I switched back to Flickr when SmugMug bought them and 500px killed their API. The switch was a little harder to accomplish because I was planning to use the API to grab the originals I'd pushed to 500px and since archived, but I'm glad for it now. I guess this was the push I needed to move off the platform altogether.
One of the things I prioritise when picking a platform is answering the question "how easy is it to leave?". Flickr still seems pretty easy to leave if it comes to it.
I had deleted my Flickr account with my Yahoo account deletion as there was no way I could keep Flickr without Yahoo. When SmugMug bought Flickr I wanted to sign up and try it again. But I see that the sign up is still via Yahoo accounts. I guess it will take some more time.
Yeah, I've signed up with an account that's separated from my regular online identity. Hopefully, that gets sorted; if not, it's all at arm's length anyway. I should preferably get around to hosting this stuff personally, and federating to Flickr/wherever somehow.
It seems like a lot of that is a holdover from Flickr's preexisting technology; for instance, I don't think Smugmug itself performs image recognition. I'm personally hoping for some changes in there as the new owners take hold of the platform and start to shape it.
Instagram is like a performance show; every shot a photographer posts there is expected to have a wow-factor and generate Likes.
Flickr is much more relaxed; it's not perfect ( you can't exclude photos fron the Photostream for example ) but there's less of an expectation of consistent performance. I'm happy to upload 'warranty shots' to Flickr, unexciting but interesting documentary photos.
Flickr has been seemingly starved of resources since Yahoo purchased it - development definitely slowed down and the performance of the service got noticeably worse. It was looking grim for a while there, so it's really hopeful that smugmug have bought it.
It's still a liberal/free license but they're now using a custom license under their control and have also accepted 7.25M funding round so they could also become hostile in future. For this reason I'm hesitant to rely on their APIs and only maintain and use offline copies of photos I like.
They talk about it from their Series A announcement:
> The funds being invested today will be going toward defining a new economic model around photography. It won’t be a model where photos are going to be paid for with cryptocurrency. It will be a model that leverages the unprecedented distribution Unsplash photos gain to bring as many opportunities to contributors as possible while maintaining the open, free-to-use principles of the community.
If people need alternatives to 500px, Flickr allows CC-licensed photos, and recently got sold to Smugmug. Hopefully they'll keep the licensing intact.