I admit that I wasn't in the most stable frame of mind when I deleted my long-running (14 years!) Flickr account last spring - as this was shortly after I'd been fired by Patreon. But I stand by my decision to ragequit Flickr, when they announced in March that artists like myself were going to have to start paying to provide them with nude and/or erotic content. I get that they're a business, selling a product, but I have a product to sell, too. If our goals are aligned - driving traffic to their site - and I'm providing the kind of material they're forcing other users to pay to see, then charging me to do that is exploiting my labor. There are other sites on the web where I can do that for free. Some of them will even pay me to generate that content. Why the hell would I continue to patronize Flickr?
I must also admit that I was rather annoyed by the nature of Flickr's announcement - how it was phrased in that disgustingly hypocritical, Orwellian tone that is so common among tech companies these days. Everything is couched in positive language, and the knife they stick in your back is etched with motivational aphorisms. The most common example is censorship resulting from a "deep commitment to free speech" (I kid you not!). Consider how Flickr described their discrimination against nude artists ("reserved for Pro" really means "forced to pay") in the same breath as calling itself the "most inclusive photography community on the planet." For the last few years, the new owners of Flickr threatened to delete users' art if they didn't delete it themselves first - an act that accomplished the opposite of their promoted goal to "preserve the art, expression, history, stories, and memories of all Flickr members". Though this ultimately turned out to be a hollow threat ("we haven't deleted a single photo"), they managed to spin that lie as an investment in the community, ignoring the fact that it effectively punished all those who followed the new rules, while rewarding those who didn't - a business strategy that hardly inspires trust.
To be fair, Flickr made me the artist I am today. Back in 2008, it was their welcoming community and dedication to free expression (including sexual expression) that gave me an open platform to discover - wholly and without limits (within the bounds of reason) - and grow into the kind of artist I wanted to be. I'll always honor and respect that Flickr and think back on it fondly. But Flickr has changed. It's not even owned by the same people anymore. I hate that yet another piece of my history has been lost, at a time when I was also grieving the loss of the home in which I grew up and spent most of my life. So many memories, the concrete records of which have been wiped clear. The comments. The conversations. The journey of self-discovery. (By the way, now there are a ton of broken links on my blog and elsewhere). But that's the way it is. All I can do now is wipe off the tears, and face forward.
