[HN Gopher] The Internet Archive Book Images has deleted their F...
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The Internet Archive Book Images has deleted their Flickr account
Author : danso
Score : 172 points
Date : 2022-04-04 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| udia wrote:
| I am surprised that the Internet Archive does not fully control
| the storage of their assets, or at least have some kind of
| contractual agreement with Flickr to prevent this from occurring.
| gowld wrote:
| > I am surprised that the Internet Archive does not fully
| control the storage of their assets,
|
| > or at least have some kind of contractual agreement with
| Flickr to prevent this from occurring.
|
| None of this is relevant. IA deleted their account because it
| wasn't a fit for Flickr. It was a mutually consensual
| separation.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| A mutually consensual separation that they are now both
| claiming was the other one's choice, not theirs.
|
| Yeah, ok, I actually believe that.
| nightpool wrote:
| To be clear: the actual scans are fine, what is removed was the
| ability to browse and search for these images on Flickr, with
| metadata & tags added by users, rather then having to manually
| download thousands of photos on IA, without any web-based
| search or preview. The linked article goes into this:
| https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2022/04/5-million-book-i...
| But for all the greatness of Internet Archive (and it is truly
| great!) it doesn't have the user-interface for images that
| Flickr has, the ability to save to galleries, add tags, and
| effectively search. That's why it was such a marriage made in
| heaven. As far as we are aware, with the IA Book Images account
| gone, there is now no way to search for individual images from
| the hundreds of thousands of books at Internet Archive
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The Internet Archive Book Images recently deleted their Flickr
| account. Flickr and Internet Archive were in agreement on this
| because...
|
| If the support thread is to be believed, Internet Archive was
| part of the decision process and agreed on this outcome. The
| wording makes it sound like the Internet Archive deleted the
| account, not Flickr.
|
| Doesn't really look like pitchforks are warranted
| johtso wrote:
| From what we know deletion of account was mutually agreed
| between Flickr and IA.. and was carried out with no
| consultation or prior warning, and no consideration for all the
| lost metadata.
|
| Edit: To clarify, the internet archive did not consult or warn
| the users of the collection.
|
| There's currently an open letter to IA and Flickr for people to
| sign to try and call on them to find a better resolution:
|
| https://openletter.earth/open-letter-to-flickr-and-internet-...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| EDIT: Original title of this submission claimed that Flickr
| deleted the account, not that Internet Archive deleted their
| own account. My comment below is in the context of that
| claim.
|
| Do you have a reputable source for this from the Internet
| Archive (not speculation)?
|
| It literally says that the Internet Archive deleted their
| account, not Flickr.
|
| Unless the support thread is wrong, I don't see how your
| claim about no consultation and no warning is consistent.
| johtso wrote:
| By no consultation or warning I mean that the Internet
| Archive did not consult users of the resource or give any
| warning that they would be deleting it.
|
| https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-
| us/72157720510495566/#r...
|
| "The Internet Archive Book Images recently deleted their
| Flickr account. >Flickr and Internet Archive were in
| agreement on this< because:"
|
| https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-
| us/72157720510495566/#r...
|
| "Hey, all. We're sorry for what seems like a sudden removal
| of the Internet Archive account. This decision came after
| weeks of conversation and coordination with the Internet
| Archive."
| tempnow987 wrote:
| I believe most of the images are still available directly
| from IA.
|
| For many with lighter copyright you can certainly host
| them elsewhere as well.
| johtso wrote:
| The real issues are:
|
| 1. All the lost metadata. By making the images available
| on Flickr users were unearthing the interesting images
| from the 5 million plus collection and creating all sorts
| of valuable metadata.
|
| 2. There is no way to explore the images as they are
| stored on IA. At a certain point if the data can't be
| explored it may as well not be available.
| johtso wrote:
| textfiles wrote:
| All the images are returning.
|
| https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill/status/1511033739706478594
| tedd4u wrote:
| @DonMacAskill - Smugmug/Flickr CEO
|
| "Recommending to IA that they delete it was a mistake. Our
| problem was that the 5M book images were drowning out the rest of
| the Commons members. So, we are restoring the account, moving it
| out of the Commons, and placing the book images under CC0, with
| IA's permission and support" [1]
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill/status/1511033739706478594
| danso wrote:
| Flickr support thread with rationale:
| https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/72157720510495566
| blakesterz wrote:
| Flickr says "The Internet Archive Book Images recently deleted
| their Flickr account. Flickr and Internet Archive were in
| agreement on this because..." so from the sounds of that,
| Flickr didn't delete it, they both agreed it wasn't what they
| wanted?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Interesting. I hope there is not a general policy of
| discouraging documents on Flickr because a Flickr album I
| personal refer to often consists entirely of scanned maps and
| papers.
