MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: epixx on June 23, 2020, 17:38

Title: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: epixx on June 23, 2020, 17:38
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

"You have the freedom to work, to create value, as much as you want. We have the obligation to pay you as much or as little as we want, if at all, whenever we want."

It's time to create a new United Artists, a new Magnum Photos, a new artist owned cooperation to sell our content. We are many enough to do that, but we would need to organise and establish a management group to lead such a project.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on June 23, 2020, 17:44
With the screenshot owner's permission, I tweeted about that. The entitled little twit of a billionaire really told us to take our content & go

Tosser!

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1275559611655876608
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Simon Brough on June 23, 2020, 18:14
#TakeYourContentAndGo seems a very apt social tag for Shutterstock at this moment in time.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on June 23, 2020, 18:15
Just a heads up for people who are being open about #BoycottShutterstock, a number of us had our accounts disabled today. I had not changed my profile picture or text - there was nothing that broke the terms of service

If you need your income from Shutterstock, lay low and don't upload any more as your best way of supporting the boycott.

I was already planning to leave sales off indefinitely, but I can't tell if this is a temper tantrum on their part or a warning shot to others :)
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Mantis on June 23, 2020, 19:11
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

"You have the freedom to work, to create value, as much as you want. We have the obligation to pay you as much or as little as we want, if at all, whenever we want."

It's time to create a new United Artists, a new Magnum Photos, a new artist owned cooperation to sell our content. We are many enough to do that, but we would need to organise and establish a management group to lead such a project.

Great. That's all Needed to know. Now going to delete assets one by one and close my account.  What this does show, though, is that they knew this would get ugly and always knew contributors would remove content. They banked on that 300 million images keeping them afloat and this shows that they could care less what we do and, most importantly, it shows they never cared about contributors way back when....why do I say that? It's the same captain of the ship who is telling us, daring us, to remove content. Your wish is my command dickhead.

Can someone message me that script for removing images? Thanks in advance.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: noodle on June 23, 2020, 19:44

Contributers react to Mr Oringer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYiow8qNL8Y (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYiow8qNL8Y)
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Les on June 23, 2020, 19:53
That is a sad state of affairs when the owner of the company takes such antagonistic stand against his partners.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Chichikov on June 24, 2020, 01:58
In defense of Jon Oringer, unlike Pavlovsky who blocks all those with whom he disagrees, I must say that even if he answers crap, at least he answers ...
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: blue on June 24, 2020, 02:01
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

Please stop comparing contributors to slaves. We are free, slaves are not. And they do not get any pay at all.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Noedelhap on June 24, 2020, 04:34
As I said in another thread: what a pompous ass for tweeting something like that. Compare this guy to someone like Bill Gates for example, Gates would never attack anyone like that on Twitter. Oringer sounds more like an agitated Trump, with his stuck-up, billionnaire attitude.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on June 24, 2020, 05:35
Honestly I think Jon has lost touch so much he doesn't understand his own business.

He used to, I remember interviews when he said things like (paraphrasing) "30% is the sweet spot and lets contributors make some money while we do too". True he was already being greedy at that rate, but that's human nature. At least there was some appreciation that we are shouldering some (really most) of the risk. Now he's paying us single digit percentages (probably, definitely a lot less than the 15% minimum advertised).

I'd be happier if he would admit to himself what his business is. Exploiting us to line his pockets. They've shifted all the risk to us. It took years to see a decent return on a shoot or hours put into illustrations, they haven't only scr*wed us going forward, but assured we will never see a return for thousands of hours put in already.

Oh, and his "we are all suffering" BS makes the least sense of all. We were paid per download, we were already sharing the pain before the additional attack from them.

There was no need for a January reset and fake percentages based on all downloads used. They could have come up with a rolling real world percentage structure workable for everyone.

