The day before yesterday, I blogged about Flickr forcing users to switch over to using a Yahoo! ID to access their Flickr account, and the patronising email I got about it. I was not a happy camper.

Now the furore has developed, and Flickr/Yahoo look even worse. Maybe it’s just bad timing, but it seems there are three main issues running concurrently here.

1. The forced switch to a Yahoo! ID.
2. Flickr forcing graceless limits to friends and tags.
3. Yahoo! using ‘all rights reserved’ and ‘non-commercial’ Creative Commons licensed photos on their Wii page, for commercial gain.

Oh dear. What a mess.

The forced switch to Yahoo!
Flickr announced in 2005 that they were going to be shifting to the Yahoo! log-in, and in a BBC article from September 05, they reassured people that all would really be ok with this move:

“We care deeply about our community, and their worries are ours,” [Caterina] Fake told the BBC News website.

“But I think the fears are unfounded. As always, the proof is in the pudding. We’re tending to our knitting, and making sure the Flickr experience is as good as it’s always been.”

But mistrust of Yahoo! goes back a long way, and disgruntled Flickr members started the Flick Off group to protest. There are now 1533 members, counting down to the day when Flickr IDs will be turned off and some of them will quit Flickr for good. The official Flickr forum thread is currently running at 1681 responses, and still going strong. The issues people are worried about include:

• Finding an available Yahoo! ID that doesn’t suck.
• Hating your existing Yahoo! ID; or losing the password and being unable to retrieve it.
• Hating the unpleasant and long-winded Yahoo! sign-up process, which includes questions some people find intrusive and objectionable. For an insight into this process, take a look at Chris Messina’s screenshots.
• Intermittency of Yahoo! sessions – people like being permanently logged into Flickr and don’t want to have to keep logging into Yahoo! (This is supposed to have been fixed now, but not everyone is happy with the cookie-based solution.)
• Concern that, in the UK at least, Yahoo! is wedded to British Telecom’s broadband service and that by tying Flickr to Yahoo! they are also tying Flickr to BT. This is not good – if you want to change ISP you loose your BT Internet email address, which would then invalidate your Yahoo! ID and cut you off from Flickr.
• Yahoo!’s habit of tracking usage using cookies and other methods.
• Fear that Yahoo! will terminate your account for reasons unclear or unreasonable, thus locking you out of Flickr.
• Fear that your Yahoo! account will expire without you realising it, thus locking you out of Flickr.
• The item in the official help page that says if you terminate your Yahoo! account, you will also terminate your Flickr account and delete all your photos (see below).
• A perception that Yahoo! marketing practises are unethical and exploitative.
• Fear that Yahoo! will screw with Flickr the same way they screwed with other sites they bought in the past.
• Technical issues with the Yahoo! sign-in screen, such as it timing out and not allowing browsers to save the password.
• Issues with different Terms of Service for Yahoo!
• Confusion for people with multiple accounts of either kind.
• A feeling that if one has signed up with and paid money to Flickr, one should not have to now sign up to Yahoo!
• Problems with people losing photos and contacts after merging their Flickr account with their Yahoo! account.
• Concern that people who have paid for Pro accounts, but who choose not to switch to Yahoo!, will lose their money.

I could go on – this list is just culled from the first two pages of the thread and, whilst it’s admirable to see some participation from Flickr staff, they don’t seem to be really appreciating the depth of feeling about this nor do they appear to be systematically answering questions. Are these concerns and fears legitimate? Some are minor niggles that aren’t all that big of a deal, some have already been addressed by the Flickr team, but some are deeply disturbing. For example, if you delete your Yahoo! ID, you will also be deleting your Flickr account, as the official help page says:

I’m going to delete my Yahoo! account. What happens to my Flickr photos?
If you sign in to Flickr with a Yahoo! ID and you then delete your Yahoo! account, you will not be able to sign in to your Flickr account. In the future, this will delete your Flickr account as well, including all of your photos, but currently your Flickr account must be deleted separately.

This seems like a really rather harsh policy. Are users really clear on this point?

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