Quote from: Chichikov on July 02, 2020, 07:32
Are we older people to be respected for building this crappy society that we give as a legacy to our children and grandchildren?
Certainly not!

Why do people expect for a single generation to solve ALL the problems of the world? Are we handing over a world full of problems to the younger generations? Yes. But what world have we inherited?

People talk like these are the worst of times and older people have done nothing but wrong. Did any of you went to school at all?

Up until recently there were countries where apartheid was the norm. In the US there are a lot of people still alive who lived in legally institutionalized racial discrimination. Where black people could not attend to school. It was the older people (at least part of them) that fought against that system allowing today for people from the minorities to go the the university and become highly respect intellectuals and scientists. Does that count for nothing?

European countries let go of their colonies, much to the struggle of the people in those colonies. But would that independence have been granted if the governments hadn't also faced internal support for the liberation of those colonies and against colonialism?

Labour laws are under attack in Europe in a clear regression regarding workers rights. Weren't all those rights a conquer from the older generations? Have people forgotten that working 8 hours a day wasn't something universal so long ago? In fact it's the lack of spine and cowardice of the younger generations that's allowing for all the benefits conquered in the past being lost.

Or the rising of the idea of ecology. This is not a concept invented by the 20 year olds. From the 1960/70s that people have been fighting for it with increasing success.

Is 2020 all that worst than the 1950/60's with all the racial discrimination and colonialism? Or the 1930/40s with the fascist and nazi regimes and a World War? And so on and so on?

Let's be real. Life isn't a Marvel cartoon where a superhero solves all the problems with his super-powers during the course of a 90 minute film. Things evolve in smaller steps.

Honestly it's what this generation of thin-skinned snowflakes, keyboard SJW, radicalized in puritan views of right vs. wrong, totally dependent on technologies that killed their privacy like social media and location devices that allow for control from the authorities that I fear.

The older generation that in 40 years will have 80 years old may be the last to remember how it was to be free. Just look at the Big Brother being built in China and surreptitiously copied in Europe.

Deactivated +10.000 photos, video and illustrations on SS.

In fact I went exclusive with Pond5 about a week ago, so the videos will not go up anyway.

Quote from: astockphotographer088 on June 07, 2020, 11:59
If you are lazy to do the necessary calculations, don't take up valuable forum space. Thank you.

Arrogant POS.

I've presented enough data, that can be extrapolated to any month on the past 14 years I'm on SS, to show that your attempt to manipulate the contributors in favor of SS is BS.

Besides, this forum is not yours.

EDIT: Just to open a bigger hole in your personal exception case or manipulation (whichever is the case), my RPD from March, April and May is 0.85c. My RPD from June is 0,62c which represents a 27% drop.

But if we consider that I already have big sales this month that are not likely to be repeated for the rest of the month contrary to the 0,10c sales that will pile up, that 0,62c RPD will drop even further making that 27% income fall be much bigger.

Total BS.

My RPD from subscriptions and OD from May to June dropped from 0,53c to 0,34c (level 4 / previous 0,38c). This represents a 36% drop.

From April to June there's a 46% drop (0,63c to June 0,34)

I've excluded the Single & Others, EL's, Videos and other factors that are a lottery and not the brunt of the income and cannot be considered with just a week in June into any estimation but if I did the June drop would even be bigger.

I won't even bother to do more calculations. It's absolutely clear that there is a HUGE cut in my income.

Either you are an exception believing to be the rule against everybody else testimonies, or you're here just to create chaos and dissent among the contributors on SS orders.

Quote from: tpack on June 05, 2020, 22:42

Quote from: morfon on June 05, 2020, 22:09
I really don't understand this attitude.

I'm a fellow SS contributor who's also affected by this cut of royalty, but i still fail to see how SS is responsible for the current economic hardships of that alleged single mother or anyone else here. SS is a business not a charity. We are not employees, we are just contracted freelancers, and SS as an organization has zero responsibility towards us. They never made any promises and you are free to terminate your contract any time. The only reason you don't is because the rest of the agencies are just as crap or worse. A few agencies who are committed to fair trade, like pond5 or alamy, don't sell sh*, so it doesn't matter that they give you 40 to 60% of nothing. SS remained the only big one that actually sells and now it's gone too. I don't count istock/getty. The business landscape keeps shifting.

Let's face it: creating stock is a skill of very little added value, at least according to the market. No one cares how long it took you to learn photography and how much you spent on gear. Photography is extremely hard to sell even outside stock, otherwise we wouldn't bother selling for 20 cents a pop. As for me, i just stopped uploading and don't care any more.

