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Closing My Flickr Account For Cause
The links to my pictures are about to go away because I'm closing my Flickr account for cause.
The bright bulbs at Flickr wrote an image search program to scan all user images -- even the ones marked Private -- and automatically add tags it
determined were appropriate for the content of the image.
Flickr recently admitted that it has been running the new autotag program against its entire user base for the last year and decided to let its users know about the new "feature" and what it had been doing, along with a way to remove the new autotags from individual pictures. Naturally, the people with tens of thousands of pictures were understandably upset so Flickr offered to eventually provide a way to batch edit the autotags.
It was funny at first and I laughed too. The Flickrbot marked two of my pictures with the autotag 'airplane'. The first was a picture of the Flying Wing that I took at the Dream Machines show in Half Mon Bay, California. The second was a picture of the front of my XS11 with Mickey Mouse ears on the wiring harness connectors below the instrument cluster. That's 1 for the robot (yay!) and one against the robot (boo!).
Then some of the other users at Flickr started reporting some seriously disturbing "mistakes" made by the autotag feature, like marking pictures of Nazi death camps with autotags like 'sport' and 'jungle gym'; pictures of African Americans as 'ape', and other "mistakes" to disgusting to mention in public.
Inevitably, Flickr and some of the users have begun blaming both paying customers and free account users for sticking with Flickr if they don't want autotagging -- even though the Flickr/Yahoo TOS clearly states that all users are legally responsible for their images and any tags or content associated with them. By offering the ability to remove the new autotags, Flickr has in one swell foop made their users responsible for Flickr's autotag feature and any tampering by Flickr employees. There is no way to determine whether one single, solitary, criminally and civilly liable tag was or was not added by Flickr's image tagging feature OR if it was done by a bored/malicious employee or group of employees hacking the system and blaming the rogue program.
Flickr does not have the detailed logs and system audits that can prevent tampering with their system and after seeing some of the "mistakes" allegedly made by the autotagging feature I don't believe they were all mistakes. None of my pictures or their external links are worth associating myself, my pictures or anything else in my life with that kind of 'stuff' so I'm closing my Flickr Pro account. I'll try to find a way to host the pictures myself because Photobucket, Google and other image hosting sites are inevitably going try the same 'stuff' that Flickr's pulled on its customers but in the meantime the links are going bye-bye.
It was fun while it lasted but it's just not funny any more.
.
The bright bulbs at Flickr wrote an image search program to scan all user images -- even the ones marked Private -- and automatically add tags it
determined were appropriate for the content of the image.
Flickr recently admitted that it has been running the new autotag program against its entire user base for the last year and decided to let its users know about the new "feature" and what it had been doing, along with a way to remove the new autotags from individual pictures. Naturally, the people with tens of thousands of pictures were understandably upset so Flickr offered to eventually provide a way to batch edit the autotags.
It was funny at first and I laughed too. The Flickrbot marked two of my pictures with the autotag 'airplane'. The first was a picture of the Flying Wing that I took at the Dream Machines show in Half Mon Bay, California. The second was a picture of the front of my XS11 with Mickey Mouse ears on the wiring harness connectors below the instrument cluster. That's 1 for the robot (yay!) and one against the robot (boo!).
Then some of the other users at Flickr started reporting some seriously disturbing "mistakes" made by the autotag feature, like marking pictures of Nazi death camps with autotags like 'sport' and 'jungle gym'; pictures of African Americans as 'ape', and other "mistakes" to disgusting to mention in public.
Inevitably, Flickr and some of the users have begun blaming both paying customers and free account users for sticking with Flickr if they don't want autotagging -- even though the Flickr/Yahoo TOS clearly states that all users are legally responsible for their images and any tags or content associated with them. By offering the ability to remove the new autotags, Flickr has in one swell foop made their users responsible for Flickr's autotag feature and any tampering by Flickr employees. There is no way to determine whether one single, solitary, criminally and civilly liable tag was or was not added by Flickr's image tagging feature OR if it was done by a bored/malicious employee or group of employees hacking the system and blaming the rogue program.
Flickr does not have the detailed logs and system audits that can prevent tampering with their system and after seeing some of the "mistakes" allegedly made by the autotagging feature I don't believe they were all mistakes. None of my pictures or their external links are worth associating myself, my pictures or anything else in my life with that kind of 'stuff' so I'm closing my Flickr Pro account. I'll try to find a way to host the pictures myself because Photobucket, Google and other image hosting sites are inevitably going try the same 'stuff' that Flickr's pulled on its customers but in the meantime the links are going bye-bye.
It was fun while it lasted but it's just not funny any more.
.
You can delete one batch of autotags today and tomorrow there may be new ones from The Return of the Robot when it went through your pictures again and dumped a fresh load of new-and-improved tags because you were obviously displeased with the old ones and, "The only way to win is not to play...."
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