]

It's indeed a questionable move. I'm not even close to 1,000 photos on Flickr so I'm not as affected as you are but I find this sort of tactics not particularly user friendly. Especially considering the amount of storage you can get at other services like Google Drive for less than what Flickr is asking (if I'm not mistaken). I'm wondering whether actually using Google Drive to embed photos in forum posts would work. That could be a useful alternative.

[Pete_R]

I'm wondering whether actually using Google Drive to embed photos in forum posts would work. That could be a useful alternative.

No it doesn't. I use Google drive and find it very useful in some ways but it won't allow you to hotlink to anything stored on it.

[mikec]

Part of the problem is a lack of data about opportunities and costs.  Without that you cannot separate the element of greed from economic imperatives.  It seems to me that storage these days probably represents a pretty small portion of the expense of running a site like Flickr.  We do not get to look at such details or to know how much weight the management process gives to relevant data points.

I used to make a bit of money on my web site from ads pointing to Ebay, Amazon and Google.  The monthly forty bucks or so easily paid for the cost of running my site with enough left over to pay for some film.  Then all of them cut the reimbursement to the point where there was no longer any incentive for me to maintain the sitw and I shut it down.

I would suggest that a sustainable model for Flickr and others to follow would be to allow some ownership and direction by users.  Group moderators could be given free accounts.  Image posting could be limited to a set number of groups.  User complaints and suggestions could be taken seriously.  Unless that sort of strategy is adopted some other big operator will inevitably come along to undercut Flickr and hype their offerings and Flickr will go the way of the rest.  I think one can also generalize these ideas to the whole web.  Self publishing is the great promise of the Internet, but there has to be neutrality and widely shared incentives including platform ownership and direction.  It is as much a political problem as an economic one.

[Francois]

I'm wondering whether actually using Google Drive to embed photos in forum posts would work. That could be a useful alternative.

No it doesn't. I use Google drive and find it very useful in some ways but it won't allow you to hotlink to anything stored on it.

There's always Google Photos....

Only way to get a free internet hosting solution that I know of is to host your own at home.... Or make your own site using Google sites and Google drive....
But then you don't have the community to go look at your stuff.

I don't know about the Free Socialist Republic of Canada, but generally hosting your own public webserver from a home is frowned upon. Meaning, illegal Not to say that I haven't done so myself (although, I can neither confirm nor deny that, if the NSA is watching this post )....

Well, you can host your own website in most places... but it depends on your ISP's terms.

[Pete_R]

(although, I can neither confirm nor deny that, if the NSA is watching this post )....

In the UK, NSA = National Sheep Association. Not sure they would be baaathered.

[Indofunk]

Only way to get a free internet hosting solution that I know of is to host your own at home.... Or make your own site using Google sites and Google drive....
But then you don't have the community to go look at your stuff.

I don't know about the Free Socialist Republic of Canada, but generally hosting your own public webserver from a home is frowned upon. Meaning, illegal Not to say that I haven't done so myself (although, I can neither confirm nor deny that, if the NSA is watching this post )....

Well, you can host your own website in most places... but it depends on your ISP's terms.

Actually, that's true. Not specifically against the law, but against most ISP's ToS and possibly FCC regulations or something.

[SLVR]

I pay almost as much a month for Adobe Creative Cloud. For $50 USD a month or whatever it is I have the complete adobe suite, a plethora of professional fonts at my fingertips, and cloud storage.

I can't see it being worth it to charge the same for just an image hosting site. What a scam.

[Bryan]

I pay almost as much a month for Adobe Creative Cloud. For $50 USD a month or whatever it is I have the complete adobe suite, a plethora of professional fonts at my fingertips, and cloud storage.

I can't see it being worth it to charge the same for just an image hosting site. What a scam.

Flickr is going to be charging $49.99/year, that comes to $4.17/month.

[SLVR]

Ah ok. My mistake

[cs1]

No it doesn't. I use Google drive and find it very useful in some ways but it won't allow you to hotlink to anything stored on it.

