This night I had 51 video sales, all of 1 dollar, all purchased in either Norway, Poland, Phillipines or Algier. It still goes on, with 18 sales 1$ each today, but now from Indonesia, Argentina, Andorra and unspecified. There is no common tendency in the subjects of the video sales, just random purchases. I never have that amount of sales in a weekend. It is my thought that something suspicious is going on.  It is not that i mind the money or the level change... Has anyone else experienced this recently? I have this feeling that Shutter will cancel these sales soon due to fradulent activites.

So Shutterstock help desk thought it was legit. Shutterstock send me a mail that i had been kicked off the platform for every reason there ever was, without being precise. Probably a standard mail. I am not aware of having done anything against SS' tos. There were these strange sales that I reported while they happened. I had not contributed new material since the cut. Still my old portfolio made me some nice money. But the loss is very bearable.  I always worked with niches in stock photo, and it seems that some customers followed me to other platforms. I never sold images on P5, but that has changed now. My sales on AS and DT also went remarkably up. So maybe I should have quit SS right away when they made the cut back in 2020.

So Shutterstock help desk thought it was legit. Shutterstock send me a mail that i had been kicked off the platform for every reason there ever was, without being precise. Probably a standard mail. I am not aware of having done anything against SS' tos. There were these strange sales that I reported while they happened. I had not contributed new material since the cut. Still my old portfolio made me some nice money. But the loss is very bearable.  I always worked with niches in stock photo, and it seems that some customers followed me to other platforms. I never sold images on P5, but that has changed now. My sales on AS and DT also went remarkably up. So maybe I should have quit SS right away when they made the cut back in 2020.

Really they banned you for suspicious activity? That's the usual reason somewhere in the notice. So now it's up to you to write and fight and see if you can get what they owe you? Bad news.

So much once again for the outsourced help desk. I hope you have some wort of transcript to send to SS if you get a reply from an actual employee.

Did they include a contact or just ban you?

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 12, 2022, 10:10

So much once again for the outsourced help desk. I hope you have some wort of transcript to send to SS if you get a reply from an actual employee.

Did they include a contact or just ban you?

I got a standard mail informing me that the case was hereby closed and not up for further negotiation.
Well, nothing I would fight for. I begin to see increased image sales on AD, DT and even P5 where I had other wise only sold 2 images in 5 years. Itleaves me more freedom for creativity, not having to think about making media files so that some insane focus-focussed review machine would interpret the file.

Has your portfolio been removed from their platform or are they still available?

Sounds like something is all wrong with this? The whole thing is odd.

This is the mail I got.

​Dear Kim,

Thanks for reaching out to Shutterstock Contributor Care.

I understand your concern regarding your account, please allow me to clarify the reason behind the deactivation of your account.

After a careful review of activity within your account, we have determined that your contributor account is linked to suspicious activity across our platform. Your contributor account will not be re-activated.

Paragraph 4 of the Submitter Terms & Conditions gives Shutterstock the right to terminate any existing account " . . . for fraud, intellectual property infringement, violation of a third party's rights including those of privacy or publicity, artificially inflating downloads, submission of material that is obscene in nature, violent or that might be construed as defamatory, failure to comply with Shutterstock's guidelines as may be amended from time to time, or for any breach of the terms of this or any other agreement that you have with Shutterstock.�

As a result of the foregoing, Shutterstock has terminated your account.

If you have earned commissions at the time of this closure, you are not entitled to these earnings per the Shutterstock Terms & Conditions you agreed upon when you became a Shutterstock contributor.

Paragraph 9(d) of the Submitter Terms & Conditions states that "If your account is terminated for a breach of the material terms of the TOS, in addition to its other rights at law or in equity, Shutterstock shall have the right to retain any royalties and/or other compensation otherwise payable to you hereunder as liquidated damages."

Your account cannot be reinstated and you do not have permission to create a new account. If you try to open another account, our system will automatically reject you. Please consider this matter closed, as future inquiries will not be addressed.

We thank you for your understanding.

Regards
Royber,
Shutterstock Contributor Care Team

I know the terms of copyright and all they state, I have been on Istock long before Getty and on Shutter since 2016. The suspicious activities were that a large number of strange sales came in at a time of the week that is otherwise very silent. I reported this to "Shutterstock help desk India" snf essd rfirected to some other third part wendor , both parts consiedered these sales legit. But then someone did not. Why should I buy my own videos? We had something on Amazon Publish, it stopped when someone proved taht it was possible to buy some Kindle e books with a credit card, and have hem refunded to basically any other credit card. Money launder, it stopped when Amazon limited the refund option to the payment source used for the purchase. For what I know Shutterstock does not offer refunds, but maybe the laundrer found out the hard way.

Nevertheless, I do not care.  I am retired now, and now have more creative freedom on sites like AS, AY, DT, P5 etc where a good photo weighs more that autodetection of insane focus and film grain.

Things went bad on Shutterstock when some youtube video went viral in parts of Asia, the video pomised big income from photos. Many rushed to the facebook group for Shutterstock contributors. Many of them had zero talent, and obviously hey did not read what they signed up for. Some appeared to come from places that did not even seem to have a monetary system. Most of then basically ha to be carried trough the whole process. When their first approved image of the electric pole outside their residence had been aproved, and made no sales for the first few hours, these luck seekers found new ways. "Show Portfolio !" was a common question to the more experienced. They soon found their images in other portfolios. These luck seekers simply wanted Shutterstock to pay them money so or so, and many more or less creatice fraud attempts were made.

From my time on Istock before the gettyfication, I knew there were issues where photographer had bought their own images towards the end of the year where just a few sales would make a significant difference in their royalty tier for the next year. With most sales being 10 cents for images or 25 cents for videos on SS, and the annual tier reset buying own assets will simply not be feasible. 

I will now enjoy my retirement and the creative freedom the agencies with human review gives me.

Quote from: KimC on April 18, 2022, 12:21

When their first approved image of the electric pole outside their residence had been aproved, and made no sales for the first few hours, these luck seekers found new ways. "Show Portfolio !" was a common question to the more experienced. They soon found their images in other portfolios. These luck seekers simply wanted Shutterstock to pay them money so or so, and many more or less creatice fraud attempts were made.

That's exactly how the various SS facebook groups still work.

What? Show me your photos, I want to steal them?  Darn the people who just can't think of ways to actually work and be honest, can sit all day and think of ways to lie, cheat and steal? I think many of them would be good creatives and earn money if they went in the right direction.