Sorry, you are dealing with this, those canned support responses that don't address the issue are infuriating! If this is definitely in violation of whatever license they are using (providing Shutterstock didn't make some special deal via a loophole in the contract) you may want to look into reporting the app itself to marketplaces distributing it, additionally filing DMCA with the company that makes the app and if no response you can also look into reporting it to whoever is hosting their sales site for the app if they have one.

I joined the Adobe Stock Discord a while back (and the ones for Illustrator/Photoshop etc) since I practically live on there, lots of great stuff going on but as a vector artist the content on the Stock server is pretty heavily photo based which makes sense.

If you guys are ever looking to expand it would be really cool to have an official Adobe illustration /  animation stock server. I'm in the process of building a 2D animation community, but it's not stock focused. 

There are lots of specialized content ideas and technical stuff like export settings that would be handy to have an official place to chat about.

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Steve how in the world do you this every month? Make money.

I guess I am reasonably good at what I do... 

That is for sure, would you say that consistency also lends itself to your success? either as far as upload volume or quality?

This might be an amazing opportunity for the forty selected artists depending on the exact terms of deal. For the rest of us, I personally think it would be a lot more impactful and meaningful if Adobe used their considerable influence in the industry to work toward preserving the value of creative work in general.  If any company has the position, resources and incentive  to help come up with solutions for the "race to the bottom" in pricing of creative assets it would seem to be Adobe.

Education was mentioned in yesterday's announcement and I would genuinely love to see some sort of plan from Adobe about teaching copyright, IP and valuing your work as an artist. Maybe Adobe could even work with artists from the underrepresented communities to become ambassadors and educators in their local design communities?

I don't want to take away from the good this program will do for those selected and I'm not trying to be dismissive of it, but to me at least it feels awfully empty after yesterday's news, particularly if one isn't eligible to be considered. I'm not even sure I understand who is eligible, the phrase "self-identifying artists and content from underrepresented communities" sounds like vague corporate word salad to be honest. No offense meant, but the language could perhaps be more clear here.

It's good that Adobe is actively working on diversity and inclusion initiatives, but looking long term, what is the benefit of nurturing these new artists and content creators without a viable market for selling art in the future? Considering how much more difficult it has gotten in the last two decades to earn income this way, I truly wonder what it will look like to try to make a living as a creative in 2030, and moves like the free image collection seem to be making that a more remote possibility.

In my opinion this is way too many assets at way too high a quality level for a free collection. It would be one thing to offer a much smaller rotating collection of free content meant to showcase as many contributors as possible and actually highlight the paid content.  This just looks like giving up and saying even Adobe apparently can't/won't stand up to the Pixabay crowd.

This line from the FAQ is particularly tone deaf to me:

Why does Adobe Stock offer a free collection? Won't it directly compete with the paid collection?
There is a growing demand for free content.

So what? There are always people who want everything for free. There is a growing demand for free software too, will there be a rotating free app in Creative Cloud each year? Adobe's contributors are also it's customers, and it certainly feels like a slap in the face to people who've paid thousands of dollars for Adobe apps over many years.

I feel a little silly now for singing Adobe's praises so loudly over the last year, and sending all my clients there. I was so pleased with all the open communication, the Discord communities, the webinars, the time and patience Mat spends here answering questions....but a move like this from the last agency I can say I actually trusted is just exhausting and deeply disheartening.

I've patiently explained to people countless times the advantages of properly licensing images from a trusted agency over downloading from the free sites.  This just muddies the waters further for people who think all images should be free in the first place.

Creative Commons are generally free licenses some of which allow redistribution and "re-mixing" of your work so applying them would not be the same as the royalty free or rights managed licenses from the agencies which are much more restrictive.

It is not wise to suggest free sites or free services. No client will ever browse or take serious someone selling work online but not paying for hosting. Plus website developers also need to get jobs and got payed 

I was only suggesting a temporary solution for contributors who might not currently have the time or budget to build a website to get their links out quickly.  As a web designer myself very I'm well aware that people get paid to build sites.

It's a pretty big stretch to say "no client ever" will click on those links. In my experience clients absolutely will click on a link and contact you if they are really interested in your work. 

Peeps don't forget to add your link in SS profile so people can find your work elsewhere. Also create a gmail (or other email service) address with your real or contributor name to use as contact address.

If you don't have a website for your microstock profile then you can create one for free at Wix. (geez I sound like a commercial)
Any free service will do of course but I took Wix because it seems to be integrated with Shutterstock and since the purpose of this website is to steer away from SS I find this quite amusing 
We are all creatives/designers so it shouldn't be too difficult to set up a quick website.

Also for anyone who doesn't have time or is a little intimidated by setting up an actual site you could go the route of just making yourself a profile page with links to your work on a service like https://about.me/ or https://linktr.ee/ (Both have free versions last I checked.)  They are really easy to set up even with zero tech skills or patience

For what it's worth, I'm not sure what Mark's affiliation is with this plugin, (I've seen him pop up talking about it a few times in the past week so I get the suspicion,) but the CMS Account solution has been around for a quite a while. 

I experimented with them as well as Ktools (same era in the late 00's / early 2010's) before getting heavily involved with Symbistock for a while.  CMS Account support was without question more helpful and responsive vs Ktools in my experience and I think Ktools went out of business shortly after. As far as SEO they were okay but not fabulous when I tried them out vs a regular WordPress eCommerce site.  They all have their pros and cons for sure as self hosted solutions. 

I think anyone who goes down that road ends up looking for someone who can relate to the trials and tribulations of building something like that so maybe that's all Mark is interested in?

Currently I'm rebuilding using Wordpress with a standard e-commerce plugin and some custom development of my own and hoping to get some better results.

I'm always open to chatting with anyone trying to do something similar and can even sometimes be helpful as my background (besides stock illustration,) is in web development & marketing

Symbiostock was a fabulous & ambitious concept but I think as a community we were and are a little too scattered still to make it work.  Maybe some day, fingers crossed!

Good luck to anyone trying to build your own site though, I think personal branding and niche work really is the answer!

Yep I do, and I also have to file in the US every year. That's partially why I'm closing some old accounts, a site that makes under $100 a year isn't worth the extra paper work unfortunately.

Just had a chance to watch the replay and ended up with a page full of notes! So much great information here and I'm really looking forward to the episode with the search team.  Thanks so much for this Mat!  I think Adobe is really doing a good job of being open and accessible to contributors and it's super refreshing.

Thanks very much for sharing the outcome! 

I've only recently started uploading again to Adobe so I'm not 100% sure of their keyword policies so I'd be interested in the answer too.  The only thing that I could see maybe possibly being an issue is zoom, zooming, zoom in?  Maybe too many variations of the same word. 

From what you describe they seem relevant hard without seeing the animation and having first-hand policy knowledge.  Maybe Matt with come along and she some light, hope you get it sorted!