Dear Flickr,

Your most recent correspondence with me (which I’ve enclosed below) is the impetus for this letter.

Before I dive into the correspondence, I would like to note up front that I’ve had an account with you for four years now. I am a pro member which means I pay for my account. Granted, I’ve only paid once since you’ve given me a number of free years to make up for when you mistakenly deleted my account (not only once, but twice). But even if you hadn’t given me the free years, I would still be a paying member because your service is of great value to me. It has helped me tremendously in pursuing my photographic career. Flickr is the network in which I am most actively involved. It is the platform I use for sharing my work with others. Flickr is, in essence, a very important part of my life. It is for these reasons that I wrote to you.

Recently, I created a video to promote the production of a film I’m working on which documents my life in photography and shows the world through my eyes. In the video, I encourage others to support it if they are interested. I created the video specifically for my project on kickstarter.com and hoped to share it through the various online networks in which I am a part of, with Flickr being the largest and one where I have the most supporters or fans of my work.

Well aware of the fact that Flickr has established Community Guidelines for uploading photographic and video content, hazily defining at times what is and isn’t acceptable, I consulted the guidelines once more, re-reading the section on acceptable content many times. In doing so, I could not reach a conclusion whether or not the video was acceptable. I was unable to interpret your guidelines in this particular case.

So I wrote to you explaining the purpose of the video and inquired as to whether or not it was a video which I could upload, stating clearly that I had read the guidelines and could not determine this on my own. I made the case, on reading your guidelines and having an understanding of the Flickr service and its purposes, how I interpreted it as acceptable. It seemed to me to stay within the spirit of Flickr, a community of artists supporting and encouraging other artists. However, I was unclear on the matter and did not want to rely on my interpretation. So I wrote to you and I mentioned explicitly that I did not want to do anything which would put me in violation of the community guidelines.

I thanked you in advance for your advice.

Four days after I sent my correspondence, you responded with this:

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Flickr.

I see from what you’ve explained, you’re not quite sure if a video you’d like to upload to Flickr is permitted content. I’m glad you felt like contacting us, and am happy to answer any more questions in the future.

The best places to refer for clarification on what is and is not allowed are the Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. We cannot reinterpret these documents but staying within the letter and spirit of these terms and guidelines is the best way to maintain a happy and healthy Flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

I hope I have addressed and understood your concern. If not, or if you still have questions, please don’t hesitate to reply to this email and I will gladly assist you again.

Thank you again for contacting Flickr.

This is an unacceptable response. I wrote asking for clarity on the guidelines and you directed me BACK to the guidelines for clarity on my question regarding the guidelines!! I hope you are able to see where this is an unsatisfactory response. This is not an answer to a question. This is not assistance. This is not support. This is unacceptable.

I have opted to NOT “reply to this email” and instead typed this open letter to you and any interested parties. It is vexing that you provide this response given that I purposefully contacted Flickr so that I could remain a member who follows the rules and regulations of your service.

What’s unfortunate, too, is that the response you sent isn’t simply a canned response. In the opening paragraph, the support personnel acknowledges that I am inquiring about the appropriateness of a video (for which I provided a link). You took the time to read my correspondence. And then you replied in the most generic way possible. Maybe your support staff is instructed to read correspondence, identify the purpose of the letter and copy and paste canned responses that fit best from a list of possible replies. Maybe it IS a canned response. I don’t know. In either case, I don’t know how you came to the conclusion that this response was appropriate. You somehow managed to craft an email which mixes the complete alienation associated with Corporate America with the personal touch of Small Business, putting absolutely zero value in my efforts to resolve an issue BEFOREHAND and making clear that there is absolutely zero interest in addressing my question.

This is how you replied.

You leave me, a pro member, in the lurch. I have a massive active account with you, with over 10,000 followers. An account which brings in thousands of views per day which serves ads to all of your non-paying members.

How difficult would it have been to simply say, “Yes, that is acceptable” or “No, that is not acceptable?” I am baffled and disappointed by your inability to communicate clearly and directly. I had hoped for more; I felt very good about asking ahead of time whether or not something was appropriate and didn’t even question whether or not I would get an appropriate response. And then this.

Out of curiosity, I did a quick search of kickstarter on your site and it returned nearly 7,000 results. Now I certainly understand that just because there exists already a myriad of videos and photos on Flickr similar to the one which I created and inquired ahead of time about BEFORE posting, that this is not an answer from Flickr. I understand that point well. A lot of content gets posted which violates the guidelines and it isn’t removed until after the fact.

Given your lack of an adequate response, I am left with two options:

1) Operate in fear of the company with whom I have an account (of immense value to me) and choose NOT to upload the content at all, for fear of it being against guidelines and my account being deleted, or
2) upload the content and take my chances (?!?!?) that I have interpreted your guidelines correctly and then wait to find out if my interpretation matches yours.

I have decided to do the latter. In the description of the uploaded video, I will provide a link to this letter so that you and my supporters and anyone else who visits my stream can understand why I have posted the video.

I sincerely hope that if I am wrong in my interpretation of the guidelines, that you will simply remove the video and NOT delete my account as you have been prone to do before. Hopefully, I am correct in my interpretation however and the video will remain in my photostream. In either case, this is the option I choose, based on your correspondence.

If you do remove the video, I would hope for a detailed response explaining why specifically it was removed and not simply that it was in violation of guidelines (which, again, I don’t believe it is).

Thank you,
Scott

For any persons and/or entities who might have an interest in backing the project (Flickr, this includes you, of course), it can be found here.

For your review once more, here is the video.

A bikini shoot from Miami.

There are only a few remaining photos of Jen left (not from Goggle Girl) that I haven’t processed yet. They will be published today.

Goggle Girl is here. All of Jen’s photos and videos are here. All of the model photos and videos are here.

Don’t forget to follow me on twitter for a chance to win a free print! Details here.
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