Last month we announced new limits for free accounts on Flickr to support our mission to create the safest, most inclusive global community for photography enthusiasts.

Today we’re rolling up our sleeves and getting started with the hard work of making it happen. We’ll walk through what you can expect in the coming weeks, and offer all the resources we can along the way.

Before we dive in, though, we want to start with a heartfelt thank you to all the community members who shared their feedback about these upcoming changes. Your passion for Flickr is what inspires us to keep improving. Please keep the feedback coming by writing our Support Team, participating in group discussions, and having conversations on social media. We see you, we hear you, and we appreciate you.

Now, on to the details.

What’s changing?

Starting May 1, 2022, we will begin enforcing the new limit on moderate and restricted content on free accounts.

If your free account contains any moderate or restricted images after this date, those images will be considered a violation of our terms of service and subject to removal. Accounts found in violation of our limits will need to either subscribe to Flickr Pro or remove the content in violation.

For these purposes, moderate content is defined as images containing partial nudity, like bare breasts and bottoms. Restricted content is defined as images containing full-frontal nudity or sexual acts.

To ensure the safety of your moderate and restricted content on Flickr, we recommend purchasing a Pro subscription. But if you would like to keep your moderate and restricted photos safe elsewhere, we understand. Here’s how to download your photos from Flickr.

For a little more insight about safety levels on Flickr, watch this Flickr FAQs video all about setting the safety level of your images. We also want to make sure you understand these changes won’t affect your ability to view or hide moderate or restricted content. See this FAQ video for more details.

Starting May 17, 2022, we will begin removing non-public content in violation of Flickr’s new free account limit policies.

This applies to Free accounts with more than 50 non-public photos (private, friends, family, or friends and family).

This will be an ongoing process—Flickr has tens of billions of photos, and we want to hold true to our new free account limits while impacting as few active community members as possible. We’re prioritizing enforcement of limit violations for accounts that haven’t been active in many years, but will be enforcing these policies for active community members in the near future.

We want the photos and communities on Flickr to endure for generations. This includes virtual photographers, portrait photographers, train enthusiasts, bird watchers, equipment nerds, world travelers—anyone who captures an image and shares it with the world. But to ensure that longevity, we need to focus on providing the best, safest, and most sustainable Flickr experience for our members. That starts here, and we hope you’ll join us.