Open Letter to Flickr’s Your Best Shot 2023

I wrote this letter as a means of communication for my immense amount of disappointment over how Flickr’s annual event, Your Best Shot, was held, in particular in 2023. I do not condemn anyone’s actions and decisions on this event; all I need to know is why the camaraderie that led to me writing this letter happened, and I’m looking forward for anyone — especially Your Best Shot team — to answer my confusion and disappointment.

To start this letter, Your Best Shot is an annual event held by Flickr on their platform ranging for mostly end of year (around November or December) and it celebrated its users’ prestige and accomplishment by letting them show their best shots that they’ve taken within that year. Let’s say a Flickr user took a great photo in 2023, and they decided to participate to this event by joining the group, with the same name, adding appropriate hashtags to said photo, add it to the group’s Photo Pool, and optionally wait for the judges to decide which would be the winner. There are rules to abide, and users from certain countries are unfortunately not eligible to join. I, fortunately, can/could.

I am aware that this event is one of the only few times I’d get people to see and appreciate my works en masse. I did/attempted to do this as a mean to gain feedback, acknowledgment, and connection with fellow photographers around the planet. Needless to say, it’s such a prestigious event that could boost my insight and connection, and therefore deemed necessary for my photography journey (as I don’t use any other social media; a few only used for purposes such as searching for events or connecting with clients).

I’ve been following this event for about two years when I participated in YBS (as for now, this event will be referred as such) 2021 and 2022. There are lots of insights and connection that I got from this, though only few feedbacks. I got to see what people thought of ‘the best’ shot. I also got to see what the judges had to decide and learnt accordingly.

However, the 2023 one was somewhat… enraging.

Flickr seems to always give notifications and emails about the announcement for YBS in which it went for months. Because of that, I got to keep track on this event properly and helped me set times to curate my photos and which one I’d like to send to the group. Each event has its unique group so I couldn’t return to the same group as the previous event and had to re-join another group for the consecutive year instead.

At 2023, I got nothing. No notifications, no emails. Nothing. Nada.

I even thought that event might be no longer held. As nobody in my real-life society uses, let alone knows, Flickr, I had no idea YBS 2023 was held. For 6 months (November 2023 — May 2024). I discovered this event held when I was searching for random groups I’d like to join.

What was boredom become disappointment, anger, and confusion.

Which led to this open letter.

From most of my social media experience, one often got no notifications as a mean of shadow-banning, which only happened when a user violates said platform’s rules and Terms and Conditions. If I’m not mistaken, I haven’t done anything wrong in Flickr, such as uploading inappropriate (sexual, offensive, pornographic, obscene, etc.) photos, leaving comments with swearings, or spamming groups with whatever means.

Did I got shadow-banned from YBS 2023? Again, I’ve cross-checked my notifications and emails and there. Was. Nothing!

Not even in Junk mail.

So with a broken heart, I decided to just join the group, 6 months late, read the rules and Terms and Condition, copy-paste the hashtags, curate my photos, and apply said hashtags to my 2023’s best shots. I couldn’t add my photos to the group’s Photo Pool anymore. This, being a mentally challenged person, annoyed me a lot and it unfortunately interrupted my workflow for the rest of that day.

Here are what I need to know:

• Did I ACTUALLY get shadow-banned (account suspended) to the point Flickr suddenly stayed radio-silent about YBS 2023 and won’t let me know a single thing? If so, WHY? What did I do that got me shadow-banned? What did I do WRONG? Please let me know.
• If I DID NOT get shadow-banned, then why isn’t there any notifications and emails regarding YBS 2023? And why did a Google search helped reveal this unsettlingly ‘unfair’ camaraderie?
• Will there be any better means to promote YBS? Maybe put that on your platform’s ads section, so non-Pro members like me would be able to know it.

Overall, this is (and will always be) disappointing and perhaps one of my first negative experience on Flickr. I admit, Flickr is still a nice platform for photographers to share, appreciate, and improve their photography throughout groups, events, and curation on Explore. Flickr also remains the only social media I regularly use after I ditched others — and like I said on few paragraphs before, I re-used them only for necessary purposes — and after 4 years of using it, I finally got a rotten tomato from this very platform.

If you do not want me to participate in future YBS events, I’d be more than happy to know about that. I understand that I may do something bad in the past when I violated Flickr’s rules and Terms and Condition without ever knowing what I did (was I swearing on a random comment? Was I spamming a group with photos? Was I harassing a user? Was I?). But if there’s something wrong instead that led to me not getting notifications and emails and therefore not knowing YBS 2023 was held, I’m looking forward for your words and clarification. Or did I actually missed something so crucial that it’s the only way I know YBS 2023 was held?

Again, I wish everyone well, healthy, and happy and I’m always looking for other (hopefully better) opportunities to get more exciting photos in the future. But I only ask a few things: why didn’t I got to join YBS 2023 and what can I do to be there again in YBS 2024? I have lots of things to do in life and opening emails is not one of them. I don’t have much time to check emails often as everything’s on the phone/computer apps right now, like messaging and phones.

I need answers. Preferably from a Flickr representative.

Thank you,

Adi (nigelbond21st)

P.S. to clarify more things:

I haven’t unsubscribed from Flickr’s mailing list, at least that’s what I remember (though it’s unlikely as I don’t ever remember clicking ‘Unsubscribe’ from Flickr’s mailing list nor ever intending to)

I’ve checked again before sending this open letter, and the latest YBS email that I got was from 2023 (which means YBS 2022). After that, only email notifications of whomever faved my photos and followed me

YBS 2021 were the ones with the most emails. YBS 2022 only have a few

No notifications from the iOS app either (which again, led me to think if YBS wasn’t held anymore)

I have re-read (and re-read some more) about the rules and Terms and Conditions and I conclude I have yet to violate anything. If that is wrong, let me know what violation(s) I’ve done

Maybe slightly related; English is NOT my native language. We may share different understanding of nuance and context