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Add an EventFlickr Shuts Down Forum Discussion On Obama-Joker Image
Now Flickr has shut off further comments on that forum post, which was most definitely not headed in a pro-Flickr direction. In his message shutting off the discussion, Zack Sheppard reiterates how important political discussion is to Flickr:
Political discussions and expression are definitely allowed here on Flickr. We don’t want to squelch political discussion, but if something is in violation of the Community Guidelines or copyright law and it’s reported, it will be taken down whether it’s a kitten, a sunset, or something political.
It looks like this thread has devolved into antics and gone off the rails so I’m shutting it down. The OPs question has been answered here. This image was removed because the Yahoo! Copyright Team received a complete Notice of Infringement.
This is fantastically absurd. Yahoo is quite literally trumpeting that they support political discussion in the very message they are sending to close down a political discussion.
There is something richly ironic about responding to a thread where their users are complaining about censorship by shutting down the thread.
But unfortunately shutting down threads when users complain is the name of the game at Flickr. Almost daily for the past few weeks users have been complaining about Flickr deleting their accounts for no good reason and without warning.
Almost every single one of these complaint threads has ended up being shut down by Flickr staff.
What’s more I’ve personally been banned indefinitely from this forum on Flickr. My crime? Pointing people to a blog where people were complaining about Flickr nuking gay-oriented accounts. http://saynotoflickr.blogspot.com/
Here are several examples (all from this month) of other accounts where users have been complaining about account flickr censorship and account deletions only to end up having their complaint threads locked by Flickr Staff.
If you read the staff reasons for shutting down all of these threads one after another you’ll find them almost laughable.
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply673196
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply671324
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply669837
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply669698
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply668373
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply668362
http://www.flickr.com/help/for.....eply666557
Flickr has a systematic pattern of shutting down threads where their users complain and that’s too bad. While no company likes reading things on the web that are critical of them, censoring complaints about censorship is generally not the best PR strategy.
Nor is banning members from your forums for that matter. Not only am I banned from this Flickr forum, but several of my friends are who have criticized flickr in the past as well.
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