I didn't see any mention of deleting photos that were over the limit. Hopefully they do what Flickr used to do, which is make only the last 1000 photos publicly visible.
"Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit."
What I find amazing is how quickly they are doing it. You'd think they would have 12 months type thing after the 'no upload' before they delete to maintain good will. What if someone is ill or travelling. Seems there will be a bunch of people who lose photos before they realise.
Well... It would have been nice if they warned people earlier because it is quite a big thing to happen.
A possible reason why someone running a website should care about keeping stuff up is to avoid link rot, to me it feels like part of bejng a good Internet citizen is to ensure that a change to your website doesn't break other websites or links where possible and reasonable. (if people want stuff removed, then that's fine though).
However, it might be that it's too expensive to even just keep stuff up, so fair enough, but if that is the case, I feel more warning would have helped a bit here.
> Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit.
From the home page.