not sure what they are trying to do. Putting a squeeze on small companies who don't have big corporate accounts and trying to run them out of business? "Improving the customer experience". It would be funny if outright lies didn't annoy me so much. Did any of them have a mom when they were growing up telling them that lying is bad? Decided, they are lizards from space. Really perplexing what goes on behind those doors.

Not a good idea.
SS should ask every contributor on survey first before implementing it.

I just went to do a search on Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Getty Images and iStock. None of them have watermarks in the search results.

I don't remember when this changed (I'm sure at one point all of them watermarked search thumbs) but as they're all doing the same thing, why target just Shutterstock with complaints?

The best thing all the big agencies could do is actively police misuse (which in spite of their "we take this very seriously" emails they don't appear to). That would net us more than putting back watermarks on the search thumbs on only one agency.

The agencies will not pursue thieves. They want to provide a better experience.

At what image resolution do we lose our rights as contributing artists?

Well there are browser plugins and internet sites that allow people to download anything they want off SS for free.  They've been around over a year now and still no action so i guess SS dont actually care.  So removing watermarks is of no consequence to them.

Istock shutterstock fotolia there is no watermark anywhere