Flickr will start deleting old photos starting tomorrow

[Shawn Knight]

Bottom line: Nobody likes adhering to strict guidelines after having what essentially amounted to unlimited storage for years but it's a necessary evil that should make for a better overall user experience. Either way, you'll want to take action if you are a free user over the 1,000 image limit to ensure you don't lose content.

Image hosting service Flickr in late 2018 announced plans to impose restrictions on its free tier that would limit storage to 1,000 photos and videos in most cases.

Until recently, free tier users were given 1TB of online storage which was enough to accommodate more than 500,000 average-size photos. Flickr’s new owner, SmugMug, said the previous owner’s (Yahoo) decision to offer that much storage was a mistake that undervalued the worth of paid storage and attracted people interested in the free storage, not necessarily those who love photography.

Since January 8, 2019, free members over the 1,000 limit haven’t been able to upload additional photos to Flickr. And starting tomorrow, February 5, 2019, Flickr will start deleting photos and videos beyond the threshold, starting with the oldest media first.

To ensure your content doesn’t disappear into thin air, you can either upgrade to a paid Flickr Pro account or download and save your images locally, either through the Camera Roll or the Albums section.

The clock is ticking. If you don’t want to risk losing anything, it’d be best to get to downloading ASAP, especially if you don’t want to pay for a premium account. And even if you do upgrade to a paid account, it’s never a bad idea to keep a local backup of your work.

Lead image courtesy BigTunaOnline via Shutterstock

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https://www.techspot.com/news/78570-flickr-start-deleting-old-photos-starting-tomorrow.html

 

[Teko03]

Seems like just yesterday that Flickr was a great a place for photographers to share their works, network and learn...now Flickr is just a huge dumpster fire full of crap.They should just delete the entire site.

 

[toooooot]

I kept my photos there, now I cant. To think of their changes: who the heck will use it when their limit is 1000 photos?
I guess they hope to survive of premium accounts. Gl if they can.
But it feels like their path is the way of movie path. They will see users dropping left and right. Plus those who who didn't get the memo and lost their photo libraries. Then the downvoting of the service begin where it will be hard for them to attract new users while their current rating will be low. And then because they were losing revenue from ads due to drastically dropping member base, they would have to up the price to survive.
Then they would make a shitty statement telling how dedicated they are to providing photographers a place to share their work but unfortunately due to the "unkown" issues they have to stop supporting Flickr and will give the rest of the suckers who would still be using it to download their photos before the site goes down.

This is just my opinion. They might just become a niche service for select few, they might sell to someone and become what imgur became to reddit. But I have no doubt that people who don't read tech news and don't check flikr notifications will be pissed, a lot of them when they lose their photos. I cant see this improving Flickr's reputation.

 

[trgz]

I deleted my several thousands of photos (that I'd backed up from my HD) from it a couple of years back - it was never the same once Yahoo got their grubby, inept, mitts on it.