A few nice upload image images I found:
Flickr User Asks Flickr to Check if Her Self Moderated Account is OK, Flickr Responds By Deleting the User's Account Without Warning
Image by Thomas Hawk
Last week I blogged about a Flickr user Shéhérazade who without warning saw her self moderated account get permanently deleted. The user was upset about this because they thought that they were abiding by all of the Flickr rules and posted a thread on this in the Flickr Help Forum which was promptly censored and shut down there. A lot of people felt that this was not right.
This week we have another Flickr user who was concerned that her account might not be set up right and so she wrote to Flickr staff asking if they could review her account and provide her input regarding if she had set her account up correctly or not.
Flickr's response? Rather than respond back to the user and/or direct her on what she might need to do to have her account structured correctly at Flickr, simply without warning just pressed the big fat red delete button wiping out her entire account and all of her content permanently.
From the deleted account:
"I had an adult orientated stream of photos on flickr and was slowly building up a list of contacts, comments and views. All my pics were public and marked restricted except for 1 that contained no nudity and was marked moderate. My account was rated safe.
I have been deleted in the past and had done quite a bit of checking around to make sure I was on the right side of the law. It will make me sound like a bit of an anorak but I spent in excess of 4 hours on this and still was not sure. I got a flickr mail from another user (one of many) which said put all my pics f&f [edit: f&f = friends and family] or I would be deleted and this prompted even more checking and in the end I decided I would try and request flickr for help – primarily because the guidelines are so vague.
My email was nice enough. It contained the information in the first paragraph of this post and then went on to say that I did not want to get my account deleted for doing the wrong thing and that I would appreciate a review of my account to check I was all ok."
The deleted user goes on to document her reply from Flickr:
"I got a response back within 12 hours
Subject:
[Flickr Case 1054684] Re: Account Review Request
Message:
Hello,
Flickr account "flashergirl77" was deleted by Flickr staff
for violating our Terms of Service and Community
Guidelines.
www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne
Urination.
Flickr reserves the right to terminate your account without
warning at any time.
Regards,
-[edited out by staff]"
Now, Flickr tells people that they are allowed to host adult content as long as it is self moderated. Adult content, nudity, etc. is all over Flickr. The Flickr rules are that if you post that stuff you have to label it as "restricted," this way people that don't want to see it (and the default Flickr set up if people don't bother to say one way or the other) won't see it. It's like it doesn't exist to them.
So why when a Flickr user is playing by the rules and has self moderated all of their explicit photos "restricted," do they summarily get their account deleted without warning simply for the crime of asking Flickr to review their account and tell them if they are doing everything ok?
Certainly Flickr owes its community more than this. It is the community after all that makes up Flickr. Flickr would be nothing without its community. And yet time and time again, over and over again, they seem to get away with deleting accounts and censoring content with no repercussion. Because Flickr seems to be the 800 pound gorilla and because today this is where the larger photo sharing community largely interacts, they seem to feel that they can just do whatever they feel like without any sort of consequence whatsoever.
And what's sad, is maybe they're right. Maybe they can just keep on censoring accounts and deleting accounts on a whim whenever they feel like it. Maybe they can continue destroying years of people's work, thousands of comments, their uploaded images all without consequence because what are you going to do about it anyways?
But that still don't make it right.
If you'd like to follow this case in the Flickr help forum you can do that here. Don't be surprised though if the thread gets shut down shortly.
Update: Heather Champ has responded as follows in the Help Forum thread:
"I just wanted to follow up that I've sent an email about an hour ago to flashergirl1977 with an apology for the actions taken by the team in recent days. I'll leave it up to them as to whether or not they want to share the content here.
That's why I suspect this particular case is an aberration (not common, accident, etc) or there's more to the story. The last thing Flickr wants to do is create a sense of distrust among the users. Unfortunately it's only the cases handled improperly that end up getting any public attention (there's no "Great Job Flickr!" forum.) and thus leads to public fear, as if that's how all of their cases are handled.
You've hit the nail on the head. I've circled round with the team here regarding our process and policies. "
As an aside there are currently 94 threads (most of them closed or locked by Flickr) in the Flickr help forum with the words "censorship" and "mistake" in them. And yet still Flickr doesn't have a way to undo "accidental" account deletions.
Fir / Conifer Tree Room 180° Composite Panorama - Brian Eno Speaker Flowers Sound Installation at Marlborough House
Image by Dominic's pics
View this virtual tour of 152 images as a Slideshow
Visitors were invited to sit and listen to music on head phones.
Window, doors and doorways. Orange, pink and green illuminated rooms. Potted fir / conifer trees. Buttoned, padded, traditional red leather wingback armchairs. Red, tall, high backed, upholstered, swivel chairs. Wooden floorboards. 12 image 180° composite panorama. Hand stitched montage of images, each with a normalised perspective. White background.
See also the related "Brian Eno 77 Million Paintings" set, - an exhibition that ran concurrently at Fabrica Gallery during the festival.
This image is part of a set of photos of the Brian Eno Speaker Flowers Sound Installation at Marlborough House (and also of the house itself) on the Old Steine, Brighton, East sussex, UK. The exhibition was presented by Fabrica Art Gallery, as part of the Brighton Festival, May 2010. The installation includes the poems and words of Rick Holland.
The Grade I listed house was built circa 1765 , purchased at one time by the Duke of Marlborough, and substantially remodelled by the Scottish architect Robert Adam.
More links:
Brian Eno Shop
Arena TV series theme tune video by Brian Eno.
Microsoft Windows Start-Up Sounds collection video (Including Windows 95 music by Brian Eno).
Marlborough House (My Brighton and Hove)
The Architecture of Robert Adam (1728-1792) from RCAHMS (the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland)
Humberts Leisure Brochure on property [.pdf download]
Some of the photos in this set are presented in multiple versions made possible using HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography - these variations are displayed with more than one exposure, gamma, "local adaptation" compression or "unsharp mask" process.
Many rooms had their windows screened using coloured Crêpe paper / tissue paper. This gave their illumination a colour cast - which has been exaggerated (or neutralised) on an image by image basis. The actual experience of the coloured light was one of only a slight and soft hue.
In some instances the photos have modified to give an architectural, classical, "two-point" perspective - with forced, parallel verticals.
Amanda plotting
Image by gwilmore (I HATE THE NEW LAYOUT!)
This informal portrait of Miss Amanda Lee needed little postprocessing, and while it does have some technical flaws, it may nevertheless be one of my favorite images of her. If there is a limit somewhere to this young woman's ability to delight me, I have yet to discover it. I wonder what kind of mischief she is plotting here. :-)
Her mother asked me today if my Flickr friends were getting tired of seeing Amanda. If you folks want me to give her your feedback, just say whatever you want to say right here; but my own response was that I wasn't sure, but didn't necessarily care, and that I would continue taking and uploading images of her anyway.
MM #132424
