I understand that you're trying to monetize your business and I think that is important, especially since you're here commenting on an open source alternative.
But, sending multiple emails to customers with a threat to delete their private photos unless they pay, is a kafkaesque way to do business. Sorry, I'm not going to pay for something when I'm treated with actual hostility...
April 19th 2022: [IMPORTANT] Free account limit enforcement changes.
May 12th 2022: FINAL NOTICE: You are in violation of our free account limits.
Oct 6th 2022: Reminder: Your account is in violation of our free account limits.
It seems that after Oct 2022, someone realized this wasn't a good idea and the emails stopped. I just logged in and checked and still have everything there. What is the point of paying, just to silence the empty threats?
I think "actual hostility" would have been simply shutting Flickr off, something Yahoo was ready to do. (Post acquisition, they later publicly admitted they regretted not doing just that[1]). I'm surprised you view getting notices that you have the opportunity to download your content (or pay for it, your choice) to be hostile. Is it less hostile to simply delete the data with no warning, like hundreds of other services have done?
We've tried hard to thread the needle between fixing Flickr's business model (it was losing tens of millions of dollars a year when we bought them, primarily because giving away 1TB/account for free is not sustainable) and giving people plenty of time to download their photos prior to deletion.
Tough problem, tough situation, but I'm largely proud of how we've handled it - there's been plenty of runway and notice for people to get their photos back if they prefer not to pay (either scenario - paying or downloading - is fine in our minds, but losing photos is not). We're not holding them hostage or anything, we want everyone to have them, one way or the other.
Email open & click rates being what they are (low), we carefully tracked them, plus download and/or subscription rates, to determine how frequently to contact people so we could have a high confidence that most people knew they had a choice and had the chance to make it.
Your photos over the free limits will be deleted, eventually. I don't know when, for your specific account, but it's certainly not just to "silence empty threats". It's not a threat, it's a statement, and it was intended as a courtesy.
I'm glad you have a choice AND you _know_ you have a choice.
I've been a flickr user since 2005. I haven't uploaded a single image since 2014. Why? Because the quality of the service went downhill and I knew that it would eventually go away.
I think we have different perspectives on things. Flickr wasn't a way to archive content, it was a way to share it before social media showed up. The need for Flickr died over the years.
I don't really care if Flickr deletes the photos or not, they were all backed up when I originally uploaded them because I've been conditioned to services just deleting content on a whim. Those of us in crypto say, not your keys, not your coins. Similar mentality. I'm accustomed to hostility.
Sending a FINAL NOTICE and then a more friendly reminder, and then not doing anything, is hostile behavior intended to extort people to pay money for a service that really hasn't seen any improvement in a very long time.
My $0.02... listen to them and shut it down and stop burning money on it. But you won't do that cause 'the choice' must be profitable enough to keep it going.
Thanks, again, for the discussion. I really appreciate it.
I'd argue that we have the same perspective on things - Flickr is a way to share, not archive. (Archival may be a wonderful side benefit, but community and connection are what makes Flickr magical, archive is a bonus) Yahoo had a different perspective. We're attempting to reverse it.
And we're succeeding. Across every metric you can imagine, Flickr is the healthiest it's ever been. More active users, more engagement, more connections, more revenue, more of everything - except people treating it like a "photo dump".
Most importantly, our members are ecstatic about it, it's now profitable and cash flow positive, so not in imminent danger (and we're trying to build it, sustainably, for 100+ years[1]). IMHO, it's not nearly enough, yet, but the trajectory is awesome. It's working. And it's working without invading people's privacy, unlike nearly every other social media platform.
We haven't "not done anything". Your account, for reasons I don't know, though someone here at Flickr likely does, hasn't seen anything. There's a big difference. Other accounts have. Every account will, eventually, including yours. Sorry you got an extra runway. ;) We're trying to be VERY careful about deleting photos.
I'm glad you had (and have?) backups. We know definitely, though, that MOST of our members did not. You were an outlier, but our outreach to people without backups was very appreciated. They had a very clear choice, we didn't hold their photos hostage, and that mattered to them.
It was definitely not intended to extort anyone - the options were very clear: download your photos and/or pay for the storage. (I think "and" is the right choice, but I'm biased... I also don't keep my photo archive _only_ on SmugMug and/or Flickr). The vast majority downloaded, rather than paid, and we view that as a win.
We gave people years to learn, choose, and act. I'd say that's pretty generous, and more generous than nearly any other troubled Internet service I've ever heard of. Are you aware of one that's been more generous? If you DIDN'T have backups, would you still have found our emails hostile?
I would appreciate answers to my prior questions, which you didn't address. Were we more hostile than simply turning everything off? It was a binary option. We chose to give people years of choice instead of deleting their photography.
Logging in, I have to type the 2FA code that is emailed to me because someone thought it would be a good idea to use type="number" instead of type="text". Thanks to browsers being the way they are, this means you can't copy/paste the number from an email, into the field. That says to me that people aren't actually giving you the feedback that you might need, or that you don't care enough to fix small UX issues.
When I see the home screen, I am presented with 3 friends with pro accounts, who have been using your service for years. Some as long as I have. F1: last upload 2011, F2: last upload Oct 2023, F3: 2021. What this says to me is that people are paying for storage and are not actively using the site. The non-paying friends are 1-5 years ago. Those aren't customers, those are people who fell into the trap of paying for something because it was a lower bar than migrating somewhere else.
Of course what I see is different than what you see, that's why I think our perspectives are so different.
Ok, so you're an outlier. Which is ok - we're probably not building the right service for you or your 3 friends (who can easily download and stop paying - we're not holding them hostage). We're definitely not trying to build for everyone - we have a target in mind, which is consistent with Flickr's original target 20 years ago, and you're probably not it. We're 100M+ members, not billions, and proud of it because we're focused.
I'm sad that you keep dodging what I view as the more important questions after you accused us of "actual hostility", though. I'd really love to understand how we missed the mark for you, and how we've been hostile, in case that applies to non-outliers and it's something we can improve on.
Was offering years of downloads on a _free_ service hostile? In what way? Was delaying deletion to give more people more time to download hostile? Why? Do you really believe hundreds of millions of consumers all had backups? What other similar Internet services are better examples of handling a situation like this?
Or are you just trolling and I've been feeding a troll (if so, congrats, I feel like my troll detection is relatively high)?
But, sending multiple emails to customers with a threat to delete their private photos unless they pay, is a kafkaesque way to do business. Sorry, I'm not going to pay for something when I'm treated with actual hostility...
It seems that after Oct 2022, someone realized this wasn't a good idea and the emails stopped. I just logged in and checked and still have everything there. What is the point of paying, just to silence the empty threats?