Thomas Hawk is CEO of Zooomr, so he has an axe to grind, but even so…
Thomas HawkI’m pretty pissed right now. Two days ago I blogged about an incident involving Rebekka Gudleifsdottira. Rebekka is one of the most popular photographers on Flickr and definitely someone that those of us who have been around for a while would consider “Old Skool” (RIP).
Rebekka is a single mom and art student living in Iceland. She’s an artist and a talented one at that. She does amazing things with her camera. Recently she discovered that a gallery Only-Dreemin had been ripping her off. They’d sold thousands of dollars worth of her images and when she caught them and tried to make them give her the money that they stole from her they refused. So Rebekka did what anyone with a following on the internet might do and she posted about her frustration and plight on her flickrstream. And her story resonated loudly with the flickr community. Her story made the front page of digg and by days end she had 100,000 views on this particular photograph with hundreds of supportive comments.
So what’s got me pissed today? What’s got me pissed today is that according to Rebekka, Flickr has removed her image from their site. That’s right. Not only did they remove and kill her image and her *non-violent* words of protest, but they censored each and every one of us who commented on her photograph, who offered support to Rebekka, who shared in her frustration by wiping every single one of our comments off the face of the internet forever.
According to Rebekka, Flickr’s explanation?
“Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.”
Now I’ve not seen what image she’d posted, but I don’t like the tone displayed by Flickr’s staff, and I don’t like casual censorship.
Hmmm…
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