It surprised me. Like all the people complaining I went to my account and discovered the look had completely changed, on the same day the Yahoo acquired Tumblr. No consultation, no warning. Ironically I've vociferously defended Flickr as a place which could support - despite its coporate nature- an authentic networked image practice. I liked the fact that people who are attempting art are in there with hobbyists, outsiders, cat photographers, family snaps &c. See this ( scroll down for polemic): http://www.flickr.com/groups/bollocks_to_james_elkins/
Like many of those complaining I feel totally let down, especially as it is so clearly a triumph of "monetisation" over anything else. I also feel ( in common with many, I think) what we northerners used to call a *right chump* for not having been more on my guard. The changes: Yahoo has got rid of "pro" where one paid for space and no ads and replaced it with the bribe of huge free storage, 1TB, with ads ( or you can buy yourself out of these at about twice the old "pro" rate). At the same time the Tumblr like abutment of everything in one's image stream and the FB like home page is clearly designed to tap in to the 15- 25 demographic and bring the ad money rolling in. The response has been huge, from a diverse constituency largely united by the fact that it is composed of people who had paid for space, spent a huge amount of time cultivating both the presentation of their own work and their dialogue with others and who feel that this has been utterly wrecked. In particular the loss of white space around individual images is both a huge beef for those people and a clear symptom of Yahoo's view that photos have interest only by the bucketload.T he stuff about the improved size and resolution is a red herring. One has always been able to access images at many different sizes. What's also intresting is that most people are simply demanding a choice ( which Capital is always vaunted as offering us) - if you like the new format, fine, use it but let us continue to use the old one. Yahoo's refusal to date to even discuss this is profoundly symptomatic of what is driving all this. What particualrly makes me seethe is the argument that somehow the presentation on the site was "out of date". It reminds me of Blair's assertion that class struggle was "out of date" and the general fetishising ( usually for nefarious purposes) of the shiny, the up to date, the modern. For me it is absolutely clearly the *standout*, kick-to-the-stomach, goodbye to any lingering feeling that the net in and of itself represents anything progressive. It is subject to exactly the same forces as any other technology and its applications under capital. Of course the affair of Google and Amazon and tax show this even more brutally in one way but when it is a case of work that people felt was somehow an expression of a corner of unalienated cultural activity being shat upon by - literally- the Yahoos it stings. cheers michael PS Apart from registering (once and relatively mildly) my displeasure on the Flickr blog, here's my personal protest: http://www.flickr.com/photos/szpako/ You might need to scroll down a bit to see it all... ________________________________ From: Rob Myers <[email protected]> To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 24, 2013 1:42 PM Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Links On 2013-05-24 13:09, Michael Szpakowski wrote: > Hi Rob > I love the links; you're always pretty much on anything that moves. I Thank you! > think you've missed the shitstorm on Flickr though, which has lots of > very important implications. Here's a link to the nearly 23000 posts > on the Flickr blog from the past four days complaining about Yahoo's > act of corporate vandalism: > > http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/ [1] I've been a Flickr user since 2004. I was incredibly annoyed when I lost my flickr login a few years back because I had to replace it with a Yahoo! one. The new changes make the site a going concern again and I like most of them, but I had noticed some dissent. I didn't realise it was this major, though, no. That's amazing! http://www.flickr.com/photos/gabolarios/8766763357/ Can you go into more detail about this? _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
