We’ve just deleted 10,700 accounts 🗑️
Today we’re announcing one of the biggest cleanup operations in PortraitMode’s history: we’ve removed 10,700 accounts from the platform.
Why? To protect the community from spam, bots, and dead accounts that never added value to the ecosystem.
These weren’t real street photographers. These were accounts that had:
- never followed a single photographer
- never liked a photo
- never uploaded a photo, and
- never left a single comment
In other words: ghost accounts and automated sign-ups that skewed numbers but contributed nothing to the community experience. PortraitMode is built around real photographers and real interactions – so clearing out this noise was essential.
7,500 real street photographers
After the cleanup, we’re proud to share what truly matters: PortraitMode is home to 7,500 active, real street photographers from all around the world.
These are the people who upload, interact, give feedback, build portfolios, and make PortraitMode what it is – a dedicated space built for and by street photographers.
Quality over quantity has always been part of the mission. Today, the numbers reflect that more honestly than ever.
Fighting bots
As an additional step to protect the integrity of the community, we’ve upgraded the sign-up flow.
All new users must now verify their email address before gaining access to the platform.
This extra layer helps keep automated sign-ups out and ensures that new members joining PortraitMode are real photographers ready to participate.
Improvements to iOS & Android
Alongside the cleanup and security improvements, we’ve recently rolled out updates to both our iOS and Android apps.
These updates focus heavily on:
- improved stability
- smoother performance
- rebuilding core parts of the apps from the ground up for long-term reliability
The experience should now feel faster, cleaner, and more consistent across devices.
Thank you for being part of the PortraitMode community and keep shooting! 📸
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7 Comments
Good job!!
Great! I appreciate your decision.
A good move that will make place better.
This is a wonderful initiative, and it’s a joy to have the honor of participating in this beautiful project of sharing and inspiration.
It’s been not taking part of the community, but hearing this news feels great. Always to learn platform that value users over metrics.
Thanks David.
You’re also writing about quality over quantity.
It’s difficult to discuss about quality. Some like what other don’t. But could we talk about quantity?
As for the categories (not more than 10 👍🏻), could it be possible to not being allowed to post more than a certain amount of pictures per day? Every now and then some of us come and post something like 20 pictures in a row and this every day… and after a while… nothing anymore…
I personally think that such a limit would also make the experience better in having photographers thinking more about what they’re posting which would at the end also increase the quality.
What is your opinion?
Anyway, keep up the good work…! 😉👍🏻
Best regards, Jef.
Hey Jef! 🙂
A limit of 20 photos per day is actually already in place. I see where you’re coming from and it might make sense to reduce this number to 15 or even 10. I’ll discuss this with the team! 🙂
Cheers,
David