Unfortunately, Flickr has been categorized lately as having a bit of a hair trigger when it comes to deleting photographers’ accounts as a result of an alleged violation of the Flickr Terms of Service. According to numerous reports, once an account is deleted, it’s deleted. Period.
That “shoot first, ask questions later” corporate attitude appears to have caught up with the photo sharing service today in a very bad way. According to Mirco Wilhelm (aka Flickr Pro user bindermichi), a Flickr staff member accidentally deleted his account when Wilhelm reported abuse by another Flickr member.
Fearing the worst, Wilhelm contacted Flickr when he could not log in to his account earlier today. “Flickr staff” responded with the following:
Hello,
Unfortunately, I have mixed up the accounts and accidentally deleted yours. I am terribly sorry for this grave error and hope that this mistake can be reconciled. Here is what I can do from here:
I can restore your account, although we will not be able to retrieve your photos. I know that there is a lot of history on your account–again, please accept my apology for my negligence. Once I restore your account, I will add four years of free Pro to make up for my error.
Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do.
Again, I am deeply sorry for this mistake.
Regards,
Flickr staff
The “history” in Wilhelm’s account that “Flickr staff” references was 5 years of work and amounted to nearly 4,000 photos. Wilhelm gave a glimpse of the effect this will have on his attempts to rebuild the account himself:
So how can this really compensate losing close to 4000 “linked” pictures from my web albums? I have to recreate most of these links manually, which will take weeks, if not months of my free time! Not to mention, external websites that had linked these images (including some official Yahoo! and Flickr blogs).
This latest example of what many consider indifference to their paying members has led to an outcry from Flickr users around the Net.
For what it’s worth, Flickr staff member, Zach Sheppard, says that Flickr is working on a possible undo feature.
You can follow the developments of the story at the links below:
Mirco Wilhelm (strong language warning)
Thomas Hawk (where I first read about it)
Pat says
People shouldn’t rely on on-line websites as the ONLY place to store their photos! Not only are my photos on my hard drive, but I have them backed-up to an external drive as well as posted on several on-line sites.
Eric Reagan says
Agreed Pat. I think his point was that not that he didn’t have backups at home, but that he used the photos on Flickr to display them on his own blog, as well as other sites. I use Flickr’s embedding option to show off reader photos from the Photography Bay Flickr group every week. Such as here: http://www.photographybay.com/2011/01/30/reader-photos-roundup-%e2%80%93-january-30-2011/
If those photos go missing in a user’s account, they also go missing from the posts in which I embed them. If he re-uploads photos, they won’t link back to the previous embedded links.
Sorry for not making this point more clear in the post. ;)
FedUp2 says
Thing is, this is what happens to you if you complain at Flickr. They don’t like having to actually do work. That’s pretty obvious from the fact that after over five years of losing people’s photos like this, they still fail to back up anything. The founder even lost all his stuff at that cluster-f of a social network gone wrong. What’s funny about those slackers at Yahoo’s Flickr is that they think they can pull off hosting a porn site, while pretending it’s a family friendly place for your kids’ photos. That may be fine for the average user that wacks off at work, but not so good for an advertising platform, as it turns out. You see, major corporations and small businesses alike have an issue with their ads being surreptitiously placed onto hardcore pornographic web pages without being told about that. Yahoo’s Flickr can play this game of hide-the-porn while tricking the general public into trusting them. But those lies don’t really fly in the advertising world on which Yahoo depends. Everyday, several people get deleted from Yahoo’s Flickr as that company desperately attempts to make their porn site not really appear to be one on the surface. The copyright infringement is the same thing on a smaller scale. They count on people stealing your content, that’s why they tricked you into placing it all online in an easily accessible catalog of stock images from trusting idiots. Make any kind complaint about the way they are doing anything, and you’re booted out mercilessly. That’s just the way it goes and Yahoo doesn’t care one bit how you feel, because they obviously do whatever they want to. They have the government in their pocket and free reign to push porn into grade schools unlabeled, give your photos away for free to anyone that wants them without liability, and harbor countless sexual predators, pedophiles, and registered sex offenders, whom they cloak so they can be right next to your children without anyone being suspicious. Can’t really see anything worthwhile about that website, or Yahoo in general. It’s all lies from them, and everyone eats it up with a clueless smile.
James says
I also agree Pat.
This world is not perfect and nothing is for sure. People die and many things can change in a heartbeat. Even external hard drive back-ups can fail. The person who did this made a mistake. That’s it. The account holder is also responsible for this by not having a backup- and even that can fail. You can cover your ass all you want. You can take every precaution. Shit happens. Life goes on. No expectations, no disappointment… Sue! maybe you will win! but you still don’t have what you lost! … we always look for some to blame… we are human.
… In the long run, it’s just stuff! what is really important…?
We are all we will ever have til we die. And. if you are a good photographer, you will always make better fotos than you did before. That is how it works, when we stay focused; we move up and up and up!
Chill out, Flickr-man-who-lost-his-memories/ MONEY making source.
“You may say I am a dreamer, but I am not not the only one…”
:)
James says
Peace and love…
it’s the answer to everything.
Carl Bradley says
That has always been one of the issues with linked, rather than embedded content. Once the link is broken, no amount of “restore” will get you back to where you were without a great deal of effort. That’s one of the main flaws in Open Office, as, in general, it hyperlinks everything, rather than embeds it in the document—it saves space, but puts you at the mercy of the stability of the link.
Josep Lamesa Andreu says
That just means that Flickr’ has not a backup of our photostreams and configs !
Where did they put the money the PRO users pay every year?? Just profits ??
Nowadays HD Drives for a backup are extremely cheap, and the less Flickr /Yahoo can do is assure our data in prevention of any kind of mistake/failure in their systems.
triplejck says
Thanks for the heads up.
I was just about to embark on a large upload of key files.
Back to rethinking my presentations.
Rob McCance says
Man, I really feel for that user, I do.
But why does anyone use these dumbass services to begin with?
Who trusts valuable stuff like that to a online service? I’ve got 10 years worth of images and NONE of them are in the cloud or at any of these places. They are duped across 4 HDDs three of which are only plugged in to update them. They are also all burned on DVDs,
I’m in now way dogging that user, that’s ridiculous should never happen and I feel bad for him.
But, people – don’t trust your work to these CLOWNS.
Michael Short says
I agree everyone should back up their photos on to DVD and external HDDs, but thats not really the issue here.
The issue is that in order to share photos across the internet you need to upload them, now you could make your own website and store them on there which would make you responsible if anything should go wrong, but most people would just use a service like Flickr.
So this user most likely does have all his photos backed up locally, but thats not going to help when it comes to linking etc, and its still going to take him weeks or months to upload them all back onto flickr and relink them to every site that has them linked.
Pete says
Why doesn’t flicker have a backup for this client in the cloud? Shocking!
Michael Short says
I find it very surprising that flickr wouldn’t have backups of what is on their site, including all the photos that people post. a company that big should be doing at least weekly backups of all their data so that if a mistake like that does happen they can just restore it.
That solution would most likely not help with the linked photos problem, but it would restore his 4,000 photos on his account reducing at least some of the work he has to do in order to get back up and running.