Flickr goes creative for SOPA blackout

The approach is particularly creative: drive home the feeling of censorship by allowing some users to "censor" other users.

I wish they had followed through strongly on this. There's a hard-to-miss link that lets you opt-out of having your photos censored, and if you're visiting a blacked-out photo flickr gives the anti-PIPA spiel and presents a button to "show it anyway." If they were trying to demonstrate what SOPA/PIPA would make the internet like, shouldn't they just bite the bullet and make these photo black-outs permanent for a day? The idea is great but its implementation is pretty weak, it won't actually get people worked up.

"Update 9:27am January 18, 2012: We removed the 10 limit, you can darken to your dark heart’s dark desire."<p><a href="http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/18/pipa-sopa/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/18/pipa-sopa/</a>

All these positive comments are surprising. I find this to be a very bad idea. Flickr is a service (unlike HN) that some people depend on, and that some people <i>pay for</i>. So Flickr is saying that, even if I pay for their service, they might deny it to me, at the whims of other users?<p>Flickr is showing themselves to be untrustworthy -- and possibly in breach of contract. I would suggest not relying on them.

To bad the Whitehouse photo-stream is exempted.<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/</a>

My biggest complaint is that it's not easy to automate blacking out every photo of every SOPA supporter.<p>It is, but it involves YQL, API keys and more time than I want to dedicate.

I like this feature.<p>I changed my Gravatar, g+, and FB images to black squares today to solicit whys from my networks.

The wording on this was confusing enough that I thought Flickr was claiming I'd opted-in to black out my photos.

We are no doubt pissing off Congress to no end. I wonder what the approval rating of Congress will become after this stunt? 5%? 2%?