Author Topic: Brain storming : What else we can do to be heard (Read 23623 times)

douglas · « **Reply #25 on:** June 18, 2020, 08:57 »

Someone pointed to SS employee reviews on Glassdoor a week or so ago but I could not find a reference to Comparably

https://www.comparably.com/companies/shutterstock/ceo-rating

Mr Pavlovsky does not seem to be loved by his minions: as CEO bottom 5% in similarly sized companies in NY area and in USA generally.

After a minute or two a pop-up appears asking you to rate Shutterstock either as an employee or a customer.

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #26 on:** June 18, 2020, 09:23 »

Quote from: douglas on June 18, 2020, 08:57

Someone pointed to SS employee reviews on Glassdoor a week or so ago but I could not find a reference to Comparably

https://www.comparably.com/companies/shutterstock/ceo-rating

Mr Pavlovsky does not seem to be loved by his minions: as CEO bottom 5% in similarly sized companies in NY area and in USA generally.

After a minute or two a pop-up appears asking you to rate Shutterstock either as an employee or a customer.

Nice.

In the Bottom 5% of 541 Similar Sized Companies in the United States
In the Bottom 5% of 238 Nearby Companies in New York

What needs to change to make the company culture better?
CEO and the executive board needs to go.

What's going wrong and how can it be improved?
Transparency with our team and customers, better care of our contributors.

Also interesting looking at the Adobe VS shutterstock comparison

Women at Shutterstock rated their CEO a F
Diverse Employees at Shutterstock rated their CEO a F

Women at Adobe rated their CEO an A+
Diverse Employees at Adobe rated their CEO an A+

No surprise there given what we know about Stan Pavlovsky's world view based on his now deleted twitter likes

U11 · « **Reply #27 on:** June 18, 2020, 09:34 »

Quote from: Rage on June 16, 2020, 10:52

So while profile activation and deactivation will happen lets stay ahead of the curve and figure out how else we can get our point across to Shutterstock.

Some ideas seen till now
1. Contact buyers, suggest move to Adobe
2. Media - especially places that buyers frequent
3. Youtube, Insta influencers talking points
4. Spread the word on deactivations

We are supposed to be creative people, what else comes to mind

Sent from my HD1901 using Tapatalk

contact journalists who cover similar issues in different industries (Uber drivers as employees for example)
contact contributors who didn't pull the plug and ask them for any support they can provide

md9000 · « **Reply #28 on:** June 18, 2020, 15:57 »

newbielink:https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Shutterstock-Reviews-EI_IE270840.0,12.htm?sort.ascending=false&filter.defaultEmploymentStatuses=false&filter.defaultLocation=false&filter.language=eng [nonactive]

Shutterstock has a Glassdoor page and actually replies to all of what employees write about them. There is a category for freelancers working with Shutterstock also and anyone can review SS and Stan ) Have fun

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #29 on:** June 18, 2020, 18:53 »

Quote from: douglas on June 18, 2020, 08:57

Someone pointed to SS employee reviews on Glassdoor a week or so ago but I could not find a reference to Comparably

https://www.comparably.com/companies/shutterstock/ceo-rating

Mr Pavlovsky does not seem to be loved by his minions: as CEO bottom 5% in similarly sized companies in NY area and in USA generally.

After a minute or two a pop-up appears asking you to rate Shutterstock either as an employee or a customer.

https://twitter.com/joannsnover/status/1269027677047930887

Rage · « **Reply #30 on:** June 20, 2020, 00:10 »

So things to do till now
1. App rating
2. Glassdoor reviews
3. Tweet/mail a publication/journalist
4. Reverse search image, tweet/mail them to not use shutterstock
5. Find a contributor in your nice, make them join

Will start some of these today, would request others to do this as well and spread the word.

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TG1112 · « **Reply #31 on:** June 20, 2020, 02:08 »

Shutterstock exploits its image providers by not paying them fair. It may be easier to get sympathy from buyers of images that value their brands highly. Those companies want to be safe in the photographer / illustrator has received a fair compensation.
Is it possible to point out that this is affecting the poorest people in the world, those who need to sell pictures for their survival have suddenly lost 2/3 of the payment?

Fair trade is a concept used for cocoa, among other things, so that the end customer knows that the agricultural worker has been paid fairly.

A boycott of Shuttersstock's customers can be effective. It will affect those companies financially as long as they buy images of Shutterstock, which will affect Shutterstock to review its business model.

This guy got his guitar broken during his flight with Unitied Airlines. He made a song and published it on Youtube and got media cover his case. First time I watch this video was during a customer services education session. His song had impact and still has.

