Ask HN: Do you know people behind SmugMug? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you know people behind SmugMug?

5 pointseveningcoffee3 comments

SmugMug has acquired Flickr and they have found that to make it work, they must step back from the Flickr generous unlimited storage offer and delete photos that exceed their offered new quota of 1000 images starting from the least recent ones.

This is understandable. What they seem not to understand is that Flickr is a database of very specific historical information about the photography itself.

Many people joined Flickr when the film photography was still a thing and therefore there are many pictures that show the behavior photographic films that are not produced any more. These are pictures in greatest danger.

Beside that Flickr contains large amount of labeled samples of specific historical lenses and other very specific information like historical camera repairs.

It is a huge cultural value that they are threatening to destroy and I am afraid that the management just does not get it.

So please, if you happen to know the right people, help.

This has been pretty widely discussed elsewhere, including Twitter, and in part was the reason SmugMug changed that policy at the last minute to include preservation of freely licensed photos, and deceased users' accounts: https://petapixel.com/2019/03/09/flickr-will-save-all-creati...

Likely the best way to "save" free accounts with more than 1000 photos that haven't yet been deleted is to use the new option to gift them a Pro membership, which apparently doesn't require the account's consent.

Yes, it is something but I am not sure that this is enough.

There are accounts that contain important information and I could not see how the owners of these accounts would change the license.

There are users that

Giving pro membership is the option I am going to use but this is not perfect either because the amount must be paid upfront and is relatively large - $50.

I could support up to 10 accounts with the monthly subscription but I could not pay $500.

The pro membership only lasts for a year and then we are back in the same place.

You could promote those accounts to @FlickrJubilee, which at one point was taking names and donations: https://twitter.com/flickrjubilee

Archive Team had a Warrior project to preserve at least freely licensed photos, and they have an EFnet IRC channel #flickrfckr where you might be able to provide accounts for further archiving: https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Flickr

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