Quote from: synthetick on December 08, 2024, 10:49
I suppose they could be letting some AI through as an experiment because they are thinking about allowing it in future.

Please read my previous post.

SS, in the end, was never a microstock agency. It was just another Big Tech unicorn giving investors on Wall Street a chance to speculate on a concept or idea, creating a bubble. When SS launched, the bubble was crowdsourcing and gig platforms like Fiverr, Etsy, etc., etc. Then the bubble was The Gig Economy. Now the bubble is AI.

SS isn't experimenting. It's jumped on the bandwagon. Trust me on this. I'm an investor, and there is gold rush mentality around anything AI to where there could be a company that has nothing to do with AI mentioning "AI" in a press release and BOOM, shares skyrocket. AI-fever is so high right now that everyone from Google to YouTube is throwing long time webmasters and contributors under the bus to cash in.

The good news about this is that the bubble will pop because that's what AI is--a bubble. Once everyone makes their millions and have their fill, AI-mania will be a thing of the past.

I can't believe after all this time, people are still having discussions about SS or any other microstock agency from the position that they're legitimate companies.

It took me years to finally understand and accept what SS has been this entire time. SS is a Big Tech company. It's not a stock agency. The reason this is important to know is that Big Tech has never operated according to any traditional business model. The traditional business model always was, "We have a product or service that we want to connect with buyers. Hopefully, we'll have enough buyers and subscribers to stay in business."

The Big Tech business model is nothing like this. It's, "We have a technology or platform that we hope will create a bubble on Wall Street that investors can cash in on. But let's pretend it's about connecting sellers and buyers."

Every Big Tech has been using that model. It's why En####ification has become a thing. It's why, for example, Etsy immediately started inviting tons of counterfeiters from overseas to flood the platform at the expense of independent sellers who were creating things from scratch. It's why Adobe and Apple, which built brands for artists to unleash their creativity, are now replacing those artists with AI and even putting out insulting ad campaigns mocking them. It was about inventing new tech bubbles for investors to cash in on.

Same with SS. It's going through it's En###ification phase now, as it was never about building a platform to sell images. It was about creating a platform to capitalize on the crowdsourcing bubble. The crowdsourcing bubble popped, and now AI is the current bubble.

So the question, "Is SS turning a blind eye to AI?" doesn't really make much sense in this context. SS isn't turning a blind eye. It's embracing it with both arms.

Quote from: Brasilnut on August 18, 2023, 13:07
How do 34 different ports (full of stolen images) have the same goddamn image of an elephant?

Professional negligence by SS.

https://www.shutterstock.com/search/similar/2279987071

I'll be called a conspiracy theorist, but I'll say this anyway: I don't believe this is professional negligence. It's, like I said, by design, most likely. Those images are what's known as SEO spam; SS might be allowing it because having so many images of that one elephant helps gain visibility in Google and Bing Images.

Another thing: the copycats could very well be SS itself hiring people to rip contributors off. Other platforms have been caught red-handed doing this type of thing. For example, Amazon invited designers to sell their original products on the platform. The next thing they knew, their products were ripped off and being resold for cheap by Amazon. As it turned out, Amazon was using in-house staff to rip these designs off and produce its own line of products.

Ditto, Etsy. Etsy invited all of these original designers to sell, then turned around and invited third party Chinese sellers to make rips of their products.

So, those "34 ports" could be managed by SS itself. Who knows?

I think that all creatives--be it artists, photogs and even writers--should try to restart a movement back to print and other analog forms of selling. Digital selling has become disastrous. There's no transparency at all as to how and why your work gets ripped off on a platform, and it seems as if there are no longer any protections.

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on August 18, 2023, 08:45
The crazy thing to me is that they  also get to pocket the cash. If they don't want to give it the original artist (could incentivise false accusations etc.) There should be a fund that's distributed to all contributors based on dls over the past month. Letting the agency keep the money is nuts.

Funny you should say that, because I was thinking about something similar! I think that's a great idea. Every single person who contributes to any site--be it microstock, YouTube, Etsy, whatever--should get a monthly stipend on top of whatever B.S. "commission" or ad revenue share they are promised.

There's been a lot of justifiable anger over the rampant plagiarism that keeps happening at SS, along at other microstock sites.

Just know that the plagiarism isn't happening in spite of every agency's best efforts to prevent it, but openly tolerated by Big Tech, including YouTube. The plagiarism is a form of insurance in case of a popular contributor closes their account. If they, for instance, happened to do very well in a niche topic or image and they leave, the derivative content takes their place.

