If I ever had my doubts about just how interwoven social media is with politics, they dissipated as I watched tech giants donate to presidential campaigns and then share the inaugural stage. But despite being an American drastically cutting back my social media usage in 2025, Flickr’s newest feature has grabbed my attention. The image sharing platform Flickr now has a Discover feed, and it's an internet rabbit hole I will gladly fall down.
The Discover feed on Flickr is a new tool that’s designed to help users find groups (and with that group, inspiration). Users can access it by clicking on the “What’s New” tab, then selecting Featured from the sidebar. The page is filled with curated photos from different Flickr groups. Browsing the new Discover page, I can find everything from visual poetry to stick people in peril.
Simple? Absolutely. But the new feature has me wondering, as users sick of the social giants flock to brand new platforms like Bluesky in droves, that perhaps a “retro” social platform could be another solution to how downright depressing the biggest social networks are becoming. Flickr is a longstanding image platform that seemed to fall out of favor for a while, but now photographers seem to be recognizing that a photo-focused platform that isn’t at the mercy of algorithms already exists.
The problem with “new” social media platforms is you can only be social with the few people who are already on the platform. (That’s why I haven’t yet deleted Facebook but instead used the iPhone screen time tool to seriously cut back my time spent there – because it is still the place where most of my friends are online).
Either way, I think browsing art is just what my mental health needs right now – I may just have to revive my old Flickr account. Flickr just turned 21 this year, which makes the photo platform actually older than Facebook.
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