Why Millions Are Deleting Adobe (FTC Lawsuit Explained)

Adobe is the world's leader in Creative software their software Powers everything from Hollywood Blockbusters to your favorite YouTube videos but beneath the surface there's a darker Story the company's practices are so controversial that even the US government has suit Adobe this is why Adobe is one of the most evil companies on the planet this video is brought to you by my startup silos 7.39% yielding Bond accounts first what does Adobe do in short Adobe makes creative software Photoshop illustrator After Effects and about a dozen more iconic staple programs all come from Adobe despite their current

drama things used to be very different many years back you could actually buy Photoshop along with all of their other products you could pick up a physical disc in Store install it and you were good to go they were expensive at around $700 but once you bought it you owned that copy of photo pH shop also you could upgrade to the newest version for only $200 people loved adobe's products they were the best the company had an amazing reputation but all of this was about to change at some point adobe's Executives realized something they could

make much more money if they overhauled their business model have you noticed how almost every digital product or service is now a subscription this is called software as a service meaning you pay regularly to use the software instead of buying it out out right and Adobe was one of the first to adopt it someone might spend more at once on buying their Creative Suite for $2,000 but this method has a massive downside getting a customer to make such a massive purchase is extremely difficult but a subscription for the same product at a fraction of that

price is much easier to digest people rarely factor in the distant future and end up paying more than they would have if they just bought the expensive package to start with Adobe soon completely stopped selling products that you could own you could no longer buy Photoshop instead they began licensing products you could lease their revenue began to SAR as they added hundreds of millions every quarter but they also gained something else with the subscription you're paying Adobe to use their software they own the license which means they have all the power they can change anything

they want whenever they feel like it and this is where all the problems started Adobe soon began sending strange letters to customers using previous versions of their software or stating we have recently discontinued certain older versions of Creative Cloud applications and as a result under the terms of our agreement you are no longer licensed to use them Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued versions you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by Third parties these were Creative Cloud subscribers who hadn't updated their software in a while Adobe never

explain the four reasoning Behind These threats but naturally this upset a lot of people yet this is isn't why Adobe is being sued by the US government the reason behind that is much worse Adobe offers Creative Cloud through an annual or monthly subscription and they even offer a 7-Day trial but things aren't as they seem if you sign up for this trial it says paid monthly except it's not a monthly subscription it's a yearly subscription that's built monthly Adobe does offer a monthly subscription at $90 a month suddenly encouraging users to take the cheaper monthly

option but this is a trap if you sign up and continue past 14 days you're locked in and Adobe will do everything in their power to keep you there how with their dreaded cancellation fee hidden in their fine print if you want to cancel your subscription you will need to pay 50% of your remaining subscription up front which is often times hundreds of dollars and Adobe isn't very transparent about this users who unsubscribe are surprised to see Adobe charged them hundreds of dollars seemingly out of nowhere people have been experiencing adobe's Greed for years Adobe

ripped me off for $60 after I signed up for a free trial proceeded to cancel the trial and then got charged for the product anyway Adobe tried to charge me $162 to cancel my Creative Cloud subscription one user was charged over $300 to cancel their plan and another even had Adobe attempt to build them after they paid the cancellation fee but it gets even worse many subscriptions allow you to turn off auto renew so your plan will automatically cancel at the end Adobe doesn't you can't just disable Auto renewing the only way to cancel is

to cancel the entire plan which causes the massive cancellation fee and none of this is new either Adobe has been doing this for many years except now it's finally catching up with them the US Federal Trade Commission has taken action against Adobe but this isn't just any lawsuit usually a limited liability company protects the individuals but the US government is bypassing that given that this is a special case of greed and Malice they are deliberately going going after individual Executives two in particular the President and Vice President of adobe's digital media business they argued that

adobe fails to adequately disclose to Consumers that by signing up for the annual paid monthly subscription plan they're agreeing to a year-long commitment and a hefty early termination fee that can amount to hundreds of dollars Adobe clearly discloses the termination fee only when subscribers attempt to cancel turning the termination fee into a powerful retention tool that generates significant revenues by trapping consumers into subscriptions they no longer want Adobe naturally disagrees with the decision they stated that cancellation fees make up less than 1% of their revenue though that raises even more questions namely why are they

