alt.hn

5/18/2026 at 7:50:09 PM

Shutterstock to pay $35M over hard-to-cancel subscriptions

 https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/05/shutterstock-pay-35-million-settle-ftc-allegations-over-illegal-subscription-cancellation-practices

by Lihh27

5/19/2026 at 1:21:36 AM

One time for my small business I shared a login with one of my employees and they tried to get us to buy some sort of Enterprise subscription because they claimed that dozens of IP addresses were logging into the account and when we refused they simply closed our account. We were paying like over $300 per month and not even using the full subscription limits... We ended up finding a cheaper solution and now just use AI images so yeah it was pretty dumb on their part.

by weird-eye-issue

5/19/2026 at 2:29:20 AM

[flagged]

by jaynate

5/19/2026 at 3:26:28 AM

I didn't use the service. Well sometimes I would log in just to check they were actively using it and seeing which images were licensed to make sure they weren't using it for other purposes (remote employee). Only my one employee actually used it. I think she used a VPN which is why they thought dozens of people were using it apparently. Regardless the only loser in all of this was Shutterstock...

The only options they have is single seat or "talk to us" Enterprise level and for basically a one-person company using a virtual assistant we pretty much fall through the cracks there.

by weird-eye-issue

5/19/2026 at 4:11:21 AM

It's not predatory, it's just Shutterstock being shitty. And in this case, self-destructive.

Shutterstock should care how much OP paid, because if they were paying a subscription and not maxing it out, Shutterstock lost money because they had a draconian TOS that they aggressively enforced to their own detriment.

by margalabargala

5/19/2026 at 4:21:23 AM

Yes exactly it's not like it's unlimited downloads we had a fixed amount of images per month

by weird-eye-issue

5/19/2026 at 4:46:49 AM

Why is number of images more 'real' than number of users?

What is your strategy for all you can eat buffets?

by s1artibartfast

5/19/2026 at 6:22:06 AM

That's a different scenario. All you can eat buffets people will turn up and all eat a similar amount. At a company, multiple people will want to logon and look but fundamentally the only entity that needs to download is the business. Each staff member won't each be downloading similar numbers of photos. It makes more sense just to have multiple access points to one fixed account.

by ktallett

5/21/2026 at 5:34:21 AM

Most companies will happily sell you an Enterprise license or floating seats for a different price.

by s1artibartfast

5/19/2026 at 7:12:10 AM

That's a terrible analogy because an all you can eat buffet is effectively unlimited but as I already mentioned the number of images was limited.

Your comparison is actually more like if you just ordered a regular meal and then shared it between two people which is allowed...

Also I should note that users are a useful concept for businesses so that they can manage usage and things like access control easily but for me I didn't need that so a single user was sufficient.

by weird-eye-issue

5/19/2026 at 7:18:09 AM

Show some manners.

by Citizen_Lame

5/18/2026 at 9:32:04 PM

If your business is only viable due to shady subscription practices then it doesn't deserve to be running, whether it's Adobe, gyms, or whatever.

by ktallett

5/18/2026 at 8:05:20 PM

A great idea of a product is some sort of unified system for companies to correctly manage subscriptions. There needs to be standards for what makes a user flow acceptable or not when it comes to cancellations.

by chancek

5/18/2026 at 9:20:56 PM

Why would a company participate in this? Most don't seem interested in making cancellation easier.

by recursive

5/18/2026 at 9:43:00 PM

Because they like money and having different choices for consumers to give them money wins out.

by dawnerd

5/18/2026 at 11:18:22 PM

But they make way more money implementing the dark pattern playbook. It's hardly an accident when subscriptions are hard to cancel it's a deliberate optimization.

by benoau

5/18/2026 at 10:02:26 PM

You have to participate in order to get access to most iPhone users.

by neallindsay

5/18/2026 at 8:56:06 PM

I use privacy.com virtual cards. I make a card for each vendor, and define a limit for it. I can kill the cards anytime.

by Modified3019

5/18/2026 at 11:19:55 PM

Just because you revoke payment doesn’t mean you cancelled (at least in Europe). If you just stop paying, they will sue you to get the money.

by echoangle

5/18/2026 at 11:40:16 PM

Yep, in the US you can have the debt sent to collections.

