I think that if they and multiple friends were buying the images, they would have to buy an awful lot to get his images as the first 10 images on page 1 of 'man'....a category of 22 million images. Same goes for all the other most popular categories in which they have one or more shots in the top slots. You would have to purchase a lot of photos.

In the old days when there were far fewer images in the SS collection I had a couple of images (almost) at the top of search in popular, single-search-word categories and for that those images were selling between 10 and 20X/week and every week for months in order to stay at the top.

I would doubt that this is any kind of SS experiment. If you search 'man', you get the top 2 rows on Page 1 'relevant' almost completely filled with his shots. All editorial and not (IMHO) hugely attractive. SS states that it wants model-released shots if possible so why would they go out of their way to present buyers with the exact opposite of what they tell contributors that sells. All social media and Google changed their algorithms a few years ago because some clever guys/gals were able to manipulate the results to their own advantage. Now it's much more difficult. Maybe SS didn't see the need and this guy is smarter than their old algo......or maybe he's just a hacker and SS don't really care anyway!

The 'investors' are undoubtedly delirious with the coming of Stan the Man.

SSTK stock price has nearly tripled since his appointment on April 1st 2020.......who's the fool now? And with SS skimming off the top of every contributors old levels percentages from Jan 1st every year until they regain their higher levels again, how do you think that Q1 profits for the investors every year are going to look?

Nothing really matters except this:

Got this warning when I went to their site.

Welcome to the world of the corporate kleptocracy. Senior management at SS is now cracking open their bottles of vintage champagne in expectation of their realization of multi-million dollar options bonuses because Q1 profits just went through the roof...our loss is their gain (bigly)!

Methinks the biggest pain I can inflict on them (and myself) is to delete my top 30 best-sellers and keep the rest of non-sellers to foul-up their servers! With every 10 cent dl, I begrudge them the light in their eyes and dollars on their bank balance!

Quote from: sharpshot on December 18, 2020, 08:53
As this portfolio is still up, does that mean that Shutterstock is fine with anyone using another persons images and blurring them? Seems like a crazy policy but as they haven't banned this person, that's what they're telling us.

Yep. Still up in21. SS is clearly YOUR pardner in crime for wannabee imagecrims.

Unable to access SS forum and get this:

Quote from: Uncle Pete on September 15, 2020, 17:41

Somewhere, someone is still telling people, this is a good way to make extra money?

Shutterstock is still trying to get contributors to go 'more pro'...see their 'Additional Resources' page on which they show all sorts of Hollywood film-makers 'secrets' for great footage! Like you wanna do that for a dollar!

10 Types of Shots and Angles Every Filmmaker Should Know:

https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/10-types-of-shots-every-filmmaker-should-know

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on September 04, 2020, 17:08
Although

https://www.shutterstock.com/g/design_space

is still visible, Shutterstock compliance just emailed me that they have disabled the portolio

Success! Thanks Jo Ann. That's pretty fast action for them. If I click on the first image of the portfolio which is still visible I get the image but with name and profile photo blank....so that must be the first stage of disabling the port.

Edit: Now 100% gone. (9/7/20)

Thanks Jo Ann. Let's see how long it takes to remove the whole port. Knowing SS, if Kirsty Pargeter complains, they'll remove her image and leave the rest intact. They really don't give a s**t.

What always amazes me is that I've never seen a thief that isn't a serial offender yet SS will only remove the first couple of images that the real authors complain about. Only after 3+ complaints will they shut down the port. IMO if a 'subscriber' has one stolen image then the rest of their port is most likely also stolen.

The trouble is that policing image theft is not part of the profitable operation. Not preventing it is/can be profitable for SS. After all, thieves only steal good sellers and if SS can sell the same popular image twice and then withhold payment to the fraudulent contributor and not have to compensate the original author, then that's a real win-win situation for SS.

Quote from: dragonblade on September 02, 2020, 18:52
There's another brazen thief posting over on the Contributor Experience forum over on SS. He/she/ it is asking what kinds of subjects sell. Probably looking for more photos to steal (based on recommendations of subject matter.)

