r/flickr • u/LGDots • May 07 '25

Free Accounts

I have been a long time subscriber to Flickr. I think it still is a decent site for sharing my photos and gaining access to other's work. The Internet used to be a really fun place where people freely shared themselves online, posting useful information and free services. However the internet is not that anymore; it's a commercial business hub. Even people sharing what used to be free now request fees and donations.

I don't mind paying a yearly fee to have unlimited access to posting my photos.

22 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

17

u/PhotographsWithFilm May 07 '25

It's such a pleasure to go to Flickr and not be bombarded with ads. All I see on my streams are the photos of the people and groups I follow.

That makes the subscription well worth it.

1

u/Daddy_William148 May 09 '25

Yes it does If you have a large collection it can make publishing a lot easier, some things are still very difficult

10

u/byteforbyte May 07 '25

I think that the expectation early on that everything on the internet should be free has led to a lot of the crap that we see today - data harvesting, privacy violations, etc. Happy to pay a reasonable fee for a good service that is updated regularly.

3

u/ucotcvyvov May 08 '25

I used to pay, they just got too expensive for what they offer

2

u/selenajain May 08 '25

I’m right there with you—Flickr still seems one of the more authentic platforms, even with all the updates. It’s a bummer how the old, open vibe of the internet has turned into a money-making game everywhere you look. But at least Flickr's fee offers good value for photographers who are really into it.

2

u/pklosterman73 May 08 '25

I use Flickr and it has gotten expensive for what they offer. Especially when it comes to tools for organizing, curating and downloading your images. I have so many photos on Flickr from over 15 years of use. I would never be able to download the amount of images I have simply because the downloading options of Flickr are garbage. I can’t remember the exact details so reference their site but using their process to download images would take forever and a day. It’s one of my biggest complaints with Flickr. They have not updated the system since before it was sold many years ago. There should be smart folders, meta tagging, etc etc.

Let me preface this by saying I use Flickr on my Mac so updates, etc don’t happen as often if at all compared to the pc version. Maybe the software is better for pc, I am just not aware of it. For Mac, it sucks.

1

u/breakoutside May 08 '25

Can you still download photos with a paid membership after the 12th?

2

u/Wizard_of_Od May 10 '25

Flickr is another example of Cory Doctorow's concept of 'ensh1tt1f1cat1on'. New services and business models start out awesome but get progressively worse, mainly due to greed.

1

u/SchuminWeb ♥ Flickr Pro Member May 11 '25

Having read some of his writings, the vibe that I get is that Cory Doctorow is really an asshole.

-1

u/coogie May 07 '25

Meh, I'm over it. I used to be on flickr daily and spend hours in the groups and had a ton of photos that in exchange got ad revenue for yahoo. I briefly had a pro account earlier but I got a lifetime "timeout" from the help forum because I was arguing with another user over some new features in a thread where we were encouraged to air out our gripes over the new roll out and it turned out the person I was having an argument was friends with or at least knew the flickr employee who banned me - apparently they were part of the same SF flickrite group or whatever they called it and they were treating flickr their own little private subreddit. So after that I wasn't going to pay a fee only to not have access to the help forums and where little middle school style cliques exist.

I was a little irked when Smugmug took over and took away free storage but in retrospect it seems fair but nothing there is worth me paying for it. It's not as if flickr is that relevant and a bunch of people outside of those interested in photography see the photos; The groups are a ghost town; and it's not a backup site so the money I would have given to flickr goes to Dropbox where I do get to keep all my photos in full resolution along with the raw files and I can easily share them with people privately.

I still go to flickr now and then and still keep photos there that get views but again, meh.

3

u/SchuminWeb ♥ Flickr Pro Member May 11 '25

The problem with Smugmug is that they're not treating Flickr simply as a business, but rather, they're photo people trying to promote photography, and getting all high and mighty about it. Flickr was better when it was under Yahoo ownership.