Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 784 posts

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#441

Post by benoau »

sanswork wrote: post #373
55555 wrote: post #363

Adobe runs what must be one of the largest deceptive rebills. The vast majority of users signing up for a monthly plan do not realize that it is actually an "annual plan, billed monthly" and thus that if they cancel after one month (for example) they'll be billed for the remaining 11 immediately. I honestly don't know how they haven't faced FTC action for this, as it's been their primary model for 5-10 years now.

I just went back through the sign up process to check and it seems pretty obvious these days? I got three options at checkout annual billed monthly, monthly, annual. I hate annual billed monthly but the wording isn't hidden.

Because last year ...

> Adobe knowingly "trapped" customers into annual subscriptions, the FTC alleged.

> Adobe prioritized profits while spending years ignoring numerous complaints from users struggling to cancel costly subscriptions without incurring hefty hidden fees, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged in a lawsuit Monday.

> According to the FTC, Adobe knew that canceling subscriptions was hard but determined that it would hurt revenue to make canceling any easier, so Adobe never changed the "convoluted" process. Even when the FTC launched a probe in 2022 specifically indicating that Adobe's practices may be illegal, Adobe did nothing to address the alleged harm to consumers, the FTC complaint noted. Adobe also "provides no refunds or only partial refunds to some subscribers who incur charges after an attempted, unsuccessful cancellation."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/ftc-sues-adobe-o...

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#442

Post by torginus »

I just don't get how Adobe didn't get dethroned after being so unpopular for so long. There are so many Photoshop competitors, many of which are quite good, they seem to be ripe for disruption. The last version I used was CS6, which came out more than a decade ago, and even that had more than a good enough feature set.

Blender is slowly taking over 3D, why can't 2D be disrupted similarly?

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#444

Post by squigz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #238
adzm wrote: post #28

Adobe is the one major company trying to be ethical with its AI training data and no one seems to even care. The AI features in Photoshop are the best around in my experience and come in handy constantly for all sorts of touchup work. Anyway I don't really think they deserve a lot of the hate they get, but I do hope this encourages development of viable alternatives to their products. Photoshop is still pretty much p…

> Adobe is the one major company trying to be ethical with its AI training data and no one seems to even care. It's because nobody actually wants that. Artists don't like AI image generators because they have to compete with them, not because of how they were trained. How they were trained is just the the most plausible claim they can make against them if they want to sue OpenAI et al over it, or to make a moral argu…

I don't think all artists are treating this tool as such an existential threat.

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#445

Post by oreally »

torginus wrote: post #442

I just don't get how Adobe didn't get dethroned after being so unpopular for so long. There are so many Photoshop competitors, many of which are quite good, they seem to be ripe for disruption. The last version I used was CS6, which came out more than a decade ago, and even that had more than a good enough feature set. Blender is slowly taking over 3D, why can't 2D be disrupted similarly?

I'm pretty sure it's because just about every applicable art school has enforced their student's output to be done in adobe's products - meaning that Adobe has a firm grip on the educator's market. As the saying goes, hook them in when they're young and they'll be too lazy and vested to move away from their products for a lifetime.

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#446

Post by vladvasiliu »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #101
multimoon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure where we launched into the metaphysics of if an AI can produce an emotionally charged meaningful work, but that wasn’t part of the debate here, I recall my stance being that the AI will never get as good as the human. Since photoshop is a tool like any other, “good enough” refers to making the barrier of entry to make a given work (in this case some image) so low that anyone could buy a photoshop license…

I'm not the person who responded, but I believe it came from a place of "what is art" (and you had used the word "artist"). My own position is that "art" can only be created by a human. AI can produce text, images, and sounds, and perhaps someday soon they can even create content that is practically indistinguishable from Picasso or Mozart, but they would still fail to be "art." So sure, an AI can create assets to pa…

> But I would never willingly spend my time or money engaging with AI "art." By that, I mean I would never attend a concert, watch a film, visit a museum, read a book, or even scroll through an Instagram profile if what I'm viewing is largely the output of AI. What would the point be?

Why not? The output of AI is usually produced at the request of a human. So if the human will then alter the request such that the result suits whatever the human's goal is, why would there be no point?

This, to me, sound like the debate of whether just pressing a button on a box to produce a photograph is actually art, compared to a painting. I wonder whether painters felt "threatened" when cameras became commonplace. AI seems just like a new, different way of producing images. Sure, it's based on prior forms of art, just like photography is heavily inspired by painting.

And just because most images are weird or soulless or whatever doesn't disqualify the whole approach. Are most photographs works of art? I don't think so. Ditto for paintings.

To your point about Instagram profiles, I actually do follow some dude who creates "AI art" and I find the images do have "soul" and I very much enjoy looking at them.

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#448

Post by porridgeraisin »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #416
vishnugupta wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every single one of Adbobe post on HN has a top comment about this evil subscription plan. I fell for it once. But I’m in India so I just cancelled my debit card and that was that. Good luck to them to chase me through legal means in India. It was still bit of a hassle though.

I had to cancel a card thanks to PayPal’s shenanigans. Now it’s much easier to deal with the subscription problems due to the new RBI norms.

Which norms?

Re: Adobe deletes Bluesky posts after backlash

#449

Post by fxtentacle »

sureIy wrote: post #356
fxtentacle wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would describe my business relationship with Adobe as: "hostage" They annually harass me with licensing checks and questionnaires because they really hate you if you run Photoshop inside a VM (my daily driver is Linux), although it is explicitly allowed. Luckily, I don't need the Adobe software that often. But they hold a lot of important old company documents hostage in their proprietary file formats. So I can't c…

> proprietary file formats Gimp can't handle them?

For InDesign magazines with embedded images, for example, I'm not aware of any compatible 3rd party software
Post reply on HN