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/albums/7215762251846.
| ..
| r_singh wrote:
| I'm not sure but considering that SmugMug bought Flickr some
| time back...
|
| Maybe they sent the IA a bill? And in response to that the IA
| "deleted their account"...
| testplzignore wrote:
| It sounds like the Internet Archive deleted it without
| consulting with all (or any?) of the people who built and use
| it. Would be nice if they made a statement to clarify the
| situation.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > It sounds like the Internet Archive deleted it without
| consulting with all (or any?) of the people who built and
| use it.
|
| Yup, that is exactly what it sounds like. I learned this
| lesson many years ago, and this is why I no longer devote
| any significant amount of my time contributing to projects
| which someone else has the power to pull the plug on.
| [deleted]
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Then, weirdly: > "The @internetarchive did not ask to take
| these off of Flickr's site. We do not have any power of
| them-- it is up to them." --https://twitter.com/brewster_kahl
| e/status/151100996579578675...
|
| IA and Flickrs pent weeks talking about this (according to
| flickr...), but didn't come to enough understanding that they
| both agree on what happened?
|
| I'm also curious what happened with the title of this HN
| post. It currently says "The Internet Archive Book Images has
| deleted their Flickr account", but apparently originally said
| something else? Shouldn't the HN post title match the tweet
| linked, regardless? Under what HN policy do mods change the
| title to not match what it's linking to?
| webmaven wrote:
| Now that tweet has been deleted.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I think I just accidentally corrupted it in my post.
| let's try again: https://twitter.com/brewster_kahle/statu
| s/151100996579578675...
| johtso wrote:
| The account is being reinstated!
| https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill/status/1511033739706478594
|
| "Recommending to IA that they delete it was a mistake. Our
| problem was that the 5M book images were drowning out the
| rest of the Commons members. So, we are restoring the
| account, moving it out of the Commons, and placing the book
| images under CC0, with IA's permission and support"
| rasengan wrote:
| Insiders are hinting at censorship.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| no they aren't.
| rasengan wrote:
| Unfortunately, you're wrong.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| I see that you believe that no-evidence claims are
| valuable.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'm surprised IA relies on outside, potentially ephemeral
| services at all. I thought all of their material was self-hosted.
| Had that actually been true, it seems like IA wouldn't have
| needed to delete its account over an issue of whether their usage
| fit the intended use case for Flickr.
| rolph wrote:
| this is why archives should be independently duplicated, to
| head off a massacre.
|
| what isnt clear to me is the survival of the content, was there
| a data migration or was it all just nerfed?
| johtso wrote:
| All the images still exist on the internet archive, just not
| in a format that can be explored.
|
| What's been lost is the efforts of all the users to separate
| the interesting images from the chaff.. and organise them
| into collections. For such a large corpus that's a really
| valuable thing.
|
| Also links people had to those images are just dead.
|
| And all the images users had previously favourited have just
| disappeared from their collections.
| rolph wrote:
| what a task it would be, to reconstruct the relations and
| cobble up a db from user data.
| johtso wrote:
| The problem is, the internet archive is great at storing data,
| not not the best at making that data discoverable, viewable.
|
| A partnership like this makes quite a bit of sense.
| ineedasername wrote:
| It seems like there'd be a lot of volunteers to help with
| building their own. On that scale, I'm not sure if/which FOSS
| option might be suited. But the sheer technical challenge of
| scaling a system to > 100 petabytes along with a compelling
| mission would attract a lot of talent. Heck, if they'd just
| worked with Flickr long enough to extract the metadata
| created surrounding these images so that all that effort
| wouldn't be lost then I bet there would be ample volunteers
| just to reimplement a way of utilizing it. To discard all
| that work... I can only.hope that no actual data is lost and
| they will be able to do something with it in the future.
| exolymph wrote:
| Uncoordinated volunteers are worse than useless, sadly.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Why would it be uncoordinated? Volunteers work for FOSS
| after all, and if the work for IA was also under a FOSS
| license I don't see why it couldn't work. And IA is high
| profile enough to attract really talented people from the
| FOSS community that already understand how to work under
| that paradigm.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| We don't know this was the doing of Flickr though, I mean it
| seems like there could have been an intermediary step where IA
| could download all the comments and such? I mean nothing was
| stated at all, and that's a bit scary that the IA would just
| not say anything and allow all that to be deleted nonchalantly.
| ineedasername wrote:
| That's what I'm hoping. Although I doubt that IA, on it's
| own, would suddenly go to Flickr & say "Hey our use case
| doesn't really fit what you intended, let's figure out how to
| go our separate ways."
|
| My guess is that the conversation was initiated by Flickr.
| Whether IA agreed with them from the beginning or was forced
| to "agree" probably doesn't matter, especially because I can
| see the merit of the argument that Flickr may not be an
| appropriate platform. I'm just hoping things were save in a
| way that they'll be able to implement a replacement at some
| point.
| detaro wrote:
| previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30796136
| pronoiac wrote:
| Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive tweeted:
|
| > The @internetarchive did not ask to take these off of Flickr's
| site. We do not have any power of them-- it is up to them.
|
| > The Images are still in the books that are hosted on
| Archive.org
|
| > But I understand Flickr is interested in putting them back up.
|
| https://twitter.com/brewster_kahle/status/151100996579578675...
| johtso wrote:
| And Don MacAskill of Flickr tweets:
|
| "To be clear, Flickr didn't delete this. Our friends at the
| Internet Archive did. It's their account. I don't know all the
| details, but I believe we've been collaborating with IA on ways
| to improve the Commons, and I think removing the Books account
| was part of that effort."