I wonder if they are now just mining the company for as much as they can grab in the short term with the idea of selling the husk.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on June 24, 2020, 05:57
As I said in another thread: what a pompous ass for tweeting something like that. Compare this guy to someone like Bill Gates for example, Gates would never attack anyone like that on Twitter. Oringer sounds more like an agitated Trump, with his stuck-up, billionnaire attitude.
I don't know, Bill was pretty cut throat too. Track down some of the footage from the hearings back when people gave s**t about antitrust. He was a smug little s**t back then too.

It's easy to be nice when most people treat you like a saint and you're already one of the richest people in the world.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Microstockphoto on June 24, 2020, 05:59
wow, what a сunt
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: pics2 on June 24, 2020, 06:31
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

Please stop comparing contributors to slaves. We are free, slaves are not. And they do not get any pay at all.
Slaves are given food and place to sleep, so they are paid. Slaves can go from point a (place to sleep) to point b (place to work), so they are free. We just have an illusion of freedom.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: cathyslife on June 24, 2020, 06:42
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

Please stop comparing contributors to slaves. We are free, slaves are not. And they do not get any pay at all.
Slaves are given food and place to sleep, so they are paid. Slaves can go from point a (place to sleep) to point b (place to work), so they are free. We just have an illusion of freedom.

Stop already with the slave nonsense.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Microstockphoto on June 24, 2020, 06:47
he's probably one of those guys that says #whitelivesmatter and missed the whole point about #blacklivesmatter
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on June 24, 2020, 06:58
Please don't get sidetracked. There are different types of slavery and he was referring to Marx and communism, the idea that we as workers are (a type of) salve (not the same as chattel slavery) is not that crazy in that context and calling him a racist doesn't help.

There are of course a lot of people on Twitter and the like making some entirely inappropriate and counterproductive comparisons to BLM which don't help (and aren't what the OP is doing).  But again, getting caught up in all that is just a distraction and only draws more attention to those people (some of whom I'm sure are racist AF) and away from the matter at hand.

EDIT: oops sorry, your replies were not to the OP but to someone else. I'll move along
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: trabuco on June 24, 2020, 07:10
This is not about Capitalism. It's about to be a piece of s.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Hannafate on June 24, 2020, 07:34
Adobe and Dreamstime will be happy to have content that Shutterstock doesn't.

Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: PaulieWalnuts on June 24, 2020, 07:47
It's funny that over the years I've made jokes about all of the wealthy executives sitting in an extravagant conference room enjoying expensive hors d'oeuvres and cocktails while talking about the next round of "good news" of how to screw us. Based on their actions we knew how they felt about us regardless of how many times they talked about contributor value. This is just proof. We're just expendable nuisances to them.

What's funny about his statement is he's saying to go somewhere else or sell your own work. What I think he's failing to consider is the other option. Not selling stock at all because it's becoming a waste of time. They've squeezed our earnings so low that Shuterstock, and stock in general, no longer matter to a growing number of people. Years ago when I was making thousands of dollars per month it would be hard to walk away. Today, I spent more on a dinner last night than I made in a month at Shutterstock. I could walk away from all stock sites today and not care at all. Already done with Shutterstock.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: PaulieWalnuts on June 24, 2020, 07:53
Adobe and Dreamstime will be happy to have content that Shutterstock doesn't.

This attitude is another part of the overall problem. One stock site either doesn't recently screw contributors, or makes a tiny positive change, and suddenly there's a push to flock there to support them. Guess what, when Istock/Getty screwed everyone, Shutterstock was the darling savior everyone praised and supported. How'd that work out?

There needs to be a mass exodus of contributors from the industry as a whole. As long as they have content to sell, they have all of the leverage.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on June 24, 2020, 08:21
The content has to follow the best deals for contributors. That will never be staying with one agency as yes, they will all try the same tricks as much as we let them get away with it.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on June 24, 2020, 08:30
Just noticed the “SSTK paid out $1B to creators” in the screen capture

Nice semantic trick he's pulling now they managed to rebrand themselves from being agents (which in any meaningful way is what they have always been).

