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What happens when you replace a photo on Flickr?

  • Tagged with flickr
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You can replace a photo on Flickr.

When you replace a photo, you preserve the photo ID, but the secret changes.

Here’s an example from one of my photos, using the flickr.photos.getInfo API:

 <photo
   id="53513831787"
-  secret="49d244ae7e"
+  secret="da94cf8d63"
   server="65535"
   farm="66"
   dateuploaded="1707315985"
   isfavorite="0"
   license="0"
   safety_level="0"
   rotation="0"
-  originalsecret="9a2c4750ea"
+  originalsecret="1152023310"
   originalformat="png"
   views="2"
   media="photo"
 >

Note that this also bumps the lastupdate attribute in the <dates> element, e.g.:

 <dates
   posted="1707315985"
   taken="2024-02-07 06:26:16"
   takengranularity="0"
   takenunknown="1"
-  lastupdate="1708517912"  // 2024-02-21T12:18:32
+  lastupdate="1708518493"  // 2024-02-21T12:28:13
 />

That attribute is bumped for any change to the photo, not just replacement.

I don’t know if there’s a reliable way to detect replaced photos in the API. I can’t find any way to detect it in the UI (not even the lastupdate date).

When I first tested this, I made all the replacements within a few minutes of each other. I went back and replaced this photo for a fourth time, several months later – the “date posted” value remains the same as ever.

Open questions: