Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

Last week I had a nice opportunity to do an interview for the second time with Kerry Garrison and his excellent Camera Dojo podcast. We talked about a lot of the projects that I’m working on at present. The importance of projects and goals in general. Some interesting Flickr tools out there and a bit about our new Samsung Android phones and the camera tools for those. A good conversation.

You can find the podcast here.

I was disappointed to learn yesterday that Flickr has begun restricting accounts for excessive favoriting despite the fact that their very own Help FAQ says that there is no limit on favoriting on the site. At least two prominent Flickr users yesterday both had their accounts restricted and locked out of Flickr because Flickr felt they were marking too many favorites in their favorite stream. Even though faving is not listed in the TOS or Community Guidelines Flickr sent notices which read:

“We’ve seen an unusual degree of activity from your account, including rapid favoriting of other members photos in a high enough manner to be considered an abuse of resources.

In joining Flickr, you agreed to abide by the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Specifically, you must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Flickr member.”

The two accounts restricted are Billy Wilson’s and Diego Balinhas’ — both contacts of mine who I’ve enjoyed knowing personally and two of the most active members on Flickr who both contribute photos regularly to the site themselves.

So apparently now faving too many photos of another flickr members photos is now considered abuse? Personally speaking, I think this is a new low for Flickr’s already bad nanny state. Faving photographs should not be a crime. Users shouldn’t have to worry about liking too many photographs on the site. Personally speaking I’ve faved a ton of photos myself over the past five years. I fave photos because I like them and it’s a way to send a quick message to someone that I appreciate that specific image. Do I have to worry now if I spend a bunch of time faving photos on Flickr myself one day. Will my account be restricted next?

What about uploading too many photos? I’m trying to upload 1 million photos to flickr before I die. Is uploading too many photos going to be a violation of Flickr’s standards even though they say that uploads are unlimited?

Faving someone’s photo does not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other members. And if it does, other members already have a block command that can prevent someone from faving their work.

I’m disappointed to see Flickr take this course of action. Like my own account, both have now been banned from Explore. They’ve also had their photos pulled from search and they can’t even make comments on other people’s photos anymore.

Be careful out there folks. It seems Big Brother will be watching how many photos you are faving going forward.

It should be noted that both of the suspended accounts claim to have been faving photos by hand and not using scripts or bots. There is a thread in the Help Forum (where I am still banned permanently, thanks Flickr!) on this matter here.

Update: In typical Flickr fashion they have shut down and locked the thread in the help forum complaining about this issue.

From Zack Sheppard at Flickr: “We can’t discuss individual accounts here in the forum but we are communicating directly with the people that aren’t able to fav. Since nothing useful can come out of the discussion here, I’m closing this topic down. “

Just got this from Adobe:

Adobe today announced the Lightroom 3.2 and Camera Raw 6.2 Release Candidates, available for immediate download on Adobe Labs. The updates extend raw file support to 12 new popular camera models, improve on several of the lens correction profiles introduced as part of the Lightroom 3 and Camera Raw 6.1 releases, and add over 50 new lens profiles to help photographers automatically correct for undesirable distortion and aberration effects.

Also, this update improves the color and noise profiles for the following cameras that utilize the DNG raw file format already supported in previous versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw: Casio EXILIM EX-FH100 (DNG) and Leica S2 (DNG).