Restore Trust – Bring Back Fairness to Pond5
Dark_Side_of_Synth
4 Jul 2025 15:51
Shall we also add to the tragic ruin of this platform the MASSIVE invasion of spam comments in the forum without any supervision or way to report them? What's next?
It's not even just stock content platforms, people have been able to get FREE digital content of any kind, legally or illegally for at least 30 years, and in the past 15 or so even of very good quality. What's the incentive in paying if you can get professional photos, videos, and audio for free way before AI and subscriptions? One thing is posting a few low quality samples in order to promote one's catalogue, another is giving away all your stuff for what? Exposure? Who doesn't love free stuff? Would pay for a beer if everyone else in that pub gets it for free? ;)
It's not even just stock content platforms, people have been able to get FREE digital content of any kind, legally or illegally for at least 30 years, and in the past 15 or so even of very good quality. What's the incentive in paying if you can get professional photos, videos, and audio for free way before AI and subscriptions? One thing is posting a few low quality samples in order to promote one's catalogue, another is giving away all your stuff for what? Exposure? Who doesn't love free stuff? Would pay for a beer if everyone else in that pub gets it for free? ;)
NewsMarket
7 Jul 2025 18:05
I couldn't agree more on the scourge of FREE content, bad actors don't even have to steal anymore, the stock websites give your content away for free or for next to free via subscription, unless you need the tax write off why pay for it?.
If these stock websites were legitimate businesses they would offer very limited low quality/resolution content for free to lure in customers who would then pay for full quality clips. The real money for the stock sites has been in wholesaling your content to the large volume buyers like the social media companies and now the Ai companies.
One look at TikTok and you just know this many people aren't travelling the world with state of the art cameras and filming all this content for likes, these backgrounds are stock, your stock. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMSqyhgwE/
If these stock websites were legitimate businesses they would offer very limited low quality/resolution content for free to lure in customers who would then pay for full quality clips. The real money for the stock sites has been in wholesaling your content to the large volume buyers like the social media companies and now the Ai companies.
One look at TikTok and you just know this many people aren't travelling the world with state of the art cameras and filming all this content for likes, these backgrounds are stock, your stock. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMSqyhgwE/