Flickr Yahoo Login Backlash

Flickr is forcing us ‘old skool’ members to use Yahoo! accounts to login to Flickr and we’re NOT HAPPY.

I recently merged my old skool account with an old Yahoo account of mine in order to be able to use the ‘mobile site’. I eventually had to get a Flickr staff member to UN-MERGE the accounts because it was so incredibly annoying to use the merged account. Not only was it yet another login/password to remember but it was flat out cumbersome to use.

One of the main issues was that I had to constantly re-login over and over on my home computer to get to my photos on Flickr.

Also, I was being logged into a Rogers (Canadian ISP) cobranded version of the Yahoo.com site because I had a Rogers account like 2 years ago. The problem with that was the Rogers Yahoo cobranded site never worked properly! So merging the accounts actually made for a worse experience on Yahoo! as well as Flickr. I don’t even use that ISP anymore and yet I have to look at a Rogers logo every time I go to Yahoo!

I wanted to delete my Yahoo! account but then I couldn’t because I would no longer be able to use Flickr! So I had to get my accounts un-merged. What if I want to delete my Yahoo account in the future?

I’ve been nothing but supportive of Flickr from the early days when they we’re a tiny little company here in Vancouver but this is just a bad idea! So what if it’s a ‘pain’ or tedious to keep two login systems running? The friction this causes all of the original Flickr members should outweigh the ‘pain’ it causes the developers at Yahoo.

If someone asked me what photo sharing site they should use I’d no longer be inclined to just say Flickr.

If by some chance Stewart, Caterina, Heather or any of the Flickr peeps are reading this PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!

More reaction to this Flickr screw up:

BBC.
1700 Diggs.
Thomas Hawk.
Zooomr: happy to accommodate people.
SmugMug: Offering 50% off.
Dave Winer: Flickr people are smart.

If you’re planning to bail here are some ways to get out:

FlickrDown: Download all your pics from Flickr on PC.
Englaze: Get a burn of your images.

Looks like some other users aren’t happy either:

By tadmur

By neilsly

By ditdotdat

By dpurdy

UPDATE:
Bruce Sterling weighs in:

*Look, FlickR, I completely understand your commercial reasons for doing this, but I don’t trust Yahoo. You were once a groovy little photo club while Yahoo is way, way into massive datamining. I don’t want to belong to Yahoo any more than I’d want to belong to msn.com or googlemail. Of course I’m already aware that Yahoo is combing all those tags and photos looking for something they can sell me, or sell about me — but my refusal to join Yahoo! served as one small political indicator that I rather like FlickR and don’t like invasive Web 1.0 behemoths. To have Yahoo imperially dictating these measures to me doesn’t make me like Yahoo any better. It would cost Yahoo NOTHING to allow me to sign in by another method; the fact that they insist on my reduction to yahoo-hood is a tactless indicator of their bad intent.

*I’m an old-skool member for old-skool reasons. The fact that you don’t mention those reasons in this oleaginous piece of PR is alarming. What, I’m supposed to do this because “ninety-five percent” of the other kids play nicely? Come on. A peer-pressure argument, that’s what’s in it for me? If ninety-five percent of the other Flickreenos sold out to Big Brother, would you pinch your nose and jump right into the cesspool, too?

I don’t gain any benefit by this. Where’s my value proposal? There’s nothing in this proposal for me. You are exploiting your Web 2.0 social muscle and twisting my arm here. Is that FlickR -like behavior? Aren’t you a little ashamed of yourselves? Google would have at least done a few dont-be-evil headfakes around a bald power maneuver like this. No wonder they’re wiping the floor with Yahoo.

Update March 5, 2019

Well looks like this has finally been fixed. heh