It's not SS management's mistake that the single mother failed to obtain more marketable skills. We are all free to move on. Why would you rely on a single source of income, especially if it's known to be very unreliable?

Stan Pavlovsky ... is that you?

No he's not Pavlovskly. He's that guy that cracks the whip on the back of the workers on orders of the bosses. Just as poor and miserable as the others that get exploited, but who feels good being the attack dog of his millionaire owner. I know the type from the ditatorship times, and history is full of examples like him.

I really hope that Adobe would make a move, namely accepting editorial photos and videos which are a huge part of my SS income and other agencies and is a very large market.

Unfortunately I don't know how willing is Adobe to make a move because that would empower the contributors and give us a sense that collective actions and pressure does make a difference.

So, in the short term Adobe may see this as a good move to get a greater market share but in the long term the sense of power and unity the contributors gained could mean trouble for them.

After all we're talking about big capitalists whose worst nightmare is having the workers united. As an example, I know a story of a big farmer that decided to pay more to his workers because people were little more than slaves in the region. He ended up never having a crop after that because the other farmers burnt down all his crops fearing that their workers would start demanding better payment. That farmer had to leave the region.

So, as much as I would like to see Adobe make a move, the truth is Free Market and competition is an illusion and things are always under control and well orchestrated by the big players. At least in my country Free Market meant the establishment of Cartels that act as monopolies.

I would not be surprised that they are positioning themselves for acquisition.

And that explains why they created the $0.10 minimum per download when 15% actually represents $0.04 of most sales, 30% represents $0.08 and so on, for example. Does it make any sense that they created a 15% level when the sales of that level will almost always be bellow $0.10?

They created the $0.10 limit so that a new owner already has the tools to reduce even further the payment expense and make SS more attractive to potential buyers.

And it may not even take that long as I believe that later next year, after they have reset the levels in January, SS itself will drop the $0.10 limit and put all sales in the correspondent level to increase their earnings again. The $0.10 limit is just the well know strategy to soften the first blow.

So prepare yourselves to earn $0.04 per sale or little more.

I'm at risk of suffering the same situation as our fellow artist. Currently scrabbling to reinforce my presence in other areas but far from guarantee any return greater than I have now. And certainly not fast enough.

The wort part is that I beleve that after the January 1st reset, SS will drop the $0,10 minimum royalty and effectivelly implement the percentages for each level.

It just doesn't make any sense defining levels and then create a flat rate that make people in the higher levels earn the same than those on the lower levels. Prepare yourself to be earning $0.04 per download.

The drop won't be 60 to 70%. It wil be 90% in most cases.

Seeing images that went for $0,38 now going for $0,10 like I'm seeeing now, feels like being stabbed.

I'm a full time stock photographer and things were going terrible for the past years, but this move may have killed my business. To earn 25% of what I used to earn is sickening.

It's a very hard decision with a lot of serious financial consequences for me to deactivate my portfolio, but I may have to go kamikaze.

With such a huge drop it won't make a difference if I earn 25% or 0% of my previous SS income.

Quote from: pics2 on May 26, 2020, 18:24
Some girl named Katty from Shutterstock just came and said that it will not bi lower than 10 cents, not 3 or 6 cents as we assumed. What a relief.

Relief? I hope you're joking!

Getting closer to put my stock +20.000 images for free on the web and ask for donations for those who download them. Soon it won't be worse than having them on stock.

Hope AdobeStock launches a wrecking ball into SS headquarters.

The first step would be to accept editorial content which is a huge part of my SS income, and them promote good exclusivity conditions.

I also have an abrupt drop in the number of sales. But the drop in the income is even more worrying. Not only the value received for the EL's is much lower, it has become almost non-existent. The Single & Others only sell by small values contrary to the beginning where I had sales for $100, $60 and so on.

The quality of the images uploaded almost doesn't matter has to produce good images I cannot focus on large quantities. So, when they become available for search the images enter immediately into the 10th page of the Fresh Content becoming invisible in the midst of all those spamming trash SS now accepts that it's downgrading their collection.

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 01, 2020, 15:56
Yes that could be upsetting. I've never had a keyword rejected, that I know of. Do they notify me or just make it disappear?

You get a very fast message saying that incorrect keywords have been removed or something like that. I haven't seen the list of removed keywords but noticed that they removed Easter. SS does conjugate words like run/running, etc.

