More flickr thoughts

Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for this beautiful thread. I'm really moved and touched by everyone responses.

Flickr basically doesn't moderate their site (strangely enough) they trust flickr user to do that. basically whenever people see something they think doesn't follow flickr rules, they can choose to report it.
There's a strange story of flickr stalking and just random nastiness that I probably shouldn't get into, anyhow, some guy reported my account multiple times from multiple accounts until they deleted me. My flickr communication yielded 2 things 1) I was deleted for posting an image that I didn't produce (which is probably the only flickr violation I didn't do...) and 2) There is no way to restore an account once it was deleted. Even if the photos are still on server, the comments, stats, contact list, and so on, are gone for good.

To me the most horrible thing about this is loosing a part of my history as wall as my day to day communications. Flickr's not only a way to document past and present, but also a lot of the way of how I experience Israel from afar. Also it's really sad to loose Ned's first e-mail to me, about 70 comments on our first married kiss and a bunch of other personal historical moments in my life. Not to mention the fact that I'm going through pretty serious withdrawal symptoms.

All the metaphors I used to describe the feeling I've had are really violent, to me, it's far worst then loosing all the info on my hard drive (I've had that happened at least twice before and it sucks). They mostly have to do with feeling violated, wrongly accused and judged without having a chance to defend myself. It feel like coming home one day and realizing that your landlord replaced the key and burned all your stuff because the neighbors complained that you are a drug dealer while actually wanted the apartment for their relatives.

It doesn't help that disappearing without a trace as well as being convicted in a crime I never committed are 2 things that really trigger anxiety attacks for me. I'm really happy this thing happened in a relatively sane and stable month in my life.

Yes, technology and the natural development of social interaction moves in the speed of light while laws and regulations seem to not move at all. It really sucks. There's really no way to make flickr reconsider. I can go into a whole huge argument and take them to court, but basically all I might get is my 29$ back.

As the flickr help guy told me "feel free to start a new account" - nice hu?!

Which sadly, I probably will, because I do get more out of flickr then I would like to admit, because there is not serious alternative and honestly, because it's too painful and lonely without it.

The only thing I've learn from this experience is that since this whole thing is so damn random, there's very little sense in trying ot actually moderate yourself and play by flickr rules. Basically, they say in their TOU that they reserve the right to delete any account without warning and for whatever reason they see fit.