Quote from: SuperPhoto on May 28, 2025, 18:05

I'm kind of sad right now. My weekly earnings should be higher (actually much higher than yours right now) - but... sadly the last few months have been very low. Quite concerning, don't know why. But good job. Now I need to figure out how to get my earnings not only back where they should be, but improving significantly.

Thanks, since I started to create and upload almost only videos, my earnings have increased. For the images I take a couple of frames of my videos and upload them as is.

Yes, it's odd. I do videos as well in addition to images but my sales have gone down, which makes no sense. How many videos to you have?

yes but stop pointing the finger at any specific culture,spam is done in any part of the world,as you said too.

Why? You seem to be missing the point. If 95% of your problems are caused by a specific region/culture/etc, why wouldn't you do something about it?
It's like saying 'omfg! bank robbers are people too! Don't call them bank robbers! Call them financially challenged!'

While yes - other people do it as WELL... The MAJORITY is caused by east indian/pakinstani/arabic spammers/scammers.
That's why you have 'nigerian phone scams', and you say dont hear of... 'ukranian phone scams'... Or why people get phone calls from east indians posing as collection agencies/'tax authorities'/credit card companies/etc... and its not usually say... associated with people from barbados... because in general, people from those cultures do those things. there is a reason its called 'culture' - because its a set of habits people associated with it tend to do.

Like if I say "Samurai Warrior" you probably don't think of a black midget samurai, you probably think of a Japanese samurai warrior...
Or if I say "NBA basketball player" (lol while not technically a culture, more of a stereotype) - you probably don't think of 'omfg, those awesome east indian basketball players', but rather black (or sometimes white) basketball players...

Anyways. Yes.

The "ai" makes it SUPER easy for people with absolutely (or virtually) no creative/artistic skills, but with amazing stealing/theft/spam skills, to "compete" with people who do have skills.

it's always better now with submission limits.

a few days ago i was reading about someone who uploads 100 contents a day,sometimes getting rejections of 90% but other times rejections of 50% or less,so in the end he gets approvals for more than a thousand contents per month,which in my opinion is too much.

it's too much because sending 100 contents a day means that these contents are poorly made,from every point of view,even from the indexing point of view,because there simply isn't enough time to create and send 100 contents a day.

Even if you use an AI for indexing,the results should be checked,because there are many errors in the generated results,and so,whoever uploads 100 contents a day only creates a big mess in the library and sends contents without actually creating anything,imo.

these limits are necessary,so I'm happy that they have finally been implemented.

Unfortunately - submission limits don't really 'hurt' anyone except for 'honest' people...

The east indian/arabic spammers/scammers find different ways - and in fact - I think it was actually ON this forum (or maybe it was in discord) that one east indian BRAGGED about how he was simply getting CHILDREN to give them his "id" (he paid them I think $5) - so he could create MULTIPLE accounts (at that time I think he bragged about having 10 accounts) - and submit that way.

Look @ country of registration. Pakistani/East Indian? Reject - or put severe limits on the account until it has been 'proven'.
Do the same thing CREDIT card companies do. They don't blindly accept ANY transaction for fear of being accused of being "racist". They care about $$$.
And they KNOW its a poor risk to accept certain transactions from certain countries, and/or certain nationalities.

That being said - sadly now a lot have been 'imported' into Canada & the US to run the same types of spam/scam operations... so not 'as' easy - but still doable.

SUPER easy way of stopping the spam/scamming - and yes, it is primarily east indians/pakistanis + several of the arab nations. Of course OTHER people do it too - but in general significantly much less than these particular cultures seeking 'get rich quick' schemes...

To lack of education I would also add below average IQ level.  But it's better to stay away from such topics and focus on positive discussion instead

Personal attacks? Sounds like you are lacking in IQ, not I,  just a way for you to avoid thinking because you are throwing a childish tantrum. When you are ready to think like an adult, let me know. Name calling is such a waste of time, and just shows your lack of intellect.

Did you even BOTHER to investigate any of the statements? (Rhetorical question based on your response).

You really should try thinking. It's good for you.

What concerns me is this "Your submission limit is based on a variety of factors related to your account, performance and approval rates. " Especially the last one when we have all been on the rejection roulette wheel.
Telling us there is going to be a submission limit that is based on an individual "calculation" does not help us plan our workflow without given us our individual information. What exactly do they mean by "performance" as well???
What has my "account" got to do with my uploading ability? We all have "accounts" some upload, some download, some upload and download, some only have software. It is our registration with Adobe .... does that information have bearing on our ability to upload? In other words priority will be given to those who have the newest version of the software and both buy and sell? Clarity is needed or it is just more obfuscating!

Lol - since it seems everyone's "approval" rates were like 20-30%... I'm assuming recent roulette things don't necessarily factor in, because "everyone" would fall into that category...