But in this case I had Easter separated and used in conjunction with other words like "easter bunny" and "easter eggs" so to me it doesn't make sense that they would erase the single word since the others a set, if I'm explaining myself correctly.

Unless each single word in a set also works as a single word ("easter bunny" also is treated as "easter" and "bunny" seprately) I cannot understand why they would consider a repetition.

As Jens G, the deleted word ends up showing in the suggested keywords. If you add them they get instantly deleted everytime.

Quote from: pancaketom on March 31, 2020, 20:09
I have noticed they do this sometimes if for example "easter' is repeated a few times - like "easter egg" "easter basket" "easter" - they might remove "easter" - without telling you they removed it or why - if you try to add it they remove it again - at least once I removed some of the other instances and they accepted it, but if you didn't notice they removed the most important keyword....

I guess that was it. All keywords were relevant. I cannot understand why would they remove a relevant keyword, that is not used as spam but the name of the items just because there are several of them!

And the worst is what you mentioned. I haven't seen a reference regarding what keywords were removed, much less the reason.

SS is just getting absurd.

Thanks.

SS is now rejecting images as similar even if one portrays a woman and another a man doing the same action!!!

Yes I know that they are doing the same action, but aren't a man and a woman different enough to justify the approval of both images?!

Besides, not only the physical appearance is totally different but the clothing has nothing to do with each other.

So fed up!

Quote from: Uncle Pete on March 30, 2020, 14:20

Quote from: MicroVet on March 30, 2020, 06:33
When Shutterstock submission page deletes the keyword "Easter" as an incorrect word and makes it impossible to add it, in Easter themed images, than something very wrong is happening there.

I cannot understand how they did not learn a thing with what happened to IS. A few years back almost everyone raved about how well SS worked pointing their good decisions in contrast with IS, the agency everyone developed a particular hate. And that made SS without doubt the strongest agency.

Now, SS seems to be following the same path of IS, instead of preserving their strong points.

At the moment SS is still my number one agency but the fall has been so big, not only in terms of revenue but also in terms of review quality, that I'm getting fed up with them.

They deleted the word Easter? Was it an Easter Image? I have some images with the keyword Easter, so I'm trying to understand what are you saying?

2,397,414 Easter stock photos, vectors, and illustrations are available royalty-free

If Easter painted eggs together with rabbits aren't Easter symbols than I do not know anything. Let's put it this way. Imagine images of Santa Claus having the word Christmas removed.

I even tried to add them manually more than once but the system deleted them all the times. Lets hope they get approved so I try to add them in the Catalogue Manager.

When Shutterstock submission page deletes the keyword "Easter" as an incorrect word and makes it impossible to add it, in Easter themed images, than something very wrong is happening there.

I cannot understand how they did not learn a thing with what happened to IS. A few years back almost everyone raved about how well SS worked pointing their good decisions in contrast with IS, the agency everyone developed a particular hate. And that made SS without doubt the strongest agency.

Now, SS seems to be following the same path of IS, instead of preserving their strong points.

At the moment SS is still my number one agency but the fall has been so big, not only in terms of revenue but also in terms of review quality, that I'm getting fed up with them.

Quote from: Visualab on March 29, 2020, 10:28
Btw if it's true that capitalists are taking most of the pie,it's even true that our lifestyle has improved much...

Capitalists always took most of the pie. That is not the question. The question is that nowadays, with a more and more unregulated capitalism they are taking almost all of the pie. The gap between rich and poor was never this big.

Plus, if you look at history there almost always have been progress and betterment of the conditions of life. That has nothing to do with capitalism but with human nature. We didn't evolve from the Paleolithic to Mesolithic then Neolithic because of Capitalism. We did it because has humans we always try to improve our quality of life. And that has been an ongoing march. Sometimes faster, other times less so.

We can even argue that Russians and Chinese lived better in the 1960/70s than in 1910 despite the repression and oppression of those regimes that had nothing to do with capitalism. In a world without capitalism, no matter what would replace it, there would still be development and betterment of life.

Plus, I would like to add a comment on the earlier idea that the consumers drive the capitalist companies to do better, compared to regulation. I do not agree with that at all.

If we were to remove all regulations, lets say regarding environment protection, an immediate catastrophe would fall on the planet. Sure, some consumers would still make a market for Eco-friendly companies, but the vast majority of the consumers are ignorant and know nothing about ecology except a few buzzwords about it. In the end they would just buy the cheaper product and did not care if it was produced by destroying ecosystems. That would drag all the Eco-friendly companies down in a heartbeat except high-end products for a minority. We've seen it happen in Microstock with the price and content wars!

