Sunday, March 25, 2018

Quite a month!

My wife and I left Dodge for sunnier climes... only to encounter rain, rain, and more rain... followed by flooding, flooding, and more flooding... and snow in the mountains.  Lots of snow.  Could that really have been al Andalus in Spain?  It was like a bad dream.  At least the temperatures in Seville were a good 10 degrees warmer than Paris.

Early into our trip I received an email saying my px500 renewal couldn't be processed.  They couldn't find my px500 account.  I worked through the issues with their support team and realized they really couldn't find my account and were only able to refund my subscription.

Then, not two days later, I read where px500 had been sold to the Chinese.  Some of the comments I read on PetaPixel suggested people were deleting their px500 accounts and going back to Flickr.  Good thing for me as I never left Flickr in the first place.  After returning to France I removed my px500 account.  I know, they still have a bunch of my photos squirreled away somewhere on their servers.

I originally joined px500 in the hope I could sell a few images.  No joy.  Nothing sold.  So, to me, leaving them isn't such a big deal.  I just don't like the thought that the Chinese now have some of my older works.  Short of hiring a lawyer I'm not sure what to do about that.

A few weeks pass.  We experience a boatload of rain.  Not the sunny vacation we were hoping for.

Suddenly the news is awash with revelations regarding Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Russian trolls, and the role they played in the 2016 election in the USA.  It seemed like a good time to re-consider my participation in social media platforms that use individual member data as revenue sources (Facebook sells the personal data you provide, it's the basis of their business model).

I posted a series of quotes on my personal Facebook page and put a few links on my public photography page that are critical of Facebook and their business model.  Here too, I'd hoped I could make contacts with creative people and I hoped to further my photographic explorations that might eventually lead to something, somewhere, anywhere, artistically, or commercially.  But as with my experience with 500px, nothing really ever happened.  Certainly, I met some very nice people, but one of the things I've learned in living in France is that creative contacts are best made and maintained in person, and not over the 'net. 

I'm leaving Facebook after a decade of participation.

Once I started down this path, I wanted to make certain that Facebook didn't get to benefit any longer from my giving them personal data they could sell.  What this means is that any company owned by Facebook was subject to consideration.  With this in mind, I deleted my Instagram accounts.

I'm done with Facebook.  Forever.  I'm done with Instagram.  Forever.

Where does this leave me?

I still have my Flickr account - https://www.flickr.com/photos/christophersoddsandsods/

I still have this blog account (the one you are reading right now).

I still run a couple Tumblrs, which are subject to review and reconsideration.  I'm not quite sure what I'm getting from Tumblr that I can't get elsewhere.  It's difficult to measure just how much positive exposure I get from it.  We'll see.  Maybe I'll keep them.  Maybe I won't.

In any event, I am reducing the number of platforms I have to manage and maintain.  Perhaps this will free me up to spend more time doing what I really enjoy - making photos.


Nikon Nikkor + Lens TurboII + Sony A5000