I suspect Adobe was like "Holy $hit we have a lot of crap submitted in the last few months... Okay - we seriously need to clean up this $hit, and do something about it going forward". I suspect "that" is what the massive rejection rate was all about, esp. because now they have said for new submissions they are going to throttle it a bit based on past performance, etc...

Which probably means people with 5000 pineapple images will no longer be able to spam 5000 pineapples.. or the people who consistently spammed 15 finger pictures now won't be able to continue spamming that - and might actually need to 'edit' images first...

@SuperPhoto

your speech sounds a little racist.

let's just say that those who upload a lot get a lot of rejections,especially these days with the new review.

so those who upload a lot start to lower their submission limit.

this is another good move against spam.

Lol, not racist, its the truth.

Sad though you feel the need to "label" something instead of observing the simple truth that is right in your face... BUT... that's what 20 years of "schooling" is for, not to "educate" you nor to get you to think for your self - but - for your masters to tell you how to respond and train you like a pavlovian dog. But... you don't seem to see that. Again. something staring you right in front of your face.

Twitter ended up cancelling monetisation payments to a number of India based accounts because of the spamming.  They were acting as group viewing, liking retweeting each others tweets, tweets were mostly nonsense. 

Not really related but genuine twitter posters saw their earnings reduced.

Well, that is where most of the spam/theft comes from.

a) They (in general) don't care about quality, so you get the 6-7 fingers, 2 eiffel towers, etc, etc. They just want MONEY MONEY and spam as fast as they can.
b) Not just for photos, etc - doing the same thing on amazon. I'm part of several author groups and you wouldn't believe the amount of crap in general they post - because they want to get rich quick with amazon stuff. Titles like "How to masturb___e better, step by step techniques", or "History of The Florida Eiffel Tower", or just chatgpt spam using prompts like "Write me a 200 page book, complete with pictures, title page, and table of contents, on __subject__". Amazon for the most part seems to be accepting the garbage (they don't care, as long as they get paid) - but if the east indian/arabic spammer gets too extreme, then they deacivate the acct - and usually the east indian/arabic spammers come in crying wondering 'what happened'. Some of them even completely rip of well known company titles say like Disney titles, and try and makei it "Snow White and the Eight Dwarfs" or "Alice in Wonderland Part II", and act all confused why amazon has an issue with blatant copyright violations.

THAT is the group causing the most problems - so - simply limit it to 10 submissions from them. IF they prove they don't steal, take time to make sure there's not 7 fingers, etc - gradually increase it. But right now that's a lot more work than its worth - and most don't usually improve - they just look at a new way to 'spam/scam/steal' in the system.

So how is the start of everyone's week looking right now?

Very depressing news.

Adobe has made it official that they prefer the ai spammers.

They have removed the upload limits, so you can read people boasting how they upload 20k files a week to Adobe.

At the same time they are now using a random roulette review algo that is declining files with no logic.

Also affecting many ports with no ai, who only upload camera content.

They could have implemented simple upload limits, instead prefer the spammers.

I will now focus more on camera video and camera photo and also more on other agencies.

This is certainly an opportunity for istock to win creators back.

They still have a normal human review and sensible quality control.

a) Where is this 'announcement' you are referring to?

b) Educated guess - there are very few (i.e., only a handful) that would be producing 20k+ assets per WEEK. Lol, it's very hard to create 20k assets per month, let along in a single week.

c) Still requires 'some' intelligence when uploading. If someone uploads 20k squirrels - while you might have a squirrel doing every conceivable action possible, probably very few would buy it.

d) "Spamming", surprisingly, is still a lot of work.

They are not derivatives, they are whole new creations. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) or diffusion models are used to learn patterns and concepts. Then the machine makes a new image, that does not use any portion or detail of any training image. Information or knowledge is not a derivative any more than knowing that water freezes at 32F or 0C is. A fact is a fact. Machine learning, is taught, not copying.

If the dumber "AI" systems, use bits and pieces of actual images, to make a new product, that's would be a derivative and can't be defended in any way.


ps the above message from Richard shows a quote tagged as me, and I didn't write "That's under the derivative works clauses in many countries. They don't have to use actual content. Information or knowledge obtained is derivative."

One thing you have to remember is words are like magic, and powerful. If "they", the small group of psychopaths pushing "ai" called it "machine theft" (which it ultimately is), people might clue in and say 'hmm, ain't theft wrong?'. But call it machine 'LEARNING'... and ooh, ahh - its 'LEARNING'. (No it's not, its STEALING).

