I seem to be having the same thing happen as others have reported. Older images appearing in my portfolio that I assume are rejects they have kept and are accepting to inflate numbers.

We have also seen the hundreds of thousands of vectors that are just different color backgrounds, or a single word in different fonts, again with backgrounds switched and so on they are now accepting to inflate their numbers.

Now they can, and have, "mislead" us as contributors in any number of ways (being diplomatic here).
 
What I am very interested in is how they frame the upload numbers for share holders in their next couple of quarters. Those calls are going to be fascinating, because while they can BS us all they want Blackrock is absolutely not going to f**k around with lies or even omissions if share prices decline at some point in the next year or two. They may even keep knowledge of what's going on in their back pocket as a hedge (if share prices go up "great", if they go down "we will be gutting SS for misleading, not disclosing or worse outright lying to us").

Will be fascinating to see what happens...

If this is really happening ( my portfolio is deactivated so I dont have that experience) ther real problem can be something else.

What if someone has strategy that he sells rejected images at SS, at some other agency as exclusive content. That can get him in legal trouble and SS would be clearly responsible for that.

Depositphotos did it during their boycott. I guess, not much of the rejected photos can be sold exclusive anywhere. Anyway, I think SS is doing it, but I haven't seen any proofs yet.

Don't forget the crazy AI rejections due to focus or noise at SS the last couple of months. Many perfectly sellable images were rejected, and found a market elsewhere. If someone decided to go exclusive somewhere with images that were rejected by SS earlier on, and they now retroactively accept the image... well... that's trouble.

No need for them to lie... investors don't care too much about upload numbers if the profits are up. The only reason they had to 'big up' the upload numbers previously was because the percentage increase on profits were gradually decreasing, so they needed something positive-sounding to deflect from that.

Now they can just say something along the lines of... "upload numbers are down, as we expected due to the changes, but they haven't really impacted buyer numbers and net profits are up as a result. But just you guys wait until January... it's gonna be a doozy!"

I agree that they may not lie about it, but I think they will have to say something about the strategy if only because they have been using collection size as a metric of success in the past when talking to their shareholders. I think they were doing this even before profits were decreasing (could be wrong?).

I am very interested to see how they spin it.