I note the Foreign Office website has removed the various photos it posted on Flickr last week; as I said, it was almost certainly in breach of the ‘community guidelines’. The user fcowebsite is still active, but there’s no content showing. All the photos shown on the FCO site are being served from FCO’s own servers.
3 thoughts on “FCO retreats from Flickr”
Comments are closed.
You know, part of me would expect the FCO to comment on their experiment.
Then the other part of me, the bureaucrat, knows why they haven’t.
I’m confused Simon. Do you think DM was selling himself? It’s not something I’d considered before. Have other politicians (perhaps in the US) been rapped for using Flickr to display photos?
It’s a very grey area, Jeremy. Does general bilateral trade promotion count as promoting a product or service? Does promoting an individual help him/her at the ballot box, next time round? Perhaps not deliberately, but you very rarely see a Cabinet minister losing his/her seat. (Although we can all think of a few exceptions…)
When I’ve spoken to Flickr people in the past, they’ve always ruled against anything ‘professional’, even governmental or non-profit.