If we consider that most of the Media is property of large economic groups, people would not even know how those products were being made because of controlled information. Couple that with marketing, and fake news discrediting the people speaking about the problem and nothing would stop Unregulated Capitalism. Look at what happened to oil companies and fuel with lead or tobacco companies.

Are the State regulations and authorities slow to evolve? Yes, but even with all their problems they are what still protect the people. And do not forget that we can even argue that States and authorities are slower to act exactly because the power of Capitalists, who interfere heavily and create a lot of obstacles and sow corruption for their own gain. I see that daily and blatantly in my country daily!

Connecting all this with the coronavirus crisis, and to prove my previous paragraph, I can say that once the quarantine scenario was put on the table, the capitalists of my country immediately started to say that they would bankrupt their companies and that they needed subsidies because they could not resist economically stop for 15 days! That immediately delayed the issue of the quarantine, and will kill countless people, just because they lie about the survival of their companies and found a way to suck money from the State they hate so much.

***

Quote from: Zero Talent on March 29, 2020, 07:06

Quote from: cascoly on March 29, 2020, 04:54
competition rarely lowers prices -- yes, FDA rules handicapped us,

Lol at your first statement (which is so easily dismissable, it's not even worth arguing about) -- and yes, I'm glad that you agree with me on the second one. We have here a very clear example of how the regulations (like the ones your asking for) not just handicapped us, but led to preventable deaths.

We are making progress! 

The next step is to understand how monopolies and the associated price gauging practices are flourishing under the protection of tough regulations (cronyism)

In my country we were sold the same BS about competition lowering prices.  With that BS, the EU forced our government to privatize strategic sectors of the economy (fuel, energy, transportation, etc.). Sectors that in most part already had private companies operating and competing with the state company.

When the state sold all those companies and all became private, what happened was that cartels were immediately formed to combine prices. Forget about competition driving prices down. Now you pay what the cartels want you to pay.

With the privatizing of those profitable businesses, the profits instead of coming directly to the State and used in the betterment of the country, now go to the pocket of Capitalists.

You may argue that the state still get revenue from taxes, but that's also not true. Those capitalists moved the fiscal headquarters of the companies to countries like Netherlands where they pay less taxes. Netherlands and other countries like it, in turn benefit from wealth sucked from my country without spending a dime on it. Much like parasites. In other cases, Capitalists hide the money on off-shores not paying taxes.

You may also argue that it's the state and government job to investigate those illegalities. With so much power in the hands of capitalists, not only they buy the politicians in power, the State loss of revenue due to the mentioned above now has no means or funding to act.

Plus, in my country capitalism and the competition/prices babble was used to crush the producers cutting the price paid to them (look at what also happened to us  photographers). In the end, consumers are not paying less and workers are earning much less, but capitalists are richer than ever.

Since the privatizing of all those companies our level of living regressed to the same we had in the 70's. And man, were we poor back then!

Well, here goes an important information about Coronavirus and a potential explanation on why people suffering from hypertension are being hit more seriously.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200323101354.htm

It appears that some medications are making easier for the virus to attach to the lungs, result in infection and pneumonia. the drugs in question are ramipril (brand name: Altace), captopril (Capoten), enalapril (Vasotec), fosinopril (Monopril), lisinopril (Prinivil, Zestril) and quinapril (Accupril).

People taking these drugs must not stop taking them, but must be extra careful regarding coronavirus. At least until tests point that they don't have a relation with cooronavirus afterall.

Quote from: mj007 on March 24, 2020, 23:15
Just what If....I know most of you hat Pres. Trump...But what if the Chinese created this virus in the lab to reduce their population of elders as the 70 year old plus people old do not produce for the Chinese government. They just use up sources/food. Something went wrong in the Chinese lab and they had a very bad accident and the virus was release/by accident.. Just what if...

If you go down that route I can make a much more convincing argument. What if the virus was spread by the Americans just like they have done several times?

For example, one in the 1920s when the US government offered blankets to north-western Native-Americans purposely infected with tuberculosis so they would all die, or at least weaken them so the americans could steal their lands?

Or the other time in the 1980s when they also tried to infect Cuba with hemorrhagic fever which killed hundreds of people among them over 100 children? In fact his wasn't the first attempt to do it as in the 1960/70s they've tried it too.

I'm sure many more examples exist.