I think he means artists have paid out many billions of dollars to Shutterstock for marketing their work for them and $1B to him personally. What an ingrate. Wish I had a twitter account to reply!
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: jjneff on June 24, 2020, 09:28
I want to truly thank who took that screen shot! Just posted it on twitter and my LinkedIn!
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: CHDigitalMedia on June 24, 2020, 09:29
A definition of slavery, as I see it is a term that fits this situation very well, whether you agree with it or not

A condition of having to work very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: SpaceStockFootage on June 24, 2020, 15:12
A condition of having to work very hard...

You don't have to though, that's the difference. As a result, it's highly insulting to compare SS to slavery for anyone who is, was, or has an ancestor who was enslaved. But sure, if you ever meet somebody who used to be an actual slave, and they're recounting their situation to you... feel free to say "Yeah, I hear that.. I used to submit to Shutterstock back in the day. I know how you feel."

I'm sure that'll go down really well.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: CHDigitalMedia on June 24, 2020, 15:25
Slave is a very valid word that can be used for a modern day experience. Don't get confused with 'being enslaved'.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: MotionDesign on June 24, 2020, 15:27
Just noticed the “SSTK paid out $1B to creators” in the screen capture

Nice semantic trick he's pulling now they managed to rebrand themselves from being agents (which in any meaningful way is what they have always been).

I think he means artists have paid out many billions of dollars to Shutterstock for marketing their work for them and $1B to him personally. What an ingrate. Wish I had a twitter account to reply!

+ 1000!!!
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: cascoly on June 24, 2020, 16:36
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

Please stop comparing contributors to slaves. We are free, slaves are not. And they do not get any pay at all.
Slaves are given food and place to sleep, so they are paid. Slaves can go from point a (place to sleep) to point b (place to work), so they are free. We just have an illusion of freedom.

tell that to any REAL slave!!!!  while, in the ancient world, slavery was different (eg, in Rome, slaves could earn money and eventually buy their freedom) - 'modern' colonial/capitalist slavery is a crime against humanity and here in the US we're still dealing with the evils of slavery over 150 yrs after the 13th amendment abolished slavery
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: cascoly on June 24, 2020, 16:36
dupe post
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: cascoly on June 24, 2020, 16:40
A definition of slavery, as I see it is a term that fits this situation very well, whether you agree with it or not

A condition of having to work very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation

of course that's the THIRD definition! and it's then a metaphor, not a reality  - many people talk about being wage-slaves but none of them would actually think they ARE slaves
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on June 24, 2020, 20:12
For what it's worth, anyone using "slavery" language in connection with #BoycottShutterstock is hurting our overall cause

I don't care about irrelevant arguments about dictionary definitions and neither will all the people who dismiss everything you say because you're using that language where it doesn't belong.

I do care about getting our point across to buyers and other agencies, and that won't happen if you keep distracting from our message by using language that makes people walk away

Please just stop using it in connection with #BoycottShutterstock
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Lizard on June 24, 2020, 21:31
Someone at Stock Submitter Coalition captured the tweet below before it was deleted. It's a chilling reminder of what we are. We are the slaves, and we should keep working no matter what the pay is. I'm no Communist, but this is the very reason why Karl Marx published Das Kapital back in 1867. We are back in the same situation as industrial workers of the 19th Century together with Uber drivers and other participants of the growing gig economy.

Please stop comparing contributors to slaves. We are free, slaves are not. And they do not get any pay at all.
Slaves are given food and place to sleep, so they are paid. Slaves can go from point a (place to sleep) to point b (place to work), so they are free. We just have an illusion of freedom.

tell that to any REAL slave!!!!  while, in the ancient world, slavery was different (eg, in Rome, slaves could earn money and eventually buy their freedom) - 'modern' colonial/capitalist slavery is a crime against humanity and here in the US we're still dealing with the evils of slavery over 150 yrs after the 13th amendment abolished slavery

Same thing just the boss has a bigger land today so some get false sense of freedom.