It's amazing to me that creatives don't realize this. Until laws are passed heavily legislating platforms like SS and Big Tech in general, there will never be such a thing as not being ripped off. The entire ecosystem is designed for it.

Quote from: cobalt on August 18, 2023, 00:23
Scary. Was SS always like this? And will this happen to pond5?

Something very weird happened to all of these major Big Tech platforms during the pandemic. It's like they went mental or something. The Internet Archive started giving away books of copyrighted books and music. Amazon started selling counterfeit refurbished PCs. YouTube reversed the decision on conspiracy theories and fake news. Apple started throttling iPhones to force customers into upgrading, etc., etc. I don't know what on earth is going on.

Quote from: blvdone on August 17, 2023, 22:03
I thought those negative 1 star reviews came from angry contributors after they announced royalty structure change.  If those are really from buyers, Shutterstock has a problem with their business practice.

No, they're mostly from customers, because the BBB and Trust Pilot are for consumers. I was curious how microstock was doing because it seems as if Big Tech during the pandemic started losing its collective mind and implementing all of these brazen anti-consumer business practices. I knew what was happening everywhere else, but I didn't expect to see this happening in microstock.

Quote from: RalfLiebhold on August 17, 2023, 09:56

Quote from: Her Ugliness on August 17, 2023, 08:01

Quote from: rcnyc on August 16, 2023, 22:31
When they try to cancel, they're hit with a massive cancellation fee.

This is not a scam, but customers and people who want free images not reading the terms correctly or at all.

There really is not much text on the registration page to read, but it does mention the cancellation fee.

[/b]

I agree and also feel a certain gloating. The negative reviewers are almost exclusively customers who do not want to pay anything for the products - our products - from the outset.

You are wrong. From SS's own page:

QuoteTo cancel during your free trial period, visit the Plans page. If you do not cancel within the free trial period, your annual commitment will begin and you will be charged monthly.

People who decide to continue with the free trial are told they will be charged monthly, then billed for the entire year on the second month. When they try to cancel (because they didn't expect to get charged $348 up front), they are hit with the cancellation fee.

Quote from: Evaristo tenscadisto on August 17, 2023, 05:23

Quote from: rcnyc on August 17, 2023, 02:31

Quote from: Evaristo tenscadisto on August 16, 2023, 23:40
"FLEX 10 Annual Subscription, Monthly. By signing up for a free trial of an annual subscription plan, you agree that Shutterstock will automatically charge the monthly subscription fee €29 to your payment method every month for 12 months until your subscription has expired, unless you cancel before the end of your free trial.By purchasing you agree to the Shutterstock License Agreement, or a separate written agreement in effect with Shutterstock."

The scam is in the wording. It's deliberately ambiguous. The bolded part makes it sound as if someone will be charged monthly, not the full annual price up front.

OK thanks I understand now. I also got the idea that it would be billed monthly and not a one off annual payment.

So if I understood correctly in this case it is a matter of purchasing a subscription service valid for 12 months and not a 1 month subscription service with automatic revalidation for 12 months although they present the idea that it is the second through so-called "dirty" marketing.

On the US site, it confuses customers into thinking that a subscription works the way it does when you sign a long-term contract with an ISP.

In other words, when you sign up for a two year contract with a cable or phone company, you may be locked into a two year contract, but you will still get billed monthly, like $80 a month. You will not be forced to pay the entire amount of the two year contract up front. You will never, in other words, suddenly be forced to pay all $1920 at once.

SS is doing exactly that. It's telling people they'll get charged monthly, then hitting them with an annual bill as soon as the free trial expires.

Quote from: Her Ugliness on August 17, 2023, 08:01

Quote from: rcnyc on August 16, 2023, 22:31
When they try to cancel, they're hit with a massive cancellation fee.

This is not a scam, but customers and people who want free images not reading the terms correctly or at all.

No.

This is exactly what is says on the US SS page:

QuoteTo cancel during your free trial period, visit the Plans page. If you do not cancel within the free trial period, your annual commitment will begin and you will be charged monthly.

This is deliberately ambiguous. It says that customers will be committed to a full year subscription, but says they'll be charged monthly, as in, they will get a monthly charge on their credit card, Paypal, etc. Not, "They will be charged the entire year's sub as soon as the free trial expires."

So, what SS is doing is misleading customers into thinking that if they sign up for a free trial on the annual subscription, they'll just be billed monthly. Instead, they're being forced to pay the entire year up front when the free trial ends. There is absolutely nothing legal about this practice. It's a scam to trick customers into thinking they'll get billed monthly, shocking them with an annual bill, and then telling them they have to pay a fee for canceling their commitment.

