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I've been a Flickr user for what feels like decades. Even paid for the service for a while.

These days, I get an email about once a month or so from Flickr telling me that my private photos are over some usage limit and then threatening to delete them unless I sign up for their paid service.

I briefly tried to find my private photos so that I could review/delete/public them, but it wasn't obvious in the interface, so I gave up.

Given that they have been sending me this email for what feels like a year now and they haven't done anything, I'm just going to keep ignoring the email.

If they delete the photos, oh well. If not, oh well. Just seems like a super weird way to deal with people.

Its been sold multiple times, each owner probably tightening the screws in order to maximize returns.

Ludicorp (2004–2005) Yahoo! Inc. (2005–2017) Oath (2017–2018) SmugMug (2018–present)

I used to use them a decade ago, they were better before. Yahoo was the one that started introducing limits and forcing users to upgrade to keep their photos accessible. Went down hill from there.

> Yahoo was the one that started introducing limits

Yahoo. Yahoo! Yahoo broke Flickr almost overnight and then took several months to revert the damage. Infinite scrolling (no way to see someone's first uploads). Wannabe social-media guff. I gave up then and only keep my portfolio for historical reasons.

Like Reddit, the old interface is still there, but it's not default.

Just add "?details=1" after the username/

I liked the forums. It used to be like any other single-topic forum site.

Then Yahoo bought it tried to make it more like Instagram, and suddenly every forum was a porn spam forum.

They did the same to Tumblr.
Is there a good alternative to Flickr/Smugmug and Instagram?
I would say Pixelfed. It is a federated image sharing platform. The code is libre (AGPL).

If the main federated alternative to Twitter is Mastodon, the main federated alternative to instagram/flickr is definitely Pixelfed.

https://pixelfed.org/

I’d say it’s an alternative to Instagram, but not Flickr. A huge distinguishing feature of Flickr is that it keeps high-quality versions of uploaded photos. Instagram and Pixelfed compress to a low quality. Pixelfed’s UI also suggests that it’s more of an Instagram replacement, i.e. more about the social media aspect than about the photos. The photos are just an excuse to do social media.
Also worth noting: it uses ActivityPub, and Mastodon users (and many other systems) can see and interact with Pixelfed users in most ways that matter.

In a lot of ways it's just a photo-optimized UI for ActivityPub. Which is generally a good thing.

I recall Flickr before was free up to a certain resolution, at the time it was something very low like 800 pixels or less than 2mb. During Marissa's CEO days, they pushed Flickr and introduced the unlimited storage for all users. I believe after it was sold to Smugmug, the storage was back down to being limited again.
It's a great idea though I haven't noticed photographer friends sharing Flickr galleries in quite a while. Mostly they just post stuff to Facebook and Instagram.
They changed their pricing structure so it's not a good self-hosted-gallery alternative and lack of easy sharing/etc. make it higher friction than sharing sites (with far more engagement there). It had some tolerable workflow tools when people primarily used lightroom, but it's not as well integrated into other stuff, especially mobile phone workflows.
I feel copyright licences stifle what is freely shared; maybe they should make the CC-BY licence the default to users. People already repost images and attribute them all over the internet, but a licence like CC BY-NC-ND ends any chance of humanity benefiting, or posting it to Wikimedia.
This was needed 15 years ago honestly