My spouse got fucked by Shutterstock and we have to have a calendar reminder to cancel this when the year is up, since cancelation prior will result in us still paying out the year, but not getting the remainder of the service.

They're extremely scummy. I could certainly block the charges, but they'd just come after us and cause a headache.

by supern0va

5/18/2026 at 9:19:40 PM

Same. Apparently their privacy policy is sketchy as hell but the product has been consistent for over 12 years of using it

by x86hacker1010

5/18/2026 at 8:39:43 PM

Did Shutterstock come out money ahead?

Is 35 million and the potential for future punishment a sufficient deterrent?

by rectang

5/18/2026 at 9:29:58 PM

Look at the stock history. The company is on life support. This is basically an entire year of earnings.

by bpodgursky

5/19/2026 at 12:10:37 AM

Getty’s trying to acquire them pending approval from UK’s regulatory body.

by josh_p

5/18/2026 at 11:34:43 PM

regardless, still likely came out ahead

by altrum

5/18/2026 at 11:37:14 PM

Can they please do this with at&t internet.

by zackify

5/19/2026 at 1:49:48 PM

+ and Adobe Creative Suite

by level09

5/19/2026 at 12:21:50 AM

I'm old enough to remember when we had a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to push back against this kind of anti-consumer crap. It got doge'd by Dumpty/Musk.

by daveguy

5/19/2026 at 12:57:36 AM

They stopped Shutterstock?

by paulddraper

5/20/2026 at 2:25:44 AM

I'd be willing to bet it was their consumer complaint system that informed the FTC. They have a interagency agreement for crossreferral. Hopefully they didn't have to cut that back with the 90% doge cut. But don't worry, we will restore funding and make it more powerful after we de-dumpty the federal govt.

by daveguy

5/19/2026 at 12:23:56 AM

Good. There needs to be a US-wide law that any method used to sign up for a subscription has to be a valid way to unsubscribe too. If you allow users to sign up online, you should also be required to let them unsubscribe online too.

Basically, take the Californian setup, and apply it to the whole US. And pretty much every country in Europe.

by CM30

5/19/2026 at 1:26:20 PM

The law should be simple. It should take the same amount of effort, or less, to unsubscribe as it did to subscribe.

by HardwareLust

5/19/2026 at 2:44:46 AM

Gyms

by ge96

5/19/2026 at 5:20:52 AM

[flagged]

by 3vo-ai

5/18/2026 at 8:43:50 PM

Adobe needs to be next. I had to cancel a card because that was easier than cancelling Creative Cloud.

by whh

5/19/2026 at 1:53:13 PM

+1. They doubled my fee, treated silence as consent for a yearly renewal, then tried to charge a cancellation fee based on that inflated price.

Daylight robbery.

by level09

5/18/2026 at 9:01:45 PM

Adobe isn't hard to cancel if you sign up for monthly subscriptions. I do it fairly regularly because I need PS in short bursts.

A lot of people sign up for discounted annual commitments though then complain when they can't cancel before the year is up.

by sanswork

5/18/2026 at 9:23:13 PM

I had been paying monthly for 13 years straight and they still demanded a cancellation fee because it turned out I was on an annual commitment (which by the way they hiked the price of by 50% with a month’s notice and by the time you notice the larger payment go out you are in a whole new 12 months).

So yes, I complained about that.

by IneffablePigeon

5/18/2026 at 9:33:25 PM

Ok so you were on an annual plan to save money and when you cancelled you had to pay an exit fee to account for the annual discount. Seems reasonable to me.

They gave you a months notice of the price increase and you didn't cancel until after it went into effect?

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 1:04:18 AM

An annual plan shouldn't require a termination fee. If I purchase an Annual Subscription, I should be able to cancel it whenever, with no fee whilst retaining the benefits for my subscription, as I paid for a whole year up front anyways....

Adobe software being a subscription service is nonsense too, but thats for another discussion.

by HDBaseT

5/19/2026 at 1:11:03 AM

Yes, and if you get an annual plan from adobe and pay up front there is no fee for cancelling. The fee is if you get an annual plan with a monthly payment and cancel early.

I remember when it was like $600 for photoshop for a single version(like 25 years ago so what would that be today?). The subscription pricing is a steal.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 2:50:04 AM

If the subscription pricing was a "steal" and the perpetual licensing was genuinely more expensive and worse, they'd still offer the perpetual licensing.

