I was particularly concerned that at the same time the group disappeared the group's founder had his account name changed and made unavailable to him . It was not deleted. Why would they do that? For spite?

There is definitely something fishy going on there.

I go on there a couple times a week to make comments, as I no longer post. The past month I got a message that I was the new admin for two groups. Turns out so many people left the group, including the people who started them, I was next in line on the member list.

Here is my favorite article on the whole ordeal. twirpz.wordpress.com/2019/01/12/is-flickr-guilty-of-freemium-extortion

I'm so glad I found ipernity. Really!! Like the slogan says, more than photo sharing. I also love that I'm part owner here ...

I think it has to do with forum moderation, there is none. Back when Flickr started one of the co-founders, Caterina Fake, made sure to build community with good forum and group moderation. All of that left after she did. So I think Flickr just needs to drop the forum, and do like we are doing here with the IMA page.

Thank you for providing a link to that very informative article, Frank. The moment Smugmug acquired the site I suspected the 1 terabyte allotted to free members would not continue for long. When they inflicted the 1000 photo rule on free accounts, I felt very sorry for the free members who took full advantage of that 1 terabyte allowance Yahoo granted them. Now they are caught between paying the $50 yearly membership fee or losing all photos they posted that were over the 1000 image the limit. Extortion? Smugmug would say it was a needed way to support operating Flickr. I guess profiting off the content and selling member information to advertisers was not enough? Thankfully I never depended on Flickr for photo storage so the new restrictive rule never impacted me.

Concerning the group that got deleted, rather than personally contact the administrators of the group to explain what "violations" they supposedly committed, they were left to guess and speculate along with the rest of the people commenting on the "Help" forum. It wasn't until more than one person questioned the integrity and security of the Flickr platform that a Flickr admin finally broke his silence and said it was the "Flickr Abuse Team" that deleted the group and any account they found "in violation" of community rules. No explanation of which specific rules the group supposedly violated. This was a group of over 500,000 members and a photo stream of over 4 million images! One poster stated that due to the lack of transparency in how this case was handled, he was going to think twice before starting a group on Flickr.

That was a really good read for the article you supplied the link to, Frank! Thanks!

Glad you found the article meaningful, Valerie. I know what you mean about the free members getting cut short, because of that I dropped my pro status and became a free member. Removed most of my images, and now only comment to maintain the relationships I have on Flickr. I think we need to just keep inviting people here to Ipernity and keep it growing slowly but steady. This is a special place, not for everyone now on Flickr. Whoever stays there either doesn't get the bait and switch that SmugMug did, or they are too lazy and just paid up to keep things as is.

Val said:
"Flickr admin finally broke his silence and said it was the "Flickr Abuse Team" that deleted the group and any account they found "in violation" of community rules."

My question is this: How could a group do anything? A group is a concept; not a living, thinking entity. A group cannot do anything to violate any rules. But, the members of a group can. So, why weren't the members who broke any rules disciplined and leave the group alone? It's because it was clearly about what the group stood for and that's the reason it had to go. If the theme of the group violated any rules, how was it that it lasted so long? This is nothing more nor less than Christianity bashing.

It wasn't just Christianity bashing, it was about silencing freedom of speech, something this group was unique for. Once I began seeing how certain political points of view were being vilified as "hate speech" both in social media and in the public square, I knew the end was near for a group like that. George Orwell wasn't just a great novelist, he was an accurate prognosticator of these times. It would do well to read his books, "Animal House" and particularly "1984".

Glad you found that article informative Kenneth.

I've had further communications with an administrator from Flickr and he said that a member at the GWE group did something that corrupted the data of the group and Flickr felt it would be easier to just delete the whole group. Does that mean another person like that can come along and corrupt the data for all of Flickr and then it would have to be deleted as well? That doesn't really make any sense. That group was targeted for deletion by somebody and they succeeded. It's a shame.

That is a justified question, Kenny. I think there may have been some corruption of data, but if this scenario happened to another less controversial group of the same size I would be interested to know if they wouldn't attempt to do all they could to fix the problem before deleting the group entirely?

After all is said and done, I look at it as one door being closed while another opens.

I think the end is near for everything. Too many passages in Revelation are taking place as reality.

Yes, those are both great books and are in my personal collection.

Thank you for this insight. It's truly sad. That's why this site is so important since it's not run by some corporation that stifles free speech and expression -- rather by photographers, writers and other artists who value creativity and free speech.

You are so right, William! Ipernity is really the only social media site that I trust.and I have no problem paying whatever it takes to keep it running. It is beholden to no one except its members who support it financially.

I agree with everybody's comments. It's just a refreshing change using Ipernity, compared to other sites. It just works here and makes you feel good to be able to connect with other like-minded users.

Yeah, it's kind of unbelievable after you spend time elsewhere, then come back here.