I am a refugee from the Great Flickr Disaster of May 2013.
The first I knew of it was when I was checking facebook on my phone over breakfast. A friend had written: "Have you seen the hideousness that's the revamped Flickr? no no no no no NO!"
I discovered what she meant when I opened my flickr page. It was like being parachuted into a disaster zone. My home page was a jumbled mosaic of seemingly randomly sized pictures - a latest upload from one of my contacts was so huge that it filled almost the entire screen and was inexplicably displayed smaller when I clicked on it... Interspersed with the pics were strips displaying hard to read comments in white text against a greyed out version of the pic they related to with a thumbnail in the corner. A completely incomprehensible mess. Not to mention the scroll of death...
The help forum was flooded with angry users screaming "Give me back my old layout!" but no-one was listening. The response from flickr management was just arrogant, patronising crap.
My anger and outrage has now become sadness. Sadness at leaving behind what I have built up over the last six or so years at flickr; a photostream I was proud to direct others to, friends and groups...
Hang on in and let it all settle down, say some. But whatever flickr does to sort out the current debacle I no longer want to be associated with a company that treats its users with such high-handed disdain. I just can no longer trust them. I'll salvage stuff and bring it over here, let my pro account revert to a free one and probably ultimately delete it - if flickr doesn't die first, my prediction is two years at most...
Now ipernity is my new photo home. Look forward to meeting old friends over here and making new ones.