Instead they killed it, they clearly do not want to cannibalize their subscription offing. It clearly makes them more money.

Your first point is valid, I was misunderstanding the yearly subscription pricing, they offer an upfront payment as well as a monthly (but with year commitment).

I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.

by HDBaseT

5/19/2026 at 3:43:12 AM

The subscription pricing makes it more accessible to consumers where as previously the only people that paid for licenses were companies(and probably only large companies given it was basically always the most popular warez). So they charge less per release but they dramatically increase the possible consumer base and release lumpy revenue based around semi-regular annual releases with constant cash flow. So on a per user basis it is without a doubt cheaper but overall they can still make a lot more money.

>I believe still however, if you pay for a year, cancel, you still get access cut off. Which is absurd.

I've not seen anyone claiming this actually happened but maybe I just missed them? Everyone I've seen has said the opposite.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 2:26:19 AM

Take a step back and think of the company who designed this machiavellian scheme and generated this dramatic situation...

is this a business relationship with trust and maturity?

by m463

5/19/2026 at 2:33:15 AM

"We will give you access to annual pricing discounts but not require you to pay the full year up front"

It's not complex or dramatic.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 5:54:22 AM

"you pay what you use"

by m463

5/18/2026 at 9:55:46 PM

Shouldn’t auto renew and auto commit though.

by hartator

5/18/2026 at 10:00:15 PM

Why? It's a subscription auto-renew is the default. As for auto-commit why would they change your subscription choices on you without you choosing it?

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 2:40:40 AM

> It's a subscription auto-renew is the default.

There are a number of subscriptions where I regularly want only a single month of service at a time.

by Marsymars

5/19/2026 at 4:23:31 AM

Then cancel your subscription before its over? I'm not seeing what the problem is here.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 12:58:17 AM

Because it's not the price you agreed on? Crazy what you people are willing to accept as normal.

by DangitBobby

5/19/2026 at 1:12:44 AM

The notification is telling you of the new price. If you don't do anything at that point then it is the price you agreed on.

by sanswork

5/20/2026 at 6:21:59 PM

Not how agreements work.

by DangitBobby

5/19/2026 at 1:06:06 AM

What happens if Adobe changes the price from $299 yearly to 29k?

Do you think that is fair? After all they gave you 30 days!

by HDBaseT

5/19/2026 at 1:13:25 AM

Why do you feel the need to make up ridiculous numbers?

by sanswork

5/18/2026 at 10:09:49 PM

Why are you defending obvious theft?

by DangitBobby

5/18/2026 at 10:17:12 PM

> Why are you defending obvious theft?

Where’s the theft?

It’s perfectly normal to have a fee for breaking a lease. And that’s what an annual subscription paid monthly is anyway. It’s a commitment for an extended period of time.

If you could just stop paying and retain the discounted rate, what is an annual subscription vs a monthly one?

by koolba

5/19/2026 at 12:57:15 AM

Is upping the fee and automatically confirming the contract without a re-up "perfectly normal"? Seems doubtful.

by DangitBobby

5/19/2026 at 1:40:25 AM

Yes? Commercial leases (and residential for that matter) commonly have increase clauses that operate automatically (CPI, 3/4/5%, market review, etc).

by anomaly_

5/20/2026 at 6:29:14 PM

Varies by jurisdiction. Residential leases typically require notice, and inedequate notice (both by time and by method) nullifies the agreement. This is because the legal world generally agrees that contracts that would expose consumers with practically zero legal access or knowledge to one-sided contracts providing one party unilateral control would be unconscionable.

Even if it were technically legal it should distress you.

by DangitBobby

5/18/2026 at 10:28:54 PM

Because it is not obviously theft. If you are getting a discount for making a year-long commitment, and then cancel, breaking that commitment, isn't a cancelation fee appropriate?

by whyenot

5/19/2026 at 12:57:37 AM

Is that the whole story? Or did you miss literally half of what GP said happened?

by DangitBobby

5/18/2026 at 9:33:20 PM

If you only need PS in short bursts, may I recommend https://www.photopea.com/?