"Guitar Guy" sings about United Airlines damaging Taylor guitar"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT7LNIPeMis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #32 on:** June 20, 2020, 11:01 »

Quote from: Rage on June 20, 2020, 00:10

So things to do till now
1. App rating
2. Glassdoor reviews
3. Tweet/mail a publication/journalist
4. Reverse search image, tweet/mail them to not use shutterstock
5. Find a contributor in your nice, make them join

Will start some of these today, would request others to do this as well and spread the word.

Sent from my HD1901 using Tapatalk

Also reddit has several useful sub reddits for this sort of thing. Not only designer ones but also ones like "I am a total piece of s**t", maybe a post with photos of Stan and Jon and a caption "cut artists payments by 50%+ in the middle of a pandemic so they could pay themselves a massive dividend as controlling share holders".

Rage · « **Reply #33 on:** June 20, 2020, 11:23 »

That might help, reddit has been amazing at providing reach and support. I'm just surprised there isn't a microstock subreddit there

Care to start a post and share links here. We can chime in and push it up

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Chichikov · « **Reply #34 on:** June 23, 2020, 05:07 »

"What else we can do to be heard?"
The problem is not that they don't hear us…
The problem is that they don't want to answer us (and that's not going to change).

pics2 · « **Reply #35 on:** June 23, 2020, 09:50 »

good point

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #36 on:** June 23, 2020, 10:29 »

We don't need to be "heard" by Shutterstock. They are the enemy. We need to be heard by buyers, who have other better options to buy from and by fellow contributors who we need solidarity with to force Shutterstock to act. What needs to happen is that SS should not be able to post anywhere without having attention called to their misdeeds. Facebook, twitter whatever. Keep it coming.

If SS don't review their actions we need to move enough buyers elsewhere that we can leave SS, or force a change in management that will result in better conditions for us.

pics2 · « **Reply #37 on:** June 23, 2020, 10:32 »

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 23, 2020, 10:29

We don't need to be "heard" by Shutterstock. They are the enemy. We need to be heard by buyers, who have other better options to buy from and by fellow contributors who we need solidarity with to force Shutterstock to act. What needs to happen is that SS should not be able to post anywhere without having attention called to their misdeeds. Facebook, twitter whatever. Keep it coming.

If SS don't review their actions we need to move enough buyers elsewhere that we can leave SS, or force a change in management that will result in better conditions for us.

We can't move buyers without help of agencies. It becomes annoying how Adobe silent is. Were they taken by surprise and still can't figure out what to do? At least Getty is sending promo emails with a link for exclusivity application. Will Adobe tell us what the plans are here? It looks like they don't want to make enemies with SS, how pathetic.

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #38 on:** June 23, 2020, 10:42 »

Quote from: pics2 on June 23, 2020, 10:32

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 23, 2020, 10:29
We don't need to be "heard" by Shutterstock. They are the enemy. We need to be heard by buyers, who have other better options to buy from and by fellow contributors who we need solidarity with to force Shutterstock to act. What needs to happen is that SS should not be able to post anywhere without having attention called to their misdeeds. Facebook, twitter whatever. Keep it coming.

If SS don't review their actions we need to move enough buyers elsewhere that we can leave SS, or force a change in management that will result in better conditions for us.
We can't move buyers without help of agencies. It becomes annoying how Adobe silent is. Were they taken by surprise and still can't figure out what to do? At least Getty is sending promo emails with a link for exclusivity application. Will Adobe tell us what the plans are here? It looks like they don't want to make enemies with SS, how pathetic.

It could even be the case that AS had something similar planned that they have had to pull back on thanks to the s**t storm raised by SS. If so good.

None of these companies have our best interests at heart and we need to get organised and be ready to act, on this and the next time and the next.

One good thing about AS though is that the Stock business is a smaller part of the company with a big overlap with their main customer base (most of us are Adobe customers too). It could make them wary of doing too much harm on the stock side even if it means slightly less profit from that side.

pics2 · « **Reply #39 on:** June 23, 2020, 11:05 »

I agree. But, the problem is that Adobe is used to parasitize on SS role of the number one earner. Adobe, like the others too, never had to do anything to motivate contributors to produce content. The content was produced for SS and sent to other agencies by default. Now, if things change these other agencies, Adobe first, have to do something to motivate contributors to produce content. I'm not sure they are still up to that role.

