27 votes

Flickr will soon start deleting photos — and massive chunks of internet history

17 comments

  1. [8]
    esrever
    Link
    There's an Archive Team page linking to some tools[1] and project status[2] for a crowdsourced archival project. flickr-grab and flickr-items Flickr tracker

    There's an Archive Team page linking to some tools[1] and project status[2] for a crowdsourced archival project.


    1. flickr-grab and flickr-items
    2. Flickr tracker
    12 votes
    1. [6]
      Nivlak
      Link Parent
      These guys do some good work also.

      These guys do some good work also.

      5 votes
      1. [5]
        esrever
        Link Parent
        I definitely have an even greater affection for Archive.org, but it wouldn't have anywhere close to the amount of mirrored/archived content housed if it weren't for independent teams like Archive...

        I definitely have an even greater affection for Archive.org, but it wouldn't have anywhere close to the amount of mirrored/archived content housed if it weren't for independent teams like Archive Team. They were part of the effort in archiving Geocities, but also instrumental in numerous other projects.

        7 votes
        1. [4]
          meghan
          Link Parent
          Both the Internet Archive and Archive Team are made up of much the same people. Most notably, Jason Scott is the founder/curator for both. The two sites have much the same goals, however Archive...

          Both the Internet Archive and Archive Team are made up of much the same people. Most notably, Jason Scott is the founder/curator for both. The two sites have much the same goals, however Archive Team is a more crowdsourced approach to downloading massive amounts of highly unstable data.

          5 votes
          1. [2]
            masochist
            (edited )
            Link Parent
            Jason Scott is also the madman behind textfiles.com. I didn't know that he was also so deeply involved with archive.org / Archive Team, but I'm not surprised. Cheers for the headsup. :) edit: some...

            Jason Scott is also the madman behind textfiles.com. I didn't know that he was also so deeply involved with archive.org / Archive Team, but I'm not surprised. Cheers for the headsup. :)

            edit: some punctuation silliness that sneaked in unnoticed

            3 votes
          2. esrever
            Link Parent
            Thanks for that clarification. I wasn't aware of that connection between the two.

            Thanks for that clarification. I wasn't aware of that connection between the two.

            2 votes
    2. zaarn
      Link Parent
      Everytime I open my personal data hoard, I'm thankful for the ArchiveTeam being enablers in my addiction. Archiving the web is an important task and it's quite annoying how often people don't know...

      Everytime I open my personal data hoard, I'm thankful for the ArchiveTeam being enablers in my addiction.

      Archiving the web is an important task and it's quite annoying how often people don't know how important archival is.

      I've dug up a post on the datahoarders subreddit and I'm probably going to get a copy of the Apollo mission's pictures if I can.

      3 votes
  2. [3]
    alyaza
    Link
    fundamentally flickr's model was unsustainable so nobody should be surprised, but to say that this will take a massive bite out of internet history is still probably an understatement. even with...

    fundamentally flickr's model was unsustainable so nobody should be surprised, but to say that this will take a massive bite out of internet history is still probably an understatement. even with the pushed back deadline (the big deletion round was supposed to happen around this time this month) this will still be cataclysmic to a lot of internet history because of just how widespread flickr's use was at one point. some things will be saved and archived because of things like wikipedia (which has saved probably hundreds of thousands of good flickr community images on wikimedia because of their licensing) and the internet archive, but even with the new deadline i would be shocked if more than like 10 percent of the site's content is saved before things start getting deleted.

    6 votes
    1. NaraVara
      Link Parent
      What’s annoying is their bulk download function doesn’t seem to be working. Those of us who used to use it can’t pull their photos down without going one by one.

      What’s annoying is their bulk download function doesn’t seem to be working. Those of us who used to use it can’t pull their photos down without going one by one.

      3 votes
    2. frickindeal
      Link Parent
      I thought about it a long time ago when I was very into photography: why did flickr allow all that metadata (EXIF info, if you're familiar) out into the wild instead of attempting to sell it to...

      I thought about it a long time ago when I was very into photography: why did flickr allow all that metadata (EXIF info, if you're familiar) out into the wild instead of attempting to sell it to camera manufacturers—obviously in a non-privacy-invading way. They could tell camera manufacturers what type of users were using what (landscape vs. modeling vs. action, etc.) to better cater to their customers. They had location data on millions of photographs. Wasn't that all worth something? The ability to search for "shot on iPhone," for example, should have been a huge thing Apple would love to see, but they got it all for free, and any user could search it. I think that was a potential non-advertising way flickr could have helped sustain itself.

      3 votes
  3. [3]
    Algernon_Asimov
    Link
    I can't say I'm surprised, or even upset, about this. I'm actually feeling a combination of told-you-so and schadenfreude at this news. This is what happens when you give your stuff to someone...

    I can't say I'm surprised, or even upset, about this. I'm actually feeling a combination of told-you-so and schadenfreude at this news.

    This is what happens when you give your stuff to someone else to look after it for free. They won't take care of it like you do, and you won't have guaranteed access to it. I would say that people should use a paid service, but even that's no guarantee your stuff will be taken care of (people paid for the copies of '1984' ebooks that Amazon deleted).

    If you don't have personal, local, custody of your stuff, be prepared to lose it at any time.

    5 votes
    1. [2]
      nic
      Link Parent
      If you don't have secure offsite backups, also be prepared to lose your stuff.

      If you don't have secure offsite backups, also be prepared to lose your stuff.

      2 votes
      1. Octofox
        Link Parent
        Home NAS + off site archive backup is a pretty ideal setup.

        Home NAS + off site archive backup is a pretty ideal setup.

        1 vote
  4. gyrozeppeli
    Link
    That's what people get for relying on a third party to [infinitely] host photos. At best it's naive, at worst it's just selfish expecting someone to host photos for, well, forever. If the photos...

    That's what people get for relying on a third party to [infinitely] host photos. At best it's naive, at worst it's just selfish expecting someone to host photos for, well, forever. If the photos are that important then they should've been backed up somewhere in the event of this happening.

    In a few years imgur is going to do the exact same thing, except tons of photos on imgur are already inexplicably dead. A lot of reddit posts are already unusable because they linked to a ton of imgur images. That's why I back up my images, and use s3 buckets to store the images I use e.g. in my blog posts. Even if amazon shutters their service I'll be able to easily move to the next most concrete-looking provider.

    2 votes
  5. [2]
    rickdg
    Link
    Bit weird how yahoo sold Flickr but the platform still relies on yahoo services.

    Bit weird how yahoo sold Flickr but the platform still relies on yahoo services.

    1. masochist
      Link Parent
      Flickr claimed that you'd no longer need a Yahoo account to sign up in January. I don't quite think they're there yet.

      Flickr claimed that you'd no longer need a Yahoo account to sign up in January. I don't quite think they're there yet.

      1 vote