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Hmm … I am still sceptical about flickr. To me it looks like a huge sandbox for dataminers to play in.

Hmm … I am still sceptical about flickr. To me it looks like a huge sandbox for dataminers to play in.

That’s a thought-provoking opinion. I was missing that for a while.

Do you care to elaborate on this? What do you mean, exactly? When you say, “sandbox for dataminers”, do you mean those mining for personal data, or those mining for data on social-networking? Perhaps something entirely different?

That’s a thought-provoking opinion. I was missing that for a while.

Do you care to elaborate on this? What do you mean, exactly? When you say, “sandbox for dataminers”, do you mean those mining for personal data, or those mining for data on social-networking? Perhaps something entirely different?

Yes, you kind of made the point. I am suspicious about flickr in the same way as I am about orkut or gmail. All these systems offer temptating things like a lot of space to store data for example. On the other hand users provide the sytem with a lot of personal data. Those system aren’t charitable, they are companies with a commercial interest. So what is their advantage? Of course they will use the users’ personal information to extract some kind of profile of them. Then they can sell email-adresses connected to this profile to companies interested in, for example spammers. Gmail for example reads your emails to place advertisements which are especially temptating to you. I think flickr will do some kind of that sooner or later as well. At the moment image retrieval is not working as good as text mining, but I think it is just a matter of time until for example people that like to travel through sweden get offers of airlines for trips to sweden. This is just a scenario containing maybe annoying spam. I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but one can think of much more evil things to do with personal information.

Yes, you kind of made the point. I am suspicious about flickr in the same way as I am about orkut or gmail. All these systems offer temptating things like a lot of space to store data for example. On the other hand users provide the sytem with a lot of personal data. Those system aren’t charitable, they are companies with a commercial interest. So what is their advantage? Of course they will use the users’ personal information to extract some kind of profile of them. Then they can sell email-adresses connected to this profile to companies interested in, for example spammers. Gmail for example reads your emails to place advertisements which are especially temptating to you. I think flickr will do some kind of that sooner or later as well. At the moment image retrieval is not working as good as text mining, but I think it is just a matter of time until for example people that like to travel through sweden get offers of airlines for trips to sweden. This is just a scenario containing maybe annoying spam. I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but one can think of much more evil things to do with personal information.

Well, Flickr is already making money off its customers either by charging them a fee (my case, as I am a ‘pro’) user, or by displaying ads (for the ‘free account’ users). So, yeah, I see your point: be careful with whom you trust. But, as it stands, I will give Flickr (or any other individual/company) the benefit of the doubt, and consider ‘non-evil’ until proved otherwise.

As I see it, the benefits of Flickr (in a nutshell: it is a great application for storing and organizing your pictures) outweight the hypothetical dangers. And if you don’t want to make your pictures widely accessible, then just mark them private and no one, except those whom you explicitly allow, will be able to see them.

Well, Flickr is already making money off its customers either by charging them a fee (my case, as I am a ‘pro’) user, or by displaying ads (for the ‘free account’ users). So, yeah, I see your point: be careful with whom you trust. But, as it stands, I will give Flickr (or any other individual/company) the benefit of the doubt, and consider ‘non-evil’ until proved otherwise.

As I see it, the benefits of Flickr (in a nutshell: it is a great application for storing and organizing your pictures) outweight the hypothetical dangers. And if you don’t want to make your pictures widely accessible, then just mark them private and no one, except those whom you explicitly allow, will be able to see them.

I did not want to offend anybody for using flickr. I just like to place some thought-provoiking statements from time to time to make people think of the risks of datamining. I am sure that you are aware of what those companies are able to do. I just see how often people have no idea of that and thats why I like to sensitize the world a little bit.

I did not want to offend anybody for using flickr. I just like to place some thought-provoiking statements from time to time to make people think of the risks of datamining. I am sure that you are aware of what those companies are able to do. I just see how often people have no idea of that and thats why I like to sensitize the world a little bit.