| https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill/status/1511018079802720256
|
| Clearly there's some misunderstanding/communication.
| martin_a wrote:
| Love the reasoning:
|
| > The Internet Archive Book Images recently deleted their Flickr
| account.
|
| > Flickr and Internet Archive were in agreement on this because:
|
| > (1) The account was largely comprised of scans of book images,
| not photos.
|
| > (2) The account was no longer being actively managed by
| Internet Archive.
|
| > (3) The book images tended to show up in irrelevant search
| results of Flickr Commons photography.
|
| While one can argue that scans != photos, 2 and 3 sound like lame
| excuses.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _While one can argue that scans != photos, 2 and 3 sound like
| lame excuses._
|
| How so?
|
| My take: Dead accounts of not-photos don't seem great for
| Flickr or its users.
| martin_a wrote:
| Why not conserve it? From the forum posting it seems like
| lots of users enjoyed those images, collected and organized
| them and whatnot. I see a use for them, but it's obviously
| not as "shiny" as flickr would like its content to be,
| probably.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Why not conserve it?_
|
| FWIW, the 5 million book illustrations are still on
| Internet Archive somewhere (the key being "somewhere"). The
| loss of the metadata and organization is still a shame, of
| course. IA is a miracle, but can be intimidating compared
| to Flickr.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Because that's not their job? From their perspective it's
| quite literally spamming up their index and impeding the
| intended use of the commons. Those images and all
| associated metadata should have been relocated to
| archive.org years ago. Instead it appears IA just nuked it
| outright without consulting anybody to see if any of it was
| backed up anywhere. The problem here isn't with Flickr, but
| the clear lack of professionalism on the part of IA in
| misusing others' resources and then pitching a fit when
| called out on it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > My take: Dead accounts of not-photos don't seem great for
| Flickr or its users.
|
| Even if that's the case, this kind of thing should be handled
| differently (e.g. keep the account, but do some custom thing
| to down-rank those images in searches or whatever).
| root_axis wrote:
| Why?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Why?
|
| Because I think it's bad form to just up and delete data
| like this, especially something that's about
| archiving/preservation.
| root_axis wrote:
| How long should they keep data that both the hosting
| platform and owner of the account agree should be
| removed? If this isn't sufficient rationale to delete
| data, what is?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > How long should they keep data that ... the ... owner
| of the account agree should be removed?
|
| Has the Internet Archive actually made a statement about
| that? Some Flickr support person claimed they agreed to
| it in a support thread, but I can imagine a lot of
| scenarios where there might be an unacceptable amount of
| spin going on (e.g. Flickr made some unreasonable
| ultimatum, and IA chose to delete the account instead of
| accept).
|
| > If this isn't sufficient rationale to delete data, what
| is?
|
| That the data is truly unwanted.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Some Flickr support person_
|
| What's that about? Is this meant to cast doubt on the
| reliability of the speaker?
|
| > _I can imagine a lot of scenarios where there might be
| an unacceptable amount of spin going on_
|
| Ok well, I am going to take Flickr's word as stated until
| I have reason to believe otherwise, I don't see any
| reason to speculate on arbitrary alternative scenarios,
| Flickr doesn't have a history of lying about support
| issues as far as I am aware.
|
| > _That the data is truly unwanted._
|
| There's not really a way to reasonably assess if that's
| the case besides what the owner of the account
| communicates.
| johtso wrote:
| https://twitter.com/brewster_kahle/status/151100996579578
| 675...
|
| "The @internetarchive did not ask to take these off of
| Flickr's site. We do not have any power of them-- it is
| up to them.
|
| The Images are still in the books that are hosted on
| https://t.co/NHtWm9GEQu
|
| But I understand Flickr is interested in putting them
| back up."
|
| https://twitter.com/DonMacAskill/status/15110180798027202
| 56
|
| "To be clear, Flickr didn't delete this. Our friends at
| the Internet Archive did. It's their account. I don't
| know all the details, but I believe we've been
| collaborating with IA on ways to improve the Commons, and
| I think removing the Books account was part of that
| effort."
| nodefortytwo wrote:
| Why should flickr invest time doing that when the IA didn't
| want the account?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Why should flickr invest time doing that when the IA
| didn't want the account?
|
| That's not how the OP twitter thread presented it.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Your quote literally says that the Internet Archive deleted
| their own account.
|
| It sounds like maybe their was some discussion between the two
| organizations, but unless Flickr is blatantly lying I don't see
| any reason to believe that the Internet Archive was wronged.
| martin_a wrote:
| People also shoot themselves in the head with their hands
| tied on their back.
|
| Point is: flickr should have enough space and whatnot to host
| all those images if it wanted. They decided to remove that
| content, because "it appears in search"?
|
| Sounds more like it wasn't cool enough so they wanted it
| gone, found some reasonable reasons and that's it.
| thi2 wrote:
| Thats devastating. I actually have the mentioned Biodiversity
| Heritage Library account bookmarked and visit it from time to
| time, I really hope it remains unaffected.
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(page generated 2022-04-04 23:02 UTC)