It's not at 100% feature parity with PS but it's pretty darn close.

by cryzinger

5/18/2026 at 9:35:01 PM

Appreciate the suggestion but I'm terrible at editing so I just stick with PS because the cost for a month or two when I need it isn't much and it's really easy to find videos walking through exactly what I need to do. Even a single hour spent trying to translate a tutorial would more than wipe out the savings.

by sanswork

5/18/2026 at 9:46:34 PM

Totally fair, I understand :)

by cryzinger

5/18/2026 at 10:46:33 PM

No, the complaint with Adobe is that if you cancel, they terminate access immediately rather than at the end of the billing period. There is no explanation for this other than a predatory one; they’re betting you’ll forget to cancel by the time your bill comes around. The immediate termination is effectively depriving you of the next N months of access for which you already paid.

by chatmasta

5/18/2026 at 11:42:22 PM

This isn't true though. Again like with the annual plan people are confusing things. I just looked it up and checked a few reddit posts to confirm and heres what's happening.

If you cancel in the first 14 days they terminate immediately and refund you. After the 14 days the subscription is cancelled and you keep access until the point you paid for. If you signed up for an annual contract you have a cancel fee of 50% of the remaining agreed amount.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 3:34:05 AM

Maybe now, after they had to pay a $150M fine for using dark patterns and making unsubscribing difficult: https://www.gadgetreview.com/adobe-pays-150m-to-settle-subsc...

They did a lot more than just making it hard to cancel, too: https://www.deceptive.design/brands/adobe

by like_any_other

5/19/2026 at 3:50:21 AM

Your deceptive design link is literally outlining the plan discussed in the rest of this thread.

The first one in your deceptive design was:

Adobe: Unclear yearly subscription terms and cancellation fees "Apparently monthly subscriptions, but you are signed up for a year. Cancelling early results in a 50% of remaining months subscriptions being applied as a cancellation charge."

Then you click through to look at it and the button the user selects says

Annual, Paid Monthly Fee applies if you cancel after 14 days

With an information popup.

Scrolling through the rest all of it is them just selecting this option without reading the details then being upset when the Annual plan is an annual plan.

I have no clue why they decided to settle that lawsuit since they still have the same plan. I'm not a lawyer.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 4:12:33 AM

You are describing the current state of Adobe subscription. If you check out the post linked on the deceptive.design page [1], one of the replies states [2]:

after the original thread a year or so ago, team made a clearer way to show pricing options to give ppl/teams who buy an annual sub a discount w/o paying it all up front

So the clear language is new. And that doesn't touch on the losing access during the current billing period either.

> I have no clue why they decided to settle that lawsuit

Because they have changed their subscription page as part of the settlement. All the posters telling you how Adobe ripped them off are describing Adobe from before the settlement.

[1] Adobe's subscription model deploys recurring annual plans or termination with massive penalty - https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1660907518430699523

[2] https://x.com/scottbelsky/status/1661376319169372166

by like_any_other

5/19/2026 at 4:26:42 AM

I'm describing the state from the screen shots on the site you included.

>https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1660907518430699523

This screen shot is too heavily cropped for me to know exactly what the page explained. I'm going to go ahead and assume this was intentional on the part of the x poster. I've been using Adobe subscriptions on an off for several years so before this point and somehow manage to continue to be able to cancel.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 5:22:03 AM

Nowhere did anyone say people were unable to cancel. What they said was that cancellation fees were hidden, and that access to Adobe products was disabled as soon as a subscription was cancelled, even for periods that were already paid for.

by like_any_other

5/19/2026 at 7:22:11 AM

Nothing you've posted has shown that last claim. Everything I've found has shown it to be a misunderstanding.

by sanswork

5/19/2026 at 10:27:29 AM

I was on the monthly plan mate. I don’t know what UX you’re talking about but it was literally impossible to find how to cancel it.

And they chased me for months to update my card after I’d cancelled it.

Please stop attacking people’s genuine lived experience of a company’s genuinely bad practice…

by whh

5/18/2026 at 11:41:57 PM

>No, the complaint with Adobe is that if you cancel, they terminate access immediately rather than at the end of the billing period. There is no explanation for this other than a predatory one

This is exactly what Shutterstock does. What's maddening is that you can be getting a monthly charge, but are locked into a year contract. If you cancel, they'll continue to charge monthly but without being able to use the service. It's absurd.

by supern0va

5/18/2026 at 9:08:03 PM

I hope freelancer.com will be the next one. I canceled and renewed my credit card because of them. Even though I deleted my account, they continued to withdraw money.

by nih567

5/18/2026 at 9:28:33 PM

Canceling a card isn't the same thing as canceling a subscription. Most businesses will have you still pay via a different payment method to resolve your debt.

by charcircuit

5/18/2026 at 9:37:44 PM

They'll invoice you but don't actually pay. They aren't going to take you to court over a $50/month subscription; the easier route for them is to just disable your account, which is what you wanted anyway.

