Privacy Wars: I want access to MY data - always.
I just posted a little feature request on the Flickr Ideas Forum. You could also understand it as a open letter to Flickr.
Dear Flickr Goddess,
i would like to ask for a very simple feature: I want access to ALL my photos ALL the time, unless i canceled / deleted my account.
There is a very simple solution:
I would like to a see a separation between the public view of my photo stream and how i with my account see the photo stream.
My view always includes all my pictures. It is my data, and i should always have access to it.
The public view for everyone else can be limited to the 200 pictures.
I don’t mind all the other limitations on the upload and set’s etc. But i would like to have full access to MY data. I am totally willing to pay for sharing. To give everybody the possibility to access my pictures. But i am NOT willing to pay to get access to MY data.
Why?
Well, i put “Privacy Wars” into the topic for a reason: With the recent privacy issues on Facebook, more and more people started to realize to what extend a company has control over their data. The asynchronous access to my photos and the resulting dependency is a major problem of the current privacy issues. With a similar dependency Facebook is able to adjust the privacy terms and therefor control the users data.
In my opinion Flickr always had a very good understanding of sharing and privacy. 90% of the decisions Flickr made in the last years related to that topic where transparent and comprehensible. They in general went into the direction to empower the user.
I know that some people at Flickr understand the current issues of the “Privacy Wars” very well. It would be wonderful if Flickr could send out the right signal to the Flickr Users.
“We understand: You need the free access to your data, we give it to you.”
Even if that means to adjust the Terms of Services.
Thanks
occam, 2010-06-11
