Skip to main content

Flickr accidentally “permanently” deletes user’s 3,400 photos

It’s every Flickr user’s worst nightmare: one day you login to find your collection of thousands of carefully organized photos have vanished. Permanently. That’s exactly what happened this week to Mirco Wilhem. When Wilhelm, a five-year member of the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing website, tried to log in to his account he was denied access and instead prompted to create a new account. An e-mail from Flickr eventually confirmed his fears:

Hello,

Recommended Videos

Unfortunately, I have mixed up the accounts and accidentally deleted yours. I am terribly sorry for this grave error and hope that this mistake can be reconciled. Here is what I can do from here:

I can restore your account, although we will not be able to retrieve your photos. I know that there is a lot of history on your account–again, please accept my apology for my negligence. Once I restore your account, I will add four years of free Pro to make up for my error.

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do. Again, I am deeply sorry for this mistake.

Regards,

Flickr staff

Wilhelm vented his well-earned frustrations in a blog post titled “You Have Got To Be F******g Kidding, Yahoo!” Wilhelm, who works in IT, was at a loss to explain how Flickr could turn an “active” account into a “deleted” one without a “deactivated” period, during which it would be possible to address any issues. In this case, such a grace period would have allowed Wilhelm to notice his account had been wrongly nuked. The mix-up began after Wilhelm submitted a support ticket to Flickr concerning the account of another user who he suspected of stealing his photos.

Despite Flickr’s initial assurance that it would not be able to recover any of the photos, Wilhelm eventually received word that he would not only be getting a free pro membership for 25 years — not just the four years Flickr initially offered — but his photos would be miraculously coming back, complete with Wilhelm’s organized sets, comments and favorites. Here’s the statement Yahoo released a day after Wilhelm got the bad news:

Yahoo! is pleased to share that the Flickr team has fully restored a member’s account that was mistakenly deleted yesterday. We regret the human error that led to the mistake and have worked hard to rectify the situation, including reloading the entire photo portfolio and providing the member with 25 years of free Flickr Pro membership. Flickr takes the trust of our members very seriously and we appreciate the patience shown by this member and our community. Flickr will also soon roll out functionality that will allow us to restore deleted accounts more easily in the future.

While providing a great deal of relief to Mr. Wilhelm, Flickr didn’t explain how the mix-up occurred in the first place. Nor has it explained what magical recovery process it employed to restore the photos after initially saying that doing so would be impossible.

Topics
Aemon Malone
Former Digital Trends Contributor
The Acer Swift 16 laptop with AI and OLED is down to $850 today
The Acer Swift Edge 16 open on a table.

For great laptop deals, Best Buy is a familiar place to head, offering deep discounts on cheap models as well as high-end examples with great features. Right now, you can buy the Acer Swift 16 AI for just $850, working out as a saving of $350 on the regular price of $1,200. It sports everything you could want from a laptop to use at work or take to the coffee shop. Let’s take a deeper dive into just how great it is.

Why you should buy the Acer Swift 16 AI
Back when we reviewed the Acer Swift 16 AI, we loved its “thin and light chassis” along with its “beautiful OLED display” and “good productivity performance.” We cited it as “reasonably affordable,” which makes this discount even more appealing. The main issue? A poor battery life at just over four hours when browsing online. That’s thanks to its 16-inch 3K OLED display impacting battery life, but on the plus side, it looks utterly gorgeous. It offers cinema-grade 100% DCI-P3 color gamut support, 340 nits of peak brightness, and a response time of just 0.2ms, so it’s perfect for watching movies on the move. Just bear in mind that battery life.

Read more
TP-Link routers may get banned. Here’s which brands to use instead
The TP-Link Archer AXE7800 tri-band Wi-Fi 6E router in a room.

In December last year, it was revealed that the U.S. government is considering banning TP-Link routers entirely. Much like Huawei back in 2019, the brand might soon all but vanish from the U.S. market -- but unlike Huawei, this might turn out to be a huge problem, because TP-Link routers are highly popular all across the country.

The fate of these routers is still uncertain, but it's a good idea to think ahead and potentially replace your existing router. If you're buying a new one, it might be better to buy from a different brand. Below, I'll walk you through the best routers currently out there and help you pick a brand that suits you.
What's going on with TP-Link?

Read more
Forget DLSS 4 — this app already does multi-frame generation
Path of Exile 2 running on an Asus gaming monitor.

Unlike most of the PC gaming world, my ears didn't perk up when Nvidia announced DLSS Multi-Frame Generation alongside its RTX 50-series GPUs. Although the cards themselves look destined for a slot or two among the best graphics cards, the new DLSS 4 and its Multi-Frame Generation feature that's exclusive to Nvidia's latest graphics cards didn't stand out. To me, at least.

That's because I've been using an app called Lossless Scaling for close to a year now, which spent most of the past 12 months laying the groundwork for multi-frame generation. I've written about Lossless Scaling too many times to count, but it's high time to revisit the app once again. Not only is DLSS 4 on the way to show everyone what multi-frame generation is capable of, Lossless Scaling just received the biggest update it's seen in months.
It's really, really good

Read more