I’m Breaking Up With Flickr
I’ve been a Flickr user since 2006. I encouraged all my friends to join, my husband, etc. It was an application I felt covered all the basis; cutting edge integration, sharing ability, incorporation with blogs and websites, etc. The founders seemed to know what they were doing. The professional side of things really appealed to my husband as he was able to learn about different types of photography actions (like HDR) and join groups that would connect him with other photographers with similar interests.
Yahoo! bought them and I didn’t notice any drastic changes, really. So I had to use my Yahoo! ID to sign in. No big deal. I had one of those.
I never quite found a Flickr Uploading tool I liked. I hated the one on the website itself where you could only upload four photos at a time. The bulk uploaders were buggy; an older version worked better than a newer version. Then when I got my Mac, the integration tool I found that worked with iPhoto took even LONGER to upload. I started to get discouraged. I’ve found I upload photos to Flickr MUCH less than I used to. I can’t be bothered to wait so long for the upload to go through. Then I have to tag everything, caption everything, etc. It became way too time consuming.
However, even with all of that, I still enjoyed looking at other people’s photos. Contacts I’ve had for four years – watching their kids grow up, following each holiday, their unique tags, sets, photostreams.
For the last four months, I’ve experienced some strange activity. I’ll get notifications that someone added me as a friend, but no one whose ID rings a bell. Typically their names are surrounded by weird characters like ~*~ or something similar. If I just get added as a friend, I simply block them. But then I started getting actual Flickr mail from them.
Messages like this one:
I’M FROM BRAZIL, PLEASE , READ THIS …
It’s about his daughter Lyla. Unfortunately many people who have fake profiles, as a kind of game, are using little lyla’s pictures, and this is inevitable, but with your permission I would limit, and much, how many people would use her photos , So just me and two or three people confidence we would use the photos of her and would do everything so that nobody else uses. Please think about it, I do not use the photos of her in relation to you, and especially to layla, because you can not believe it, but I, and dozens of girls over here in Brazil, much admire your daughter, and of course we do not want photos of your baby being used by anyone, she is a child, not an object. Thanks for reading and would like a response as soon as possible.
Or this one:
Hello, well I call Bianca Faso am 12 years old and part of a game called fake, you should already conhesser. This game and so we live in a world invented by people on the internet, or rather on orkut and I’ve been following your flickr for a while and this time I latched onto a Lyla incredible people that sometimes I do not believe this is upsetting affection, love. I am very well educated and do not want anything hidden from you and that luckiest mother around the world can have this pricnesa, this angel as his daughter. I wanted to ask permission to use photos of her in this game, I want to take care of her pictures as I have always been doing … eye is posted every day new pictures so I can stay enjoying. And believe I’ve ever cried for her because I was senseless day my flickr and your account was in it and how I would make my day happy without it? No and no exaggeration of Lyla Mom, please? Thank trusting min.
NOTE: The mother of Cassie authorized another person to use pictures of Cassie, wanted to use the photos of Lyla as well.
(For the record, the mother of Cassie never authorized anything at all)
As a parent, this is hugely concerning. Yes, I post photos of my kids on the internet. A LOT of people do. This doesn’t make me a bad person (although there’s a troll around that will disagree – hi, hope you’re doing well, can’t wait to hear, one again, all about how I’m exploiting my kid. Go ahead, leave another comment. I’ll delete it. Again.). My Grandmother loves seeing my Flickr stream and you could literally wallpaper entire rooms in her house with photos of her great-grandchild. If I were to make everything private, or Friends and Family only, she wouldn’t be able to see the photos. Anyone want to explain to an 89-year-old how to create an account and login? Pass.
Regardless, if these messages are correct, my kid’s face is being plastered all over Brazil in some online game that has, with what I can figure out, ties to Orkut (whatever that is). I don’t even know if deleting my account will help what’s already been taken and used illegally. I’m thinking it won’t. And that’s upsetting. But I have to try to make it stop happening in the future.
I hoped Flickr would care. However, there’s no way to email them directly and let them know. I’ve tweeted about it – and have found that there aren’t many other people experiencing this – and haven’t received any outreach from them as an organization. I hate ending a four-year relationship with a site that I love. One I feel has been a true founder of networking and I’d even go as far to say that they are a pioneer in social media.
So Flickr, we’re over. It’s not me. It’s you.