If you kid was sick at that time you might been lucky and the lord would pay a doctor at list for his future profit, or at least say NO in your face. Today you get an automated reply from a robot.

Same thing going on just a bit more sophisticated.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Lizard on June 24, 2020, 21:37
(https://i.ibb.co/0F3x8LP/krm.jpg)
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Chichikov on June 25, 2020, 01:33
« Thanks for the plug »…

I think you meant this
http://d1o1wlqwda3y1b.cloudfront.net/MC/SE687205525c54ba08a01.jpg (http://d1o1wlqwda3y1b.cloudfront.net/MC/SE687205525c54ba08a01.jpg)

Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Mimi the Cat on June 25, 2020, 04:10
As I said in another thread: what a pompous ass for tweeting something like that. Compare this guy to someone like Bill Gates for example, Gates would never attack anyone like that on Twitter. Oringer sounds more like an agitated Trump, with his stuck-up, billionnaire attitude.

On Glassdoor one of Oringer's employees described him as a "man/child" which pretty well sums it up.

A petulant over entitled man/child who throws his teddies out of the cot when he doesn't get what he wants  ;D

Or a Tosser as Jo Ann described him :D
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Justanotherphotographer on June 25, 2020, 04:32
For what it's worth, anyone using "slavery" language in connection with #BoycottShutterstock is hurting our overall cause
...

This. We have to think strategically, it isn't helping win over customers, garner sympathy and therefore increase pressure on Shutterstock, so how true it is not really relevant to whether we should be using it on social media.

Even more so with with BLM comparisons.

There are tons of other effective ways to message this without resorting to Shutterstock's own tactics of appropriation. Some examples:

1. Pushing back on SS's hypocrisy in forming "socially responsible" partnerships with charity organisations while mistreating their workers and employees (i.e. acting in the least socially responsible way possible where they actually have power). Contact their partners whenever SS posts and let them know this isn't helping their image.

2. Stories of real world impact of these changes on the lives of the most vulnerable people (that single mothers working from home for example).

3. Posting about deactivations and why you are doing it

4. Contextualising Shutterstock's actions in a broader narrative of corporations trying to cynically appropriate good causes while acting mercilessly in their own sphere in the middle of a pandemic.

5. Pushing back on the narrative that SS has paid out lots of money to contributors, contributors have actually paid their agent a massive percentage to market their work.

and lots of others

Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: noodle on June 25, 2020, 07:13
You can tell Oringer is really losing it by his manner of replying

His true colors are coming through

But it’s like he can’t help himself, which tells me one thing - KEEP UP THE PRESSURE!!
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: PaulieWalnuts on June 25, 2020, 08:07
Right they paid out $1B to contributors. Not a word about the fact that they also made billions of dollars from contributors. Or the fact that Jon became a billionaire from contributors.

And that's the whole problem. They don't see this as mutual partnership. They see themselves as the ruler who provides all of the value and us as the peasant workers who are expendable and worthless.

Without them we wouldn't have the opportunity to earn money from them. We would however have the opportunity to earn money from our media from other places. But if they didn't have our media, there would be no Shutterstock and probably no billionaire Jon.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on June 25, 2020, 09:15
Right they paid out $1B to contributors. Not a word about the fact that they also made billions of dollars from contributors. Or the fact that Jon became a billionaire from contributors.

From yesterday on twitter

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1275903045214146560
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: trabuco on June 25, 2020, 12:15
The King of Nerds is underexposed, overexposed, or is inconsistently exposed.
Title: Re: The attitude of a real capitalist
Post by: PaulieWalnuts on June 25, 2020, 20:48
Right they paid out $1B to contributors. Not a word about the fact that they also made billions of dollars from contributors. Or the fact that Jon became a billionaire from contributors.

From yesterday on twitter

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1275903045214146560

Good specific financials showing exactly what we bring to them.