Quote from: stockastic on September 03, 2015, 12:52

Quote from: ShadySue on September 03, 2015, 12:16

No, that was my mistake at the beginning.
The theead is abour image spamming,  not keyword spamming.

Similar issue though.  How are these guys getting approved in the first place? And what would it cost to clean this up?

Why would they bother looking at all 50,000,000 images? There's only, what, 60,000 contributors give or take? A couple of editors can get through that, as stated, in a couple of months. How long would it take to find problem contributors when you look at a portfolio and see an entire page of nearly identical shots?

I agree although my comment was actually about keyword spam.  If SS was willing to take a hard line, and drop a contributor on the first instance of image spam they identified, they could really clean house.  I note however that some contributors have many thousands of images, which would take a while to flip through. 

It will never happen, though.  There is obviously no one at SS whose job it is to care about this problem.  They probably don't even see it as a 'problem'. 

Quote from: stockastic on September 03, 2015, 09:49

We're seeing the final stage of 'crowdsourcing'.  This is where it ultimately leads.   And with 50 million images already accepted, there's no possibility of cleaning up the inventory.

I think cleaning up the collection would be quite easy actually, a couple of full time employees dedicated to the task could get it under control in a few months. I mean just the icon example I pointed out, that's tens of thousands of images right there, and you issue a serious warning that stops them uploading the same garbage again, that's thousands less images out of the queue every week. So maybe $80000 a year, which is a total drop in the ocean for SS.

But lets face it, it's the opposite of what SS wants to do, they want to inflate the number of images in the collection so they can sell it to share holders. For the same reason Facebook spams up my inbox telling me I have "notifications" when I don't, just to get my login so they can claim a billion people use the site every day or whatever.

Nah, I dare to say It's even simpler, no employees, no developers needed... there are already thousands of people sorting out the images: the customers. They just need to drop the super-unpopular images that nobody even looked at for years. I bet the collection would go down well below 20 mill in a blink...

Quote from: Rinderart on September 04, 2015, 16:58

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on September 03, 2015, 05:44

Don't forget this guy.  He's added even more!
http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_landing=1&gallery_id=1256674&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest

Just added 400 new ones since 2 days ago.

So how is this happening? Has he paid off someone in SS to load this stuff in?  Are we supposed to  believe all this junk passed inspection?

This guy has to either be tight with someone at SS or works there.  I can't imagine they would otherwise let people do this. It's stupid as hell.  Maybe I can try a test, create 400 text images and see what my reject rate is.

Maybe he is flogging dope to all the reviewers?  when they go for lunch he is down there getting them all at it and when they come back to office they're so high on the hubbly-bubbly they pass and accept anything and everything

Interesting thread, I said the same things about out of control spamming over on the iStock forums and posted these search results for certain keywords,

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19999283/iStock-spam.jpg

These are actual best match keyword searches, not taken from ports or from date ordered searches. Each batch can run several pages followed by another batch of spam from another contributor.
Being exclusive on iStock I don't usually look at what's going on at SS but having just had a quick browse I'd say standards have indeed dropped dramatically since I last looked a few months ago but I don't think the spamming is any where near as bad as on iStock, yet, at least for illustrations, haven't compared photos.

It seems the whole industry is shooting itself in the foot in the race to the bottom, which is not just about being cheapest but being able to boast about the largest collection. Any algorithm which is supposed to promote better images to the front of searches based on performance is fighting a losing battle, the cream can't rise to the top when it's buried under so much spam.

^^^
I didn't say it was about keyword spamming, but that these are the kind image spamming search results that you get, lets say for certain topics, rather than keywords, if it will make you happier.
If you type in a couple of keywords and get 3 pages of very basic similar images from one contributor, how would you describe it?

The plan at SS - to the extent there ever was a 'plan' - was to use crowdsourcing to get unlimited inventory at minimal cost, then do the heavy lifting in what we call the 'search algorithm', which I'm guessing is by this time a fairly complicated piece of software.  They believed if they hired a bunch of hot-shot young developers, drinking Jolt and acting very Disruptive, that search algorithm would get better and better until somehow it was able to cut through all the spam and junk, and show the buyers exactly what they wanted.  In other words, typical dot-com hype about "AI", and wishful thinking by investors, resulting in many millions of dollars being sunk into a business concept which is ultimately self-limiting and destined to hit a wall at some point.   

In particular, I think they underestimated how much they'd end up being 'played' by technically knowledgeable spammers and, maybe, by good old fashioned corruption. 

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on September 03, 2015, 05:44

Don't forget this guy.  He's added even more!
http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_landing=1&gallery_id=1256674&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest

He was obviously stoned when he came up with the idea...

I guess the reviewer might have been also..

Quote from: hofhoek on September 20, 2015, 08:36

Quote from: Monty-m-gue on September 03, 2015, 05:59

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on September 03, 2015, 05:44

Don't forget this guy.  He's added even more!
http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_landing=1&gallery_id=1256674&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest

He was obviously stoned when he came up with the idea...

I guess the reviewer might have been also..

Or, he is a reviewer himself.

Then he/she can determine their own earnings from reviewing.....real easy money! Must be difficult to find enough hours in the day to produce the quantity needed to make you a millionaire reviewer though. But I'm sure that completely automated processes could achieve that. 

49000 Icon Why?
newbielink:http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_landing=1&gallery_id=243877&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest [nonactive]

104 000 Icon.
newbielink:http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?gallery_landing=1&gallery_id=802546&page=1&safesearch=1&sort_method=newest [nonactive]

They are have 100-200 Icon just change the background, and making 100 000 vector. You are kidding me . I make 100 icon and i put in 4 pictures. 25 - 25 - 25 - 25 icons. And stop it, no more variations, but the spammer never give up

The pictures on shutterstock 80% crap or poor, not quality. Shutterstock must change the business strategy, while the professional contributors give up. The buyers not find easy the quality pictures => not buy pictures, and we have poor earning.
I HATE THE SPAMMERS! WE HATE SPAMMERS!

Oh man awesome. You have to admire the nerve of switching out the backgrounds and reuploading the same simple icons again and again. I wouldn't have the front to do it. Or at least be able to look at myself in the mirror afterwards.

Why not deleting this crap portfolios, and leave space for professional contributors?  If I were the owner, i fired out these lame contributors. In 1000 new accepted (vectors), 50 is the good work, it is unacceptable.

We should consider the possibility that this stuff isn't even being submitted, inspected and approved - but that SS has people generating it internally, just to pump up their numbers.  There is absolutely nothing to stop them from doing this.