Quote from: epixx on June 23, 2020, 17:38

Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

Please stop comparing contributors to slaves. We are free, slaves are not. And they do not get any pay at all.

Slaves are given food and place to sleep, so they are paid. Slaves can go from point a (place to sleep) to point b (place to work), so they are free. We just have an illusion of freedom.

We don't need to be "heard" by Shutterstock. They are the enemy. We need to be heard by buyers, who have other better options to buy from and by fellow contributors who we need solidarity with to force Shutterstock to act. What needs to happen is that SS should not be able to post anywhere without having attention called to their misdeeds. Facebook, twitter whatever. Keep it coming.

If SS don't review their actions we need to move enough buyers elsewhere that we can leave SS, or force a change in management that will result in better conditions for us.

We can't move buyers without help of agencies. It becomes annoying how Adobe silent is. Were they taken by surprise and still can't figure out what to do? At least Getty is sending promo emails with a link for exclusivity application. Will Adobe tell us what the plans are here? It looks like they don't want to make enemies with SS, how pathetic.

Ok, I just saw that video. Closed eyes detection looks good. Overexposure and underexposure can be heavily corrected with raw converters these days, it is good for jpg. Cropped faces can be on purpose. But, good idea.

Adobe doesn't charge that fee for European contributors.

good point

I think we are loosing track of the fact that by far the majority of the stock is held by insiders.
So what is actually happening is they are taking money directly from artists into their own pockets by way of dividends.
It's a straight up cash grab from us to the people actually making the decisions to reduce our royalties.

And many of them are family members. We are seeing few families getting rich practically doing nothing except sitting in their chairs and waiting for cash. I don't even want to think how far this has gone, it makes me sick.

Quote from: pics2 on June 15, 2020, 05:25

Stock market was down in general on Friday, it is not SS specific.

The attached chart shows last month share price and if you take a closer look you'll see that it is going down since June 8th after it went up since June 2nd

Correct! I was only referring to daily change of -2.18% on June 12th.

Hi Everest,

I agree with you on many levels. One of my points was that big producers who can step up in the game and produce that kind of high-level material usually don't have much choice, they might have 10+ people on board with high maintenance costs. If those companies are earning 20.000+ USD per agency per month from the most significant agencies, it will be hard just to shut off one of them even if commissions have cut half of one of them.

The only thing I don't agree with you is about these factories. They do have a choice, and a lot of them. We are talking about people who are successful businessman with a lot of cash. They are not some Unsplash enthusiasts, they can switch businesses and they have potential to switch businesses very easy (their potential are their obvious business talent and skills - not everybody can build up  a big production or factory, I can't, I don't have those skills, and they have a lot of cash and savings). So, it is realistic to expect that big factories will leave microstock business as soon as they find it unsustainable. Even more they are the only one among contributors that will react by the laws of market and the only one that will avoid that effect of boiling lobster or frog, because they are professional businessmen, you can't fool them. The majority of small contributors will be, however, fooled. So I'm still optimistic that these factories will take a stand and will make a crucial change in negotiation with SS.

Quote from: pics2 on June 11, 2020, 03:50

It looks like the earnings of the big players  will not drop that much. They have strong portfolios (should we use stock market term all weather portfolio) and it is also possible that SS is fine tuning search engine to drive more traffic to them, so they would not leave. All of them are now "shocked" and "insulted" and "humiliated" with 10 cent sales, but in reality all they (and all of us, lets face it) only care about overall income, not RPD. Why I think that? Pure logic - 38cents was already so low it could also be called insulting and humiliating. All microstock concept is based on that. So, they won't care is it 10 or 5 or 1 cent as long as the overall income is satisfying. SS will take care that income doesn't drop that drastically, and everything will be the way it used to be. and the small contributors? Who cares about them.

All the level 5/6 people I know have taken a BIG hit in income this month as well as RPD, including me.

I know, the same here. Even level 6 doesn't mean you are a big producer, I'm not. I just have few information which makes me conclude that big producers are not hit that much. Without big producers deactivating portfolios nothing can be accomplished.

It looks like the earnings of the big players  will not drop that much. They have strong portfolios (should we use stock market term all weather portfolio) and it is also possible that SS is fine tuning search engine to drive more traffic to them, so they would not leave. All of them are now "shocked" and "insulted" and "humiliated" with 10 cent sales, but in reality all they (and all of us, lets face it) only care about overall income, not RPD. Why I think that? Pure logic - 38cents was already so low it could also be called insulting and humiliating. All microstock concept is based on that. So, they won't care is it 10 or 5 or 1 cent as long as the overall income is satisfying. SS will take care that income doesn't drop that drastically, and everything will be the way it used to be. and the small contributors? Who cares about them.

Cobalt, you are right. I still think this is EyeEm fault. Because I think they did offer this collection to Getty as unique, artistic, non standard stock pictures, and maybe even making in look exclusive. Otherwise, I doubt Getty would accept it in their macrostock collection. Westend is in this collection and they ask image exclusivity from their contributors. They do send them to other so called macro agencies Offset, Adobe Premium, Plainstock etc, but not microstock. That's way I thin that EyeEm fooled them.

You can deactivate any file from your port.

But are you sure?

Maybe just leave them there, focus on other places, come back 6 months later and read up on what happened.

I just wanted people to be aware of the potential problem.

I'm afraid that something similar could happen with Adobe.