Hildegarde · « **Reply #40 on:** June 23, 2020, 11:13 »

One public figure who writes all the time about issues like this is Robert Reich. If somehow we can get him to know the story of what SS is doing, he might spread the word.

zsooofija · « **Reply #41 on:** June 23, 2020, 12:02 »

Quote from: Rage on June 18, 2020, 03:58

Sure Jo Ann, thr only problem was that this discussion was getting lost there in all the deactivation updates

The urgency is that while most will deactivate for a week or two what happens if SS does not respond at all. Some next steps are critical and need to be thought of and discussed. Else this will become one more slight that will get forgotten

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The forum on the Coalition's website will be functional very soon, it's a much better place to have organized discussions. https://stockcoalition.org/

WebSubstance · « **Reply #42 on:** June 23, 2020, 14:11 »

The idea to educate the buyers is one of the best. I remember that I stopped buying Nike products when I read the news about how the factories were run in Asia. I don't know if the other brands were better but I stop buying Nike products forever.

Everyone here who has a website could write their own blog article to educate buyers and guide them with the right info.

We just switched our small company monthly purchase account from SS to Adobe. We also buy images from Stocksy when client allows it.

Which other companies would you recommend that has fair commissions and fair prices for customer?

I'll put a request to have an article about this on our blog.

Thanks!

Mrblues101 · « **Reply #43 on:** June 23, 2020, 16:03 »

Quote from: WebSubstance on June 23, 2020, 14:11

The idea to educate the buyers is one of the best. I remember that I stopped buying Nike products when I read the news about how the factories were run in Asia. I don't know if the other brands were better but I stop buying Nike products forever.

Everyone here who has a website could write their own blog article to educate buyers and guide them with the right info.

We just switched our small company monthly purchase account from SS to Adobe. We also buy images from Stocksy when client allows it.

Which other companies would you recommend that has fair commissions and fair prices for customer?

I'll put a request to have an article about this on our blog.

Thanks!

We can look for a higher impact exposure too. We are a big community, maybe some one have some network with high impact magazine where an article could be published...

miketravels · « **Reply #44 on:** June 23, 2020, 17:33 »

Just an idea but is anyone contacting those that are still submitting content and inviting them to join the protest? Ie filter fresh content and then see who's still submitting? Sometimes on their profile you can see their website or social profiles. Of course they may not want to (which is their decision) but they may also not know about the coalition.

Seems 900k photos a week that Shutterstock are still getting isn't good. If almost everyone stopped submitting for a while as well as the disabled profiles that would have a big impact.

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HalfFull · « **Reply #45 on:** June 24, 2020, 06:20 »

It may or may not work... but I'd imagine Stockmarket News blogs, analysts would be interested to hear about the exodus due to the slashing of contributor income etc... if they feel this is to fund dividends, they'd know its not sustainable and the the future value of SS shares may not be a good investment.... that may hit them where it hurts... share price / wallet!

Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #46 on:** June 24, 2020, 06:32 »

I don't use twitter. I just did a search on there for shutterstock and a lot of positive stuff comes up, you have to search boycottshutterstock to get the news.
Is this because people aren't also hash-tagging #shutterstock? (sorry I know this is dumb)

Rage · « **Reply #47 on:** June 24, 2020, 06:48 »

Quote from: Justanotherphotographer on June 24, 2020, 06:32

I don't use twitter. I just did a search on there for shutterstock and a lot of positive stuff comes up, you have to search boycottshutterstock to get the news.
Is this because people aren't also hash-tagging #shutterstock? (sorry I know this is dumb)

Most seem to be but there are a ton of probably paid tweeters posting link to their portfolios (most of which are empty) or random SS images just to keep the hashtag clean.

It helps if you search for Shutterstock and Boycottshutterstock and like all the relevant tweets or even retweet marking some buyer/media accounts

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Justanotherphotographer · « **Reply #48 on:** June 24, 2020, 06:52 »

Thanks for that. Don't know how twitter just passed me by

Chichikov · « **Reply #49 on:** June 26, 2020, 10:37 »

Funny idea... (maybe)

Even with the portfolio disabled, it is still possible to upload new images and they are reviewed/rejected (I tried).

So, what happens if we all make bad images, with a lot of noise, underexposed, etc. and each of us uploads 1000 or more?
Their inspector (or AI) will be very busy with... nothing

Okay, I need a rest… I know.

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Author Topic: Brain storming : What else we can do to be heard (Read 23623 times)

douglas

Justanotherphotographer

U11

md9000

Jo Ann Snover

Rage

TG1112

Justanotherphotographer

Rage

Chichikov

pics2

Justanotherphotographer

pics2

Justanotherphotographer

pics2

Hildegarde

zsooofija

WebSubstance

Mrblues101

miketravels

HalfFull

Justanotherphotographer

Rage

Justanotherphotographer

Chichikov

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