Last week I blogged here about the case of Edelson Flores’ and his recent account deletion on Flickr. You might remember Edelson. He was the professional photographer who had his photographs posted on Flickr that all included watermarks pointing to his image copyrights. While Edelson focuses on male models, as his subject matter, his photos did not include nudity or other prohibited content by Flickr. Edelson had his account nuked by Flickr after Terrence at Flickr alleged that he was posting other people’s copyrighted work — something that Edelson denies.
Apparently Flickr may have reinstated Edelson’s account, but not without him having lost all of his photos, all of his contacts, all of his social activity on the site, and all of the time, work and energy he spent working on his profile, etc.
I received this following update earlier today from Edelson on his account Flickr deletion:
“Tom,
I believe they reinstated my account “adoniel”, but everything is gone and will need to be added and uploaded again. I haven’t even bother to try to login to that account yet, and don’t think I ever will again. Not even my profile was restored as I had hoped it would at least be the case. Considering the amount of time I spent editing my profile, photostreams, editing photos, uploading, adding titles, descriptions and tagging all the photos in my account I don’t think I will be using Flickr ever again out of fear that they may do this to me again. Ironically, I was about to buy a 2-year Pro account the same week they deleted my account. Thank God I did not spent a penny of my hard earned money with Flickr if this is how they treat their very own customers.
I did asked for a 1-year complementary Pro account as compensation and to make up for the inconvenience, aggravation and time I have wasted on this issue, but I have received no reply to that request as of yet. It doesn’t look like I will anyways. All in all it has been a really unpleasant experience and I would not recommend nor encourage anyone in their right mind to support or rely on a company like Flickr and/or Yahoo Inc. They have absolutely no respect for their own customers and deleted my account out of pure unadulterated raw unjustified incompetence. If I may also add, the communication was really slow most of the time, and at times even non existent. The only Flickr employee who showed some willingness to help and sympathy for what they did to me was Zack Sheppard. Feel free to post my message on your blog or anywhere else you would like for that matter and let the world know that Flickr and Yahoo Inc really suck.
Sincerely,
Edelson”
As a result of protesting these sort of account deletions and the fact that flickr has no viable way (nor are they even working on a way) to recover accounts when they mistakenly delete them, and especially for pointing to a new blog which seems to be focusing on an anti-gay account deletion agenda on Flickr’s part, I was called “abusive” and banned from the Flickr help forum yesterday. So much for honest and open communication.
Yesterday as I pondered this whole situation, I was uploading some photos for a little project of mine. Instead of doing my usual process and uploading to Flickr, I put them in a gallery on SmugMug.
Ditto on SmugMug.
Reading all this is very, very upsetting. I am now considering concentrating on other photo sharing communities and SmugMug seems to be a good candidate. So far I used SmugMug only for its galleries but not its communities. This might change now considering how fast Flickr seems to be with deleting accounts without hesitation or obvious respect for other people’s time and work.
This is a shame, I’ve loved the Flickr community for a long time. I was hesitant when Y! bought them, and I guess I had good reason.
I’ve heard good things about Smugmug, a coworker uses them exclusively.
I only use Flickr because so many other people do. I’ve switched to SmugMug for showing off my work.
Thanks for the follow-up.
My suggestion is to try Zooomr.Much better than Flickr.If you use them as a host in my opinion the reproduction to your site is better than Flickr.Quite happy with the service over there so far.
Free speech being called ‘abusive behaviour’.
This is how it begins.
So where does this leave Flickr members who contribute images through the Flickr/Getty connection?
Can their images be summarily deleted and would that not damage their business?
David, unfortunately it does mean that. Hopefully Flickr would give more thought into deleting a Getty contributor and ruining that real dollars and cents business, but a Flickr deletion very much could damage their business. The sad thing about it though is that when we sign up for Flickr we agree to their TOS which says pretty much that they can delete our accounts for whatever the hell reason they want, and so although I’m not aware of a Getty contributor being deleted yet I’m afraid that there would be no legal recourse over something like this even if it hurt their business.
It’s too bad really.
Sounds like they honestly and openly communicated how they feel about you, TH. So they should get kudos for that. (Not joking; I mean that.)
I do hope Flickr figures out a way to a.) reinstate accounts and b.) let people know when their account is in jeopardy. It seems like the least they could do actually.
There is a solution to be sure that your photo will never be deleted by a third party : use your own server. If you don’t know how, try opera unite… At least everything stay on your computer so no negotiation needed!
Good Luck..
TH i find your most public admonishment by Heather to be extrordinary… its like the ultimate finger pointing.
First we gloat about a history of free speech….then we censor you from the forums in the next paragraph.
Its all too sadly funny…