Never give them your actual residential address (they don't need to know it), birth day, or SSN, or be tricked into giving them such. If they ask on any customer service chat or phone, the answer is they don't need to know it.

Without these things they can't exactly put it on your credit report, either. They may send it to collectors, but don't talk to them. Let them cry. They still won't serve you a court summons over $50.

Keep businesses in check from this money-grabbing behavior. Any kind of subscription should be easily cancellable.

by dheera

5/19/2026 at 12:12:53 AM

What you are describing is fraud.

by charcircuit

5/19/2026 at 1:00:22 AM

From which party?

by paulddraper

5/19/2026 at 1:27:46 AM

The customer lying about their information to intentionally bypass companies' anti fraud systems.

by charcircuit

5/20/2026 at 4:14:38 PM

Ah okay. I thought it was companies deceiving people into subscriptions.

by paulddraper

5/20/2026 at 3:25:43 AM

Bullshit, it's perfectly fine and legal to refuse to give companies your address or SSN.

by GreenVulpine

5/20/2026 at 11:45:15 AM

You can refuse to give it. But intentionally giving a false address with the intention of being able to defraud the company by not paying a bill you owe them is fraud.

by charcircuit

5/18/2026 at 9:19:09 PM

Don’t they charge you to cancel or something? I also remember their suite being absolutely fucking dumb I never used it again

by x86hacker1010

5/18/2026 at 9:36:02 PM

They let you sign up for an annual discount but still pay monthly. The cancelation fee is if you try to end the annual commitment early. If you just sign up monthly(seriously always do this when you see these offers) there is no cancellation fee.

by sanswork

5/18/2026 at 10:52:08 PM

Figma isn't much better these days

by hank9

5/18/2026 at 10:00:17 PM

It's a dead company walking anyway. It might be the final blow.

by raincole

5/18/2026 at 9:55:02 PM

> Shutterstock failed to get consent to charge consumers’ credit cards before charging them for subscriptions

This sounds like it should carry criminal penalties?

by runako

5/18/2026 at 10:37:26 PM

Conde Nast is _horrible_ this way, tried for a second year in a row to charge me for Wired, which i do not subscribe to, could not explain where they got the idea i did, evidently had access through some dark pattern from years earlier to charge for something i must have bought as a magazine on iOS.

It took hours of online chat argument with the unfortunate real employee fielding such pissed customers, and threats of legal action, eventually citing their legal counsel by email address and full name (from the Conde Nast site), before they agreed to _not_ charge me whatever obscene yearly subscription would be.

They can burn in crooked hell after that nonsense. I wonder if the Reddit people are bothered by their owner, as I had a personally signed generally cheery note from maybe Alexis back when i first subscribed and bought a tshirt, going on 20 years ago i guess.

by jjtheblunt

5/19/2026 at 3:02:11 AM

> I wonder if the Reddit people are bothered by their owner

Quick note -- Reddit went public in 2024, so Condé Nast is no longer their owner.

by runako

5/19/2026 at 4:09:53 PM

oh cool!

by jjtheblunt

5/18/2026 at 10:27:43 PM

Well, if you or I did it - of course!

But when Corporate does it, we just handwave it way.

by zurtri

5/18/2026 at 10:49:15 PM

Pardon the pedantry, but I the current abbreviation of the price ("Shutterstock to pay $35M") should be "$35MM".

by bch

5/18/2026 at 9:21:13 PM

[flagged]

by exabrial

5/19/2026 at 12:47:05 AM

Chicago School jerks got their way in the '70s and we effectively decided to stop doing that. This was the first notable fruit yielded by the postwar pro-rich/business "think tank" and intellectualism-washing push which was quickly followed by that set dominating almost everything.

Good luck reversing that and bringing back the "giant enterprises may be assumed harmful" standard (the one under which it was possible to win these cases more than once in a blue moon, without unreasonable costs) now that rich right-wingers just openly steer most news media.

by funimpoded