Ethics is one thing, some people may mock it.. But for me it is more about my followers. I have over six hundred followers on SS and even though my port is not that big, my income is decent and has been decent for a couple of years now, most probably thanks to them.

I care for my port and how it is presented to customers. I have my vector files neatly organized, I name all objects and groups, I keep the anchor points number minimal for maximum editability.  I dont want my buyers to think that I went full retard by repeating the same word in the description field 50 times like those image factories squirting out hundreds of vectors a day - which include the same simple icon in a hundred colour combinations..

If you want to see how far the "Title-Spamming" goes, should enter "pattern" in the search. And then go to "best match".

And I wonder that I do not sell anything anymore! 

Quote from: douglas on November 06, 2016, 23:08... Twenty years later Shutterstock will do well to learn that lesson or its customers will search elsewhere also.  I look at the antiquated software of SS (search, map breaking, uploads failing, outages) and wonder firstly how it can describe itself as a technology company ...

Someone here said there are 300 IT specialists working for SS. Are they all idiots? I do not think so. If they (IT engineers) do not fix it they just do not have an order from their CEO.

Quote from: PureArt on November 07, 2016, 10:04

Quote from: douglas on November 06, 2016, 23:08... Twenty years later Shutterstock will do well to learn that lesson or its customers will search elsewhere also.  I look at the antiquated software of SS (search, map breaking, uploads failing, outages) and wonder firstly how it can describe itself as a technology company ...

Someone here said there are 300 IT specialists working for SS. Are they all idiots? I do not think so. If they (IT engineers) do not fix it they just do not have an order from their CEO.

Agree, maybe CEO himself never wanted to.

Quote from: beketoff on November 06, 2016, 20:18

Quote from: kraphix on November 06, 2016, 01:30
After climb up to the top. Spammer edited it back to normal. so depressed. T T

Would you mind sharing the name of the tool/service which allows seeing the asset's (photo, illustration, etc.) position, like in the screenshot above? Thank you!

Here's the link http://www.m-rank.net/ This site made by Russian contributor, very useful info but rank is only for vector portfolio. Not for photo/video.

not only spammers, but now missing whole batches of new approved photos... 1 batch is online and searchable, other 2 approved in the same time not in portfolio and can't be searched, and when they get there, they will be on site 50 sorted by new.


sad, and it's only getting worst

According to their latest presentation to investors they're migrating over to a new system and are 80% there, so I wonder if that's the reason for all the glitches as they rewrite all their code?

Quote from: Shelma1 on November 07, 2016, 20:50
According to their latest presentation to investors they're migrating over to a new system and are 80% there, so I wonder if that's the reason for all the glitches as they rewrite all their code?

thanks, didn't know that

can't they do anything that doesn't negatively affect us contributors in one way or another?

it's not question to you...

And yet another huge, multimillion dollar company rewriting the code for their site while it's live. They make so much money they apparently don't care how many $$ this is costing them in sales.   

There was a saying in the software business when I was in it:  "Projects progress rapidly to 90% complete.  They remain there forever."

I see one of the admins popped up to remind everyone about the submission guidelines.

The hilarious thing is she has two identical images in her port and has used irrelevant keywords to describe her images too

Even SS own people can't be bothered to follow the rules 

Looks like spammers will never stop, I still see many files with spam titles on popular list.

Done :-)

Are there any news or signs of changes?

I think that Shutterstock has no intention to do something.
For them a sale is a sale, and the money coming from any kind of sale is always good to take...

Shareholders rule!

Quote from: Chichikov on November 18, 2016, 14:04
I think that Shutterstock has no intention to do something.
For them a sale is a sale, and the money coming from any kind of sale is always good to take...

Shareholders rule!

I think you are right. Sooo discouraging.

A medium or long-term oriented company must have an intention to change something. Then this distortion of competition among the contibutors prefers the dishonest to the honest suppliers. And no company can want that, unless it is only short-term oriented. (but is this here the case, it could mean in the worst case the management wants to plunder the cash registers soon and get rid of the dust. )

On the other side so many contibutors with big ports are cheating, that there is an danger of losing 5 - 10 percent of whole content, by suspending the ports.

I'm very far to be an IT expert but I see a simple and quickly solution for this problem: make impossible change caption after review. On Fotolia that is

They clearly don't give a f**k. The problem gets worse every day and they leave the vast majority of it up. They post the same bull about their policy every few months hoping we'll just go away and shut up and let them keep making more money by paying lower royalties to new spammers.

There is no way Shutterstock would disable or close accounts of those spammers... Many of them are image factories producing hundreds of images a week. SS worked hard to get to their lovely 100 million by approving every cr*p anyone submitted, now they are going for 150 million, then 200 million...

Who in SS cares that half of it are almost identical simple icons with 50 shades of grey background?... They will never remove the spammers, they NEED their images.

And of course if they wanted to at least remove their advantage in search results, they would have done it already months ago. How long is it, since June?........It is pathetic.

Quote from: Shelma1 on November 19, 2016, 00:56
They clearly don't give a f**k. The problem gets worse every day and they leave the vast majority of it up. They post the same bull about their policy every few months hoping we'll just go away and shut up and let them keep making more money by paying lower royalties to new spammers.

Sadly, I think you are absolutely right. Now I am really struggling with myself on what to do. On one side, I really love doing this (creating for stock) but it's also the way I make a living (yes, I live in one of those "cheap" countries). I would hate to spoil my port with this kind of stupid, naive descriptions/keywording, but on the other hand if I go back to my original profession (schoolteacher) I would earn around 300 usd (and my rent only is 150 - one room, no luxury). I still prefer not spamming, but it is too obvious for me that they are not working on this, and they have absolutely no intention on fixing this ever. 

In supermarkets, each night the employees go around and "face" the shelves. They pull all the product to the front of the shelf, where it can be easily seen and bought. If they didn't face the shelves you might only see the "off" brands, because the top sellers are in the dark on the back of the shelf. You might reluctantly buy the mushy off-brand peas once or twice because you're hungry, but eventually you'll wonder where the heck the good Green Giant peas went, and one day in your travels you'll notice a different supermarket where they still face the shelves, and the Green Giant peas are front and center and cost the same as the off brands. And you'll switch supermarkets.

Shutterstock stopped facing the shelves. And Adobe is just a click away.

Quote from: Shelma1 on November 19, 2016, 13:06
In supermarkets, each night the employees go around and "face" the shelves. They pull all the product to the front of the shelf, where it can be easily seen and bought. If they didn't face the shelves you might only see the "off" brands, because the top sellers are in the dark on the back of the shelf. You might reluctantly buy the mushy off-brand peas once or twice because you're hungry, but eventually you'll wonder where the heck the good Green Giant peas went, and one day in your travels you'll notice a different supermarket where they still face the shelves, and the Green Giant peas are front and center and cost the same as the off brands. And you'll switch supermarkets.

Shutterstock stopped facing the shelves. And Adobe is just a click away.

I love your analogy, and I know it works like that, but I am not sure if I will survive this transition. I will try anyways. And yes, FT/Adobe is my new favourite, it's the one site that motivates me to create new images and keep going on the "honest" way.

It seems that SS has no interest in eliminating spam.
Vectors recently accepted....
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/Paro1

Quote from: Dog-maDe-sign on November 18, 2016, 23:52
I'm very far to be an IT expert but I see a simple and quickly solution for this problem: make impossible change caption after review. On Fotolia that is

It seems that these spammy titles not build after review. they pass the review ....