No amount of doubletalking erases the fact that SS is using flim-flam techniques to get $80 out of people by confusing them into thinking they'll be billed monthly. You talk about people trying to get "free images." You don't seem to see this the other way around, that it's SS creating a fake free trial in order to get $80 out of the customers who decide not to sign up.

Quote from: Evaristo tenscadisto on August 16, 2023, 23:40
"FLEX 10 Annual Subscription, Monthly. By signing up for a free trial of an annual subscription plan, you agree that Shutterstock will automatically charge the monthly subscription fee €29 to your payment method every month for 12 months until your subscription has expired, unless you cancel before the end of your free trial.By purchasing you agree to the Shutterstock License Agreement, or a separate written agreement in effect with Shutterstock."

The scam is in the wording. It's deliberately ambiguous. The bolded part makes it sound as if someone will be charged monthly, not the full annual price up front.

Quote from: PhotoBomb on August 16, 2023, 22:59
Customers have been complaining about this for years.

I don't think the issues have been this brazen. But even so, why associate with a company like this?

I know that old habits die hard and that people are relying on SS for income. But just know that over the past year or so, SS has been literally scamming customers.

Scam #1: Customers are misled into thinking that if they sign up for a one month trial, they'll be billed monthly afterward. Instead, they are billed for the entire year. When they try to cancel, they're hit with a massive cancellation fee.

Scam #2: Customers are misled into thinking that cancellation is hassle free. Instead, customers continue to get billed the annual fee.

You can read complaints here: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.shutterstock.com

I know that user review sites don't tend to be reliable, but customers were angry enough to file complaints with the BBB: https://www.bbb.org/us/ny/new-york/profile/digital-media/shutterstock-inc-0121-81420/customer-reviews

Quote from: unnonimus on June 26, 2020, 09:38
sold 64 videos yesterday for 84 cents each under 'clip packs'

You had the choice to bail as soon as the announcement came out. You chose to continue selling yourself short.

And?

I wanted to post pictures of what I was talking about in my OP, but couldn't figure out a way to do it because I had deleted my entire port. But then browsing a website, I saw my images in its ads feed, so was able to get some screenshots showing the originals and copycat versions:





Keep in mind that I have no issues with "inspired" images. The issue here is that Shutterstock blocked me from adding more versions of my images to the database...while allowing dozens of contributors to create versions that were more similar to my original designs than the ones SS rejected.

Quote from: FastRacer on June 17, 2020, 13:42
Don't waste your time or money. Remove your portfolio and do business with companies that you think treat you fairly. Hate your employer? Quit and get a better job. Same principle. These big companies employ well-paid attorneys and accountants to hide money.

The problem with your "advice" is that you're assuming that this problem at SS isn't endemic to the world of business as a whole as it is right now, or isn't having a rippling affect in other areas of life. It's like when people back in the 1980s and 1990s were telling everyone that the way to solve off-shoring was to just "Buy American," when every last company was doing that, to the point where even if you wanted to, you didn't have a choice.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on June 17, 2020, 13:41
Don't be ridiculous.  And research what a pyramid scheme is.

I don't have to research anything. That's the difference between a millennial and everyone else, I guess. The older generation speaks from experience. The newer one looks everything up on Wikipedia and Reddit, develops the smug satisfaction of thinking they've got a handle on the subject and then tells everyone else to "Look it up/do your own homework/etc."

For years now, I have believed that SS's payout structure was never anything more than a pyramid scheme designed to get the vast majority of contributors to crank out photos on the promise that if they worked hard enough, they'd become a high money earner. Meanwhile, there was never a chance in hell that they'd become that, because the search algorithm was rigged so that only a few people would get the lion's share of revenue.

Why put this pyramid scheme in place? So that people would be carrot stick'ed into providing the bulk of the site's content without being compensated fairly, based on the logic that their work wasn't "good enough" to earn money.

The problem with that "not good enough to earn well" logic--to play Devil's Advocate--is that even if that were true, SS has been clearly using the prodigious output of contributions as "product" to boost its valuation in the eyes of investors and VCs. After all, why else would it have that counter boasting how many images it has and get uploaded weekly?

So, I really think there needs to be a criminal investigation into this. By carrot sticking contributors to "work hard," SS was basically getting them to act as laborers, in the sense of working round the clock day in, day out to crank out "product" that could be used as a selling point.

Any thoughts?

