Flickr used to be a great photo site. It was started in 2004 in Canada, but it didn't stay independent for very long. Yahoo took it over in 2005, and for quite a while it looked good. It was quite distinctive from some of the other photo sharing sites, and has retained a quirkiness all of its own. The problem is that Yahoo has had a lot of problems in recent years, and their properties like Flickr have suffered along with the parent, as they fall more and more into Google's shadow.
For me, I thought Flickr was pretty good until relatively recently. I have even set up a new home site recently for some of my photos as a result of changing my core online identity this year. I had thought everything was well with Flickr. However what has shaken my faith in them has been a total failure in customer support. If you try to contact them, using the methods provided on their website, then you cannot get a reply. Your ticket will go into what looks like a regular customer support queue, but you will never get a response from them. Therefore, it's practically impossible to get any issues resolved.
The biggest concern I have had with Flickr, which I only just discovered last week, is that they have removed some of the photos from my albums. I only found this out when I tried to transfer the photos to a new Flickr account, and received messages that a few images were considered "infringing content" and had been previously removed. I then checked and found that the pictures in question had been replaced by templates with the text "this photo is no longer available" printed on them.
I haven't been able to determine how the photos came to be removed. The photos were unremarkable and the most likely scenario is that malicious allegations of copyright infringement were reported by persons unknown, in order to force the images to be taken down. One album with around 2000 pictures in it had 200 images that were replaced by this template. But simply put, Yahoo decided they did not need to notify me of the reporting of the images; they simply removed them without advising me in the slightest. The law in the US requires notification of a DMCA related takedown of an image. NZ copyright law also requires this. If Yahoo's case is that neither of these laws applied, then they are responsible to inform their users under what other circumstances and what other law they consider themselves empowered to remove images.
Needless to say, Yahoo has not responded to any requests in relation to this issue. I have just filed another support request, to move the NZ Rail Maps Flickr albums to ownership from a new Yahoo ID. This process used to be available directly from Flickr account settings but has been removed from there, and you now follow a process that involves filing a support request with Yahoo's helpdesk. Well of course this has gone unanswered like all the other requests.
More than any other reason, this situation has precipitated the decision to register a domain name for the NZ Rail Maps project. It has come out of the realisation that Flickr, which has been where I hosted the map tiles for a long time, cannot be depended upon any more. Google Photos will probably end up being where a lot of the tiles are hosted in future. I am still thinking about whether to ditch the rest of my Flickr albums and move all my stuff to Google Photos. At that time I would still follow some people on Flickr, but not use it for anything else.