This small group of psychos really is a consortium (if whose name is mentioned will make some people on this forum's head explode and froth at the mouth because of their pavlovian conditioning, or - perhaps they belong to same unnamed group - because that is the strategy they employ - screaming victimhood and attacking anyone who states the obvious, so for now - will not name that group, but feel free to PM if you want to know) -  this group LOVES MONEY. MONEY MONEY MONEY. That's really all it comes down to. MONEY. And they can swim in it, and pools full of it. They LOOOOOOOOVE money. But what they love MORE than money is POWER. The feeling of power it gives them. The ability to "ban" people at will, financially control people's live, make them BEG for scraps, and they can decide on a whim whether or not to throw them some crumbs. OOOOOOooh. They love that. And they are into some really sick messed up sh*t too.

But anyways - it is machine STEALING. "Training" is STEALING.

But it's funny - by using words like "learning" and "training", it sounds so "innocent" and benign. NO. IT IS THEFT. 1000% THEFT. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

Otherwise, let's look at other euphamisms for other "professions".

A bank robber doesn't steal, he simply is a "financial planner" that "refinances other people's accounts".
A chop shop doesn't steal and put new VINs on cars and repaint them, they are simply "artists expressing themselves in creative ways".

IF someone breaks into a company, looks at trade secrets, and then "creatively makes their own" product based the information derived, didn't they steal? Or - are they just "creative artists learning patterns from random words arranged on paper", that just "happened" to make a new product totally unrelated to the original?

"AI" systems STOLE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. The MAIN PROBLEM they HAVE had is how to remove WATERMARKS - aka COPYRIGHT NOTICES. BOTH for images AND video. HOW did these "mysterious watermarks" get in outputted content? If one had permission to use said "training materials" - would they have been "trained" on images & videos with copyright notices?

"AI" is THEFT. Plain and simple. You can put lipstick on a pig, but its still a pig. Nothing different here.

Now - they models have gotten much more sophisticated - but they were all based on THEFT.

And the ultimate "goal" of this consortium of a very tightly knit group - is to make you BEG to use their tools that was derived from stealing from you, so you can make a livelihood eeking out an existance - and on a whim - they can deny you access to these "tools" - effectively cutting off your income at the knees and making you poor, homeless and destitute. THAT is one of the main purposes of "AI". "AI" is not some mysterious "intelligent" machine (at least not what the public has access too).

It's a really fancy way, like REALLY fancy way - of the current power group figuring out how to steal all your hard work for you - and then make you PAY for the privelege of using your own work to 'get by'.

The "spammers" that use AI - for the most part - have no brains, don't know how to create. BUT - like monkeys - they can bang on keyboards all day going "generate! generate! generate!".

The SUPER BIG FUNNY IRONY is... the "ai" companies don't want YOU using sophisticated algorithms - ooh they are scared of that. In their license agreements they say "oh no no no! If you want to make an image or video, you must bang like a monkey on a keyboard! If YOU figure out how to write a computer program to use our services - OMFG! thats STEALING!"... haha - EXTREMELY funny in an f'd up way.

"THEY" have these tools that steal BILLIONS with the click of a button. BUT. For you to "generate" - they want YOU sitting in front of a keyboard like a trained monkey, banging on keys MANUALLY.

If you stole a pile of gold coins, gold jewelry, silverware, etc, etc... Melted it all down - and then say made your own gigantic gold coin.
Does that mean you 'didn't steal' the gold, simply because you "trained" and "learned" from the gold, and didn't use a "specific portion of any specific gold coin", because it was "trained" on 10,000 gold coins... and you simply learned the "pattern" for "gold coins"... does that now magically mean you didn't steal the gold?

THE CURRENT "AI" systems are 100% THEFT BASED tools.

Yes, export it as a .csv file (when you are looking @ your earnings), and you can see those details.

I�m primarily selling niche content this week, which makes up about 90% of my portfolio. I only produce real videos and images�there�s no AI involved in my work. What excites me most is being outdoors for shoots, rather than being stuck behind a computer. However, I do enjoy keywording because it helps me learn more about the subjects I capture. 

I hope you understand that I can�t disclose what I shoot, as this is a very competitive market and I want to minimize competition.

Hi,

Re: disclosing, haha - was just asking for the general idea, not specifics. I.e., is it easter stuff that is selling well? (I.e., not a specific type/subject/etc of a shot).
Was just curious, it's odd - I don't seem to have yet sold any easter content... hmm!

Re: outdoor stuff, cool. Yes, probably a good idea to get some fresh air

While I am not familiar specifically with the course you mentioned, there are a lot of sub-par courses (because they just want your $$$) so if you haven't already, do a bit of research to find a good course. There are some in person camera courses/schools which are quite good (depending what country you are in).

Much you can learn yourself online too - but again - requires going through (potentially) a lot of junk to actually find people who know what they are talking about, but can be done.