Quote from: Firn on June 15, 2020, 07:53

Sorry for picking out this one sentence, but I have a problem with this point of argumentation. Just because you have earned a lot of money with Shutterstock, does not mean other contributors are in a position to deactivate their accounts. I feel like the whole undertone of this post is that the contributors who do not deactivate their accounts are "betraying" the ones who do. I am pretty sure that around 95% of all contributors, including myself, really wish they could deactivate their accounts and would do so if they were in a position that allowed them to do so. But many people depend on the income for their living.

You make a fair point. But here's a question I would put to you.

What would you do if, in a year's time, SS decided to slash your revenue to such an extent that it would be the same as not making any income at all? Or SS decides to something extreme like say, "Sorry, you can only have 100 images in your port," or, "We'll be deleting the 100 lowest performing photos in your port to save on server space?" or "Sorry, but we are now pulling eligibility for political reasons [seems transphobic, racist, etc.]." I know it seems unlikely that SS would do something like this. But trust me--as much experience as I've had with these Silicon Valley companies, I assure you that SS would have no problems doing that to you in the future. Hell, right now as I type this, they're probably considering this very thing right now.

I know it seems like scaremongering and such, but I've seen this thing happen with so many companies. For example, on YouTube, contributors who were part of The Partner Program had tons of their videos demonetized for no real reason. One of these contributors was PizzaFlix, a huge channel that provided rare, public domain movies. It relied on this income for years and YouTube decided last year that it would be demonetized. YouTube didn't even give it a reason. It just did it.

On Flickr, people had thousands of their photos deleted because the company decided that it didn't want to host all of those images anymore. Imagine that, waking up one morning having poured years into building up a gallery there, only to be told one day, "Sorry, but we're gonna delete 5,000 of your images soon."

See, I get what you're saying. If you depend on SS for income, it's easier said than done to delete your portfolio. But looking at The Big Picture, it doesn't make sense to argue that you can't deactivate/delete your port because you're reliant on income when at any given time--today, tomorrow, a year from now, two years from now--SS can just decide to eliminate half your port or decide that you're "no longer eligible."

That's what these companies do. That's how they operate. They use your financial situation (or emotional dependency) on their platforms to reel you in, then use your dependency as leverage to use you until they decide to throw you away like yesterday's newspaper. This is the position you're putting yourself in right now by not deleting your portfolio. You're not "depending on this income" so much as having your dependency on this income used against you, so that in a year's time the company can go, "See ya! We don't need you anymore."

With that being said, since you do really depend on SS for income, people have to take this into consideration when calling for everyone to deactivate their ports. And what I would suggest for you is to start looking at other ways to monetize your images without SS (Patreon, personal website, blog, etc.) so that in the future, if worst comes to worst, you'll at least have these other sites to fall back on. But don't even consider staking your entire financial future in SS. It's a huge mistake.

Quote from: Jo Ann Snover on June 14, 2020, 20:30
Tolerating plagiarism is just despicable. I think it's particularly bad in the illustration area - many of my photos can't easily be replicated even if someone wanted to, but people can, and do, copy illustrations.

I don't want to depress you (I tend to have that effect on people, LOL), but you would be surprised. Just as there are people who are talented at forging paintings, there are people who are talented at copying any photograph, no matter how unusual, creative or "lightning in a bottle." As soon as they see a photograph, they're able to pick the brain of the photographer, as well as figure out the crucial compositional and lighting elements that "makes" it magical and replicate the image with ease. To make matters worse, they don't even mind going through all the hard work, either (hiring the same or similar models, traveling to a remote location, etc.).

An infamous example of this was exposed in a PetaPixel article awhile back. Italian photographers back in 2019 went through a lot of trouble scouting out locations at particular times of day and during particular lighting + weather conditions. Unbelievably, someone went out and duplicated their shots with near exactness:  https://petapixel.com/2019/09/30/is-this-plagiarism-or-crazy-coincidence-in-landscape-photography/

This is how far the rabbit hole now goes in the era of Instagram. An entire generation of young people who came of age on that platform have learned how to not only plagiarize photos but even go through extreme lengths to do so.

Quote from: Snow on June 14, 2020, 19:33

Makes sense!
I always wondered why they gave copycats and spammers a free pass!

On top of that, SS also allowed hacks free reign in the forums to "derp" about how there was a fine line between inspiration and plagiarism and how "there's nothing new under the sun."

