viewing flickr photos that aren't of puppies

Flickr has gotten all super nanny and flagged many user's accounts as "unsafe" because they feature not so much "adult" content but rather gay content. Photos I thought were salacious were deemed okay. Photos I thought were benign—friends partying about in bars—were considered offensive. My Flickr Censor though the Folsom photos of porn stars were fine, but that me in drag was offensive. I tried not to take that personally.

There is a lot of discussion online about this, including on Flickr's discussion board. It appears that there is either one prude over there wielding abusive power, or their censorship gang each e-mail users using the same fictional name.

In any case, more and more people like me are having to set their accounts, photos and photosets to "restricted." That means that the default setting for our photos is "moderate" or "restricted" so these photos won't show up in random Flickr fields and casual Flickr surfers cannot see this content.

That also means that even experienced Flickr users can't get access to these photos, even if they are searching for them, if they don't muck around deep into their personal settings.

I have gotten several e-mails from friends and strangers asking how to see all the shots in various photosets.

Here's how:

Log into Flickr, click on "You" and select "Your Account" from the drop-down menu.



On the "Your Account" page, select the "Privacy & Permissions" tab.



At the very, very bottom—you've got to scroll down to find it—under "Content filters", click "edit" to change your search settings and turn SafeSearch to "off."



You should now be able to view such offensive material as gay guys smiling in bars or dancing to 80s music.