That's not correct, Peter. You can embed videos and photos as iframes into any site. I've been doing it for years; you only need to make sure that the access rights are set properly so that the content is actually viewable. Try it yourself: Open a photo in fullscreen by double-clicking on it, got to the "..." menu on the upper right side, chose "open in new window", in the new window, click on "..." again and then on "embed element". Please don't ask me why the option to embed the image or video only shows up when opening it in a separate window but that's how it works. However, I don't know whether or not you can derive the Google account's name (and with that the email address) from an image that is embedded publicly like this. If yes, this would raise some privacy concerns.

[Pete_R]

You can embed videos and photos as iframes into any site.

OK. I wasn't thinking about the iframe option because I'm not aware that you can use iframes to embed a photo into forums? And you were referring specifically to embedding images into forums.

We can try...

<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C23DpZJAE4tV5Z7_9ts7lYsJY_Ki5Vqu/preview" width="640" height="480"></iframe>

Hmmm...

On a more positive note. I use Imgur which works, is free and, as far as I can tell, has no limitations.

[Francois]

Peter: We can't see it mainly because the image is set to private.
I just found it's easier to do from Google Photos.
Here's a good series of articles.
http://forum.bigsteelkeg.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=18138.0

I just tried with Google Photos and it works fine... I think

[16mman]

I'm going to buy in. I've always liked using Flickr and even though I don't have 1000 images up there yet, I'm getting close. The only downside to making people pay is that the community is going to shrink a bit, but I guess I'm okay with that.

[Pete_R]

Peter: We can't see it mainly because the image is set to private.

You can't see it MAINLY because iframes don't work in forums. There's no option to make the image not private. If the iframes worked, you would see the image or, if I send you a link to the image you will be able to see it on a separate page. I don't need to specifically set permissions for that to work.

Can we just get past the fact that you can't hotlink an image from Google drive into forums.

I just tried with Google Photos and it works fine... I think

Uh, no it doesn't.

[cs1]

Hm, you're right about the iframe, Peter. I'm sorry that I mixed that up. I was under the impression that you could simply copy the image's URL from the iframe but I think that doesn't work because it's only a preview.

After searching the Interweb I saw that people actually manage to link to photos on Google Drive as long as they're marked as public. But every way to do it is a hassle and not worth pursuing as long as there're easier to use services. Thanks for the hint to look at Imgur. I'll have a look at it.

[Pete_R]

No problem.

Maybe there is a way then, but I don't see an option to mark anything as public.

I'll stick with Imgur until they start charging for the service.

[jojonas~]

bummer and blessing in disguise. mostly bummer for all the legacy threads on forums that point to nowhere when images dissapear. I used to use imageshack and regret that I guess.

talking about tumblr, don't they save a copy on there instead of using the files from flickr? depends on how you do it I guess (I use some ittt script)

couldn't they just keep the +1000 photos but in low res? sure, I understand they want to make money on it, not lose money on it.

[Francois]

I just tried with Google Photos and it works fine... I think

Uh, no it doesn't.

Bummer...

I wonder if anyone uses ImageBam? http://www.imagebam.com/

[EarlJam]

Fast Company posted their take on the Flickr changes earlier today. In their view, SmugMug's goal is to make the service sustainable over the long haul, after years of neglect by Yahoo.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90262210/flickr-restricts-free-tier-creative-commons-concerns

Personally, I've often wondered why Kodak didn't get into the online storage segment years ago. (Aside from management ineptitude and a failure to understand market forces,) they had a very workable, well established brand in "Carousel", which I think would have translated well for a comprehensive online storage system. Three tiers - free with limited image sharing; $50/year for maybe 0.5 to 1 TB storage; and $100/year for unlimited storage - would cover the market and generate good income. Theoretically, Fuji could have done, or still do, the same thing.

[mikec]

You can direct link to a picture in Google Album Archive



Here is a link to how to do that.  You need Chrome and the Google Photos Direct Link extension.

The google interface for photos has always been crappy because they want to confine users to their platform.  I used to use Picasa, but they ditched that for the Google Photos and Google+ things, so it was a lot easier to move over to Flickr.

You can also make direct links to Google Blogger images.