I can't help but wonder if some of those people weren't trolls working on the inside to encourage this type of behavior. For example, years ago I remember how there would be so many incidents involving a photographer who complained about a contributor replicating shots. This person would post his/her port and the offender, and when you looked at both, it wasn't even a question that she/he was plagiarized. (How many people could independently come up with a picture of, say, a wire fox terrier wearing an Elvis Presley jumpsuit and pompadour wig backed by a crushed blue velvet curtain??? )

It would be so obvious, yet many posters would dismiss the complainer with stuff like, "Oh, just because you have a white dog in your photo doesn't mean any photo with a white dog is a copy." Or maybe they'd call the copycat photo "inspiration" because the copybot changed the curtain from blue to aquamarine and put the terrier in a James Brown jumpsuit.

Again, I can't help wonder if some of these posters were insiders, because the dismissals weren't reasonable arguments; they were arguments designed to gaslight. It's one thing to argue that two photos of a rainbow overlooking a field of red tulips were probably similar by accident. It's another thing if the photos were shot using the exact same composition and famous local windmill int he lower left hand corner.

Some people are still on the fence about deleting their ports. Well, if you are, here is another reason why you should do it.

Years ago, I scored a hit with one particular photo and a set of illustrations. The reason why they did so well is that there were no other images like these at the site. Before you think I'm being a braggart about being an original; I'm not. I registered and started submitting images to SS in 2005, so some of my images were the first and only of their kind.

Anyway, I did really well with these images for a very long time. Then I noticed several years ago that for no explicable reason downloads were down. Upon further investigation, I learned that the reason why this was happening is that contributors were making their own versions of my illustrations, except in vector format.

I didn't worry about it at the time. I thought, I'll just beat these idiots at their own game; I'll submit more of these types of images. But guess what? When I tried, SS blocked me, claiming it had "too many on site". I then had to do nothing except sit back begrudgingly watching contributors continue to make vector versions of my images. In some cases, some of these contributors were allowed to submit a lot more than I was able to.

Fast forward to 2020, and now there are dozens upon dozens of exact replicas of my illustrations in non-vector format-- but most importantly, an exact replica of my most successful photo, right down to color, composition, lighting, format.

So, ironically, in deleting my portfolio, I didn't get the last laugh.  SS got the last laugh on me and others like me. It's almost as if SS realized long ago that it could always risk losing its best images if contributors quit for whatever reason, so started covering its bases by encouraging plagiarism.

The moral of the story is: don't let this happen to you. Don't "stick around" SS thinking that if worse comes to worse in the future, you'll be able to "stick it" to SS by deleting your best images. There's no question that SS is surreptitiously encouraging "copybots" (plagiarizers) to methodically replicate the site's best selling images and that if yours haven't been replicated already, they will soon.

Quote from: fritz on June 11, 2020, 00:34
Top 10 Bad Leadership Behaviors That Destroy Organisations:

1. Being "All About Me."
2. Falling Asleep at the Switch.
3. Relying on the Wrong People.
4. Going Off the Rails.
5. Ignoring Feedback.
6. Not Being Able to Think Long-Term.
7. Not Being Able to Communicate.
8. Passing the Buck.
9. Not Following Through.
10. Having No Substance.

If SS and all of these Silicon Valley companies are basically elaborate MLMs/pyramid/gambling schemes (which is what I believe they are), then none of this applies to them. They can make all the bad decisions they want, ignore feedback, etc. and they'll still stay afloat.

They can even lose tons of money and keep afloat. Look at Uber, Amazon, etc. None of them have ever turned a profit; they exploit their workers; they lie, cheat and steal and they are doing better than ever in spite of it all.

The point I'm trying to make is that none of these "companies" are businesses. They're just "outfits," no different from outfits being run by local underground rings. So, they're not going to be affected by the types of decisions that would cause a legitimate business to go under.

Quote from: NeonRobot on June 10, 2020, 22:57

Quote from: rcherubin on June 10, 2020, 14:33
So, it's been a week since SS dropped its bombshell announcement. The most frustrating thing to me about this entire affair isn't the announcement but the stubborn refusal on so many people to wake up and realize that all of these crowdsourcing sites and platforms offering people "opportunities" are part of an elaborate scam.

Superior explanation. Period.
May i link this thread to my "stop ss upload"?

Go ahead, by all means! 

Quote from: whtvr on June 10, 2020, 20:28
i mean that if you suggest dropping all agencies because they will end up as Shutterstock you will have to explain why people should drop current and future earnings from Adobe, Pond, Alamy etc until they end up paying 0.10 as Shutter. It is one thing to quit Shutterstock and another telling people to leave microstock in total.

I didn't say to leave anything. I said stop uploading new images and if that's not an option, just upload average shots to these agencies.

How is that translating into "lost sales?" I stopped uploading to SS almost 10 years ago and never stopped earning sales.