the winds they may be howling and my cares too much to hold

Strawberry Singh brings us news of the changes at Flickr. They're not good. Let's take them point by point.

I've been on Flickr for a stupidly long time. I have a lot of content there, though I'm nowhere near the 1,000 photos I'd need to have them start deleting them on me. I have also, until this month--to be specific, until yesterday--always had a free account. But it wouldn't have mattered had I bought in and gone Pro years ago, because the new price structure raises the Pro price for accounts from $25 US to $49.99 US (yearly). Now, could I afford that fifty per year, I'd get Flickr, on average, for a little over two dollars a month. My budget doesn't allow that, so I am resentfully now paying $5.99 a month, as I go, to give myself enough time to decide where to jump. If I am jumping elsewhere.

What does that $5.99 get me? Mostly peace of mind that I won't lose content until I figure out what to do. But also, Flickr is adding advertising to free accounts. Great. So going Pro will skip those for me, it's a trade-off.

Second, while Flickr's position on digital photography and artists seems to be, at least on the surface, supportive, Ms. Singh seems to indicate that other Flickr members have stated this is not the case. With this new change to both the pricing structure and the limitation on free accounts, this does seem to indicate that they have no problem holding content hostage--that risk of having account content deleted--for our money. This does seem particularly blatant, but without more information, I can't specifically address Flickr's desire (or lack thereof) to kick off digital photographers from their platform.

So what about her listed Flickr alternatives? Let's go over them one by one.

Instagram is not going to be a functional replacement for me, though that is primarily because I keep so little content on Instagram, deliberately. I'm not kidding--I have a grand total of seven posts. (That I have followers at all baffles me--my aesthetic, for what it's worth, on Instagram is essentially glitch art or tape damage. I refuse to upload anything that does not fit that very narrow scope.)

Tumblr is another 'replacement' listed that's just not going to work. I also have a Tumblr account (listed far down on the sidebar), and I cannot think of it as anything other than a photo/commentary reblog site. While I have posted original content (mostly poetry or political commentary), it won't work as a wide-scale replacement for Flickr. Tumblr's search features are woefully inadequate, their ability to set up individual albums is reduced to either hashtag management or setting up a new Tumblr account for each category, and the commentary on each post is essentially an embedded series of reblogs and likes that inevitably lead down the rabbit hole of other posts. And yes, as Ms. Singh points out, art theft is commonplace on Tumblr.

deviantArt has always been more of an art community than a photography community, and by that I mean sculpture, paintings, sketches, digital art, with some side ventures into sales accounts, fabric artistry, jewelry and adornments, and animation. I can't see it replacing Flickr any time soon. (I also have a deviantArt account, that does have some original work, but I don't think I'm going to challenge real artists any time soon.)

Koinup has always seemed not worth the effort to figure out--the layout is terrible, uploading to the site can be tricky and difficult, and while I did have an account in the past, I don't now. It's just not worth the trouble for me.

Ms. Singh also mentioned Ipernity, which I'd never even heard of, so I can't say whether it's good or bad. But considering I've never heard of it before this moment? I can't imagine it's a serious challenger.

Like Ipernity above, Ello is another image host I'd never heard of, so I have zero input on whether it's worth it or not.

Imgur does have the ability to compartmentalize into albums, and seems to have no image cap, but it's best to keep large-resolution originals on your own drive or upload service, because Imgur by its own admission scrunches images to save space. Also, as with Tumblr, art theft is beyond common there.

The last one she mentions I find particularly problematic as an image host: Pinterest. Originally started as a virtual design board, it does feature the ability to make many different sub-boards for separate projects, and these can include images or text that are uploaded to the site directly, or links that post offsite. But here's the problem: a couple years back, Pinterest went from open browsing to archaically closed. At this point, if I toss a Pinterest link to someone, and they do not have an account, what they will see when they click that account is maybe a second or two of the original image, then a screen-wide ad to join Pinterest. For that reason, it is unusable as an image host, and that is not likely to change.

For right now, Flickr holds its position by virtue of no one else quite able to do what it does existing currently. Maybe that will change. In the meantime, I add another fee to an already strained budget because I don't want to be bothered moving everything off and finding another image host that's less mercenary.