Edit: woops I didn't realise that this same thread was already being discussed.

By the way, it may have been Design Space who deleted that thread. There was another thief who posted on the forum some time back and it was believed that that one was deleted by the thief himself when he was exposed by other contributors.

Ah! Didn't realise that that was possible. He/she was the OP but I'm surprised that it's possible to delete everything once the thread has developed. Must admit it did seem rather fast work for SS!!

All SS cares about is that the thread exposing thieves is taken down whilst the thieves remain. As usual the thief comes to the forum asking people to show their most popular and when one of the forum regulars posts 5 photo's of the thief's next to 5 originals of theirs others chip in to show that the name and photo of the contributor are fake as is the country of residence given (USA but likely India).

Thief's port: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/design_space

Port is still up but the forum thread has been disappeared. 'Course that's the easiest thing to do...no thread, no discovery, no problem with thievery.

Profile photo fake too: https://twitter.com/amina_saidy

Quote from: gnirtS on August 16, 2020, 12:30
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.shutterstock.com   <--- their trustpilot is going from strength to strength.  Should pass 1000 reviews this week.

Who in their right mind would (i) spend a fortune each month on a package or (ii) buy shares with a reputation from both buyers and contributors as equally dismal as they have?

It's interesting to review those comments from buyers before the flood of negatives from contributors (around page 30). Loads of people thinking they were signing up for one month trial discovered that they signed up for a year and that it cost them to cancel. It seems to happen so frequently that their dubious practices must be by design rather than co-incidence/stupidity of buyers.

New posts are appearing. But it doesn't work for me so it must be those who found a workaround.

Quote from: Suspect on July 23, 2020, 19:32
Just heard back from 'support'. Apparently if I use my web browser rather than my mobile I will be able to post on the forum and pigs may fly. I will give up now or I may have to contact the Samaritans.

Not true anyway. I only log in from a browser and if I try to reply to a thread post, I get this (after I'm taken to the top of the page):

Yep. Here are the black sheep without any wool! 

I think that SS does notify you if you're banned because they also give you a re-instatement date. I looked at my forum profile and no bans or warnings on that. So.....maybe they just suspended the forums. Must have been painful to them having gotten all adverse comments removed from FB and other social media only to discover that they were hosting their own adverse comments site. 

Quote from: cathyslife on July 23, 2020, 01:29

Quote from: OM on July 23, 2020, 01:22
Is it just me or has the SS forum disabled 'quotes'?

I don't think so. I just quoted you. But I work on an ipad and this forum software isn't very ipad friendly.

I don't mean the SS forum on MSG but the SS forum on Shutterstock. No new posts since Tuesday either.

Dunno what's up with SS forum but I noticed yesterday that 'quotes' were disabled but didn't try to post anything. If you look at the landing page of the SS forum you'll notice that the last posts (most up-to-date) are from Tuesday. I reckon that it's maybe been cancelled due to lack of positivity toward SS. 

Is it just me or has the SS forum disabled 'quotes'?

Blank landing page on Adobe Contributor for me 1pm CET. Ok earlier this am. Firefox. Win 7 and 10.

Pity I didn't buy 2 BTC with every month's SS earnings in 2014! (OK that's really the same as going to the casino and getting lucky!!!)

Wouldn't need to work any more. 

Waiting until the May payment is on the bank, then disable port...only photos no video(thank goodness).

Gone from $300-400/month in 2015/16 to $100/month now. Half or one third of that is unacceptable and I'm not going to let them earn off me to that extent.
Hopefully if enough of their contributor base denies them the ability to make out like bandits from their hard work, their buyers will desert in droves due to lack of decent content. Then the senior execs don't get their bonus which is what it's all about anyway.

Submitted 12 commercial and one Illustrated editorial on May 21st. The Ill-Ed was approved immediately and the 12 were approved today. So that's 11 days I think.