so insistent on using something which has given them so much backlash which amounts to less than 1% of their revenue if it's truly less than 1% and it's given them so many issues why not just remove it simple the process to unsubscribe is horrible with all kinds of obstacles goals and the massive cancellation fee people often stay subscribed even if they don't want to long term this gives Adobe more money and allows them to boast about their low cancellation rates to shareholders that's why the FDC is suing Adobe customers couldn't be happier as it seems

like justice is finally being served even with this lawsuit there's actually an entirely different Scandal surrounding Adobe at the exact same time Believe It or Not there're hot water for something much worse in the past several years big Tech has jumped head first into the AI boom and Adobe is no different they've been integrating AI images into their own stock portfolio but most importantly training their own generative AI firly one very similar to Mid Journey or Dolly but also integrates into Photoshop and other programs the only issue is that AI need data for machine learning

lots of it so Adobe weasel in Hidden terms into the Creative Cloud with horrible implications Adobe had very subtly changed their terms that granted them full access to users local content and most bafflingly of all they included that they had a non-exclusive worldwide royalty-free sub licensable license to use reproduce publicly display and much more Adobe basically decided that taking your money wasn't good enough they wanted to own your assets your Creations everything Adobe could view your local files and do what they wished but users caught on very quickly our access to your content we may

access view or listen to your content through both automated and manual methods and then down here it says our automated systems May analyze your content and Creative Cloud customer fonts uh which are defined over there using techniques such as ma machine learning in order to improve our services and software and the user experience Not only was this unethical training for their AI but it also came with all kinds of implications this is especially concerning for users and companies who use ndas to protect their work like those working on Films or commercial space Adobe was trying

to override everything and the backlash was huge a worldwide boycott of adobe began with many major news outlets weighing in on the story some artists began uploading Nightshade art to Creative Cloud a way of intentionally misleading and poisoning machine learning Adobe insisted that Firefly was ethically trained but the evidence was clear and following the enormous backlash Adobe quickly changed or terms they outlined in their new terms we don't scan or review content that is stored locally on your device we also don't train generative AI models on your or your customer's content unless you've submitted the

content to the Adobe stock Marketplace a good change but they've only done so because they were caught doing just that but they're not out of the clear just yet you might have caught the last part of that statement about the Adobe stock Marketplace this was once a prestigious resource for artists and professionals but it is now flooded with AI with its own consequences Brian kessinger a lead artist at Disney found AI copies of his work in the market place with this name falsely attached to it while this has increased the breadth of adobe stock their

catalog of stock photos it's hard to say that this is a good thing browsing it today shows an absurd amount of lowquality AI artwork many of which have incorrect spelling or weird unnatural details now if it wasn't bad enough that what's supposed to be a database full of professional photographs has been completely diluted with unusable garbage if I did want to license any of these photos it would cost me $80 $80 for a photo someone generated by typing police card Adobe is hurting their own reputation as well as their own catalog all of this has

placed Adobe in a very bad light all of which is their own fault they're greedy malicious and their business model is predatory the people who hate them the most right now are their own customers all of this exposes a bigger problem that creatives are seriously considering for the past decade the creative industry has been ruled by Adobe they got so successful because they made great products but over time they slowly also became a monopoly in a healthy Market with a lot of competition if a company provides bad Services customers can simply switch to a competitor

so the whole Market faces pressure to provide the best service or a unique experience but for many years now Adobe has ruled their industry and as time has gone on they've made things worse for the consumer but things might be changing for years people have been advocating others to switch from ad doia looking for alternatives to this evil monolith their products have become notably unstable their service has become more predatory and now with the changes to their terms brought to light everyone has the best reason to leave Adobe behind we're finally starting to progress in

the market theci resolve has become more and more popular as a video editor especially for Blockbuster films and as has Affinity as a Photoshop alternative the market seems to be slowly but surely correcting itself and hopefully this forces Adobe to rethink their ethics but we'll have to wait and see if you're interested in deeper Dives interviews with insiders and exclusive Tech analysis you can sign up to our free Weekly Newsletter link is below but until then I'm Hari and I'll see you guys on the next one