And in the present situation the coronavirus was meant to create havoc in the Chinese and European economies since this is the declared plan from Trump. Even an idiot like him and his advisers must know that what made "Murica" "great" in the past were the profits from the two world wars. In fact it's one of the reasons why US sow so many wars. After the destruction the US companies gain a new market for rebuilding.

But since the virus is mutating more than expected, any treatment US may had to protect their citizens and profit on the death of innocent (the most profitable business of USA) the US lost control of it.

See, it's really easy to make up a much more convincing argument against USA.

Simply because if there's one country in the world that is known to have no morals and have in fact made use of weapons of mass destruction over and over is the US (atom bomb, bio-warfare, chemical warfare). In America precedents count a lot. Your legal system is based on them. So what does the precedents tell in this case?

Do I believe in any of I've written above? Not really. But if there were an evidence of foul play I would bet all my money on it. The track record of USA coupled with a lunatic president who even mimics Mussolini in the gestures, expressions and values leave little doubt.

Historically, March is the strongest month by far. This year, after a good start, it's becoming a catastrophe.

SS looks like is going to have the worst month since November 2007!

According to the site worldmeters the global percentage of deaths is 13% of all closed cases.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Currently there are countries where the number of deaths surpasses by a a huge amount the recovered cases like US, UK or Netherlands.

And then there's the differences in the way each country counts the deaths. In some countries people dying at home will not be subjected to autopsy, and will only be investigated if it has any relation to a known case of coronavirus. So, many deaths by this virus will not be counted because at the time of death it wasn't diagnosed with the virus or anyone close to it.

This means that the death toll could be much higher than official number will record.

Uncle Pete, it's obvious that a lot of important things are happening regarding the spread of the disease, as well the need to educate people about safety behaviors and procedures, etc.

But much of the problems we're facing now are due to the decisions of the politicians in power right now, and in power over the last decades. Politicians who are resisting to act now because that will show how wrong they have been on countless issues, and ultimately will show them as irresponsible murderers.

So, talking about politic is what is forcing them to act. In my country the government and authorities are walking behind the demands of the people. It's the public opinion that's forcing them to act. That, forced our government to act with weeks in advance regarding other European countries but people feel they acted too late.

That happened because they felt political pressure. Our National Health Service has been under vicious attack for decades so the private medicine companies takes over. The current government and the party that supports it (among other powerful parties) have been one of the allies of the private medicine sabotaging and boycotting our NHS.

Now, reality has proven how invaluable our NHS is, and doctors and nurses are almost heroes and we're far from the worst yet. People are raving for our NHS and that is a political action because it weakens the plan to destroy it, and forces the government to backtrack breaking who knows how many sordid agreements they had with private medical companies.

As I said, we must discuss fight and prevention of the disease, but decisions are made by politicians which a lot of time decide based on politics and not public health and public interest.

Politics are in the middle of all this. It's impossible not to discuss it especially because of the impact it had in the national health services of several countries which are now requested to act against this catastrophe, underfunded, understaffed and underequiped.

I won't even elongate but it's impossible not to consider the implementation of the Euro currency that wrecked the weakest economies of the EU because it has been managed in benefit of the largest powers.

Or the opening of the EU borders and lift of import taxes of products made in China, India, Pakistan and other countries that competed with some EU industry, especially in the poorer countries used for their cheap labor. European countries and industries that were unable to compete with the low costs of the Asian slave labor and no safety or environment regulations and costs. That decimated a chunk of some European countries industry. A situation that threw thousands in unemployment, stopping them to produce wealth, paying taxes and becoming a burden on national welfare with the unemployment subsidies and other help.

If you consider tax evasion where the rich hide countless billions in off-shores so they won't pay taxes, leaving the financing of the countries dependent on the taxes over work,  making that a lot of services get the funding cut and work less efficiently. All with the complacency of the EU and national politicians who benefit from favors a corruption.

Or the banks and bankers that behaved like criminals, but in the end it was the State bailing them out with the taxes of the workers, again demolishing the national budget, and even more cuts in public services.

Also, the public national health services being sabotaged so the private systems can destroy them and impose private medicine as the only alternative just to profit on human suffering like in the US, crippling the quality of the public services to the population. Public services that now are the exact ones called to help and not the privates.

Or the decisions politicians are making taking in consideration primarily their popularity and consequences in the next elections, instead of public interest.

Etc., etc., etc.

As I said, it's impossible to look at his just as an health issue and not diving right into politics because many of the deaths will be a direct consequence of past political decisions.