You must log in or register to comment.
Adobe’s name is mud these days.
Summary:
- The US government is suing Adobe for allegedly deceiving customers with hidden fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions.
- The Department of Justice claims Adobe enrolls customers in its most lucrative subscription plan without clearly disclosing important plan terms.
- Adobe allegedly hides the terms of its annual, paid monthly plan in fine print and behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks.
- The company fails to properly disclose the early termination fee, which can amount to hundreds of dollars, upon cancellation.
- The cancellation process is described as “onerous and complicated”, involving multiple webpages and pop-ups.
- Customers who try to cancel over the phone or via live chats face similar obstacles, including dropped or disconnected calls and having to re-explain their reason for calling.
- The lawsuit targets Adobe executives Maninder Sawhney and David Wadhwani, alleging they directed or participated in the deceptive practices.
- The federal government began investigating Adobe’s cancellation practices late last year.
- Adobe’s subscription model has long been a source of frustration for creatives, who feel forced to stay subscribed to continue working.
- Recently, Adobe’s new terms of service were met with backlash, with some users interpreting the changes as an opportunity for Adobe to train its AI on users’ art.
- The company has also faced regulatory scrutiny in the past, including antitrust scrutiny from European regulators over its attempted $20 billion acquisition of product design platform Figma in 2022, which was ultimately abandoned.
My prayers are heard. I hope you burn in the lowest circles of hell, Adobe.
I assumed their HQ was moved there long ago.
Yup. Though many people call it “Utah”
Is this a random Utah slam, or did they move something to Utah? As far as I know they’re still in San Jose
They’re in Utah.
They have a campus in Utah but their headquarters is in San Jose.
Shittycon valley vs Shittycon slopes. Might as well be the same thing.
Edgy
I’ve been on the verge of cancelling my subscription for multiple times now. But everytime I try an alternative it’s missing something (for instance capture one mobile does not do masks/layers…), and so I keep shipping shitloads of money to a company which has dickass privacy rules and extorts you out of money.
Just know that Canva bought Affinity.
Isn‘t there the possibility to use multiple Apps to mimic what Adobe does?
Depending on what you’re doing, Krita is worth a look. I gave it a go for cropping and lightly editing some photos recently, and then tried their version of the clone stamp tool. It’s hidden under the brushes presets, but worked better than the Photoshop tool 👍
It doesn’t help Adobe has software patents for their products, so anyone who makes a similar program has to either live in a country that doesn’t recognize the “right” to claim you invented math, or be risk being sued.
I’m a big fan of Affinity Photo and Illustrator. I switched when Adobe went to the subscription model. It’s very similar, and they have full tutorials on Vimeo for anything that works differently. It’s definitely worth the $20.
I switched to the Affinity suite today after almost 20 years of using Adobe products. After the trial I realized that I actually enjoyed the layout of the tools and the familiarity between photoshop and illustrator. Their InDesign alternative (Publisher 2) is pretty nice too. It really helps that they’re giving 50% off right now. (Smart marketing btw)
Only thing I’m struggling with finding a replacement for is after effects. I already made the switch to DaVinci for video so motion graphics is the only hole left to fill and then I’m free from Adobe.
That looks great. It’s mostly a Photoshop replacement right? I’m also looking for something to replace Lightroom, with the same amount of functions on desktop as on iPad. Any recommendations?
I think Affinity Photo is their lightroom replacement: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
Edit: I don’t think there’s a mobile version
With mobile I also meant iPad so they’re good on that. To me “Photo” has a lot of Photoshop abilities (drawing, pencils, etc.) while it lacks, or seems to lack, some Lightroom functions (categorizing, overview of photos, ratings, etc.). But maybe I haven’t looked at it good enough. It’s certainly a good option to replace photoshop for me, because I don’t use most functions of photoshop.
It works great on iPad, but it doesn’t store and organize.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/affinity-photo-2-for-ipad/id1616823773
I’ve heard darktable is good. Haven’t used it myself
As a “prosumer” photographer (I do semi-pro landscape photography mostly, with a little astrophotography as a hobby when the sky is clear enough), I’ve been really happy with Affinity Photo over the Adobe suite. Definitely recommend. I just hope they keep their quality up since being bought out.
Who did they get bought out from?
They were independent as Serif, but Canva bought them earlier this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif_Europe
That’s why I’m a pirate matey
Ha good fucking luck charging an early cancellation fee to the VIRTUAL CARD I GENERATED AND DESTROYED THE MOMENT I DECIDED TO STOP PUTTING UP WITH YOUR SHITTY “SERVICE”! FUCK you, Adobe. You get NOTHING from me.
Somewhere on my PC I have a several page long rant about how many government websites in Canada require you to pay for an Adobe subscription in order to sign an “official” PDF.
Why the hell isn’t there a better option for filling out legally required, government mandated forms than giving a private corporation money? This bothers me so fucking much.
I’m curious about this. If demonstrable, many could sue for damages.
For these government websites, what is the typical user workflow?
- An embedded Adobe applet (e.g. fill, sign, and submit on the government website)
- Token-based API (e.g. redirect or spawn child window/tab, user fills and signs on adobe site, user returned to government site).
- Something else, such as a document upload button with server-side validation for digital signing?
You can’t fill it out with Firefox? I think pdf.js (which Firefox uses) supports PDF forms.
Nope, I’ve tried every other option I could think of. All the browsers, a few websites, ms office products, non ms office products, some graphic design tools… to Adobe’s credit they did a great job making sure people had to pay
Ahh, it’s probably using some proprietary features that only exist in Adobe products.
I’m not sure if they still sell it, but Adobe used to have a suite of form tools where the person filling out the form had to use Adobe Acrobat (it used some non-standard PDF form features), and the company collecting the form repeonses had to use software built on top of Adobe ColdFusion (which costs thousands of dollars per server). They really tried to lock people in to their form ecosystem.
What’s even more crazy, is Adobe has a system called something like “docusign”, where you can just fill the document in in-browser.
I’m fortunate that I haven’t yet hit a form I couldn’t just edit in GIMP!
Feeling daring? If you have to buy the software anyway, invoice the government department the price of the software.
My mom worked in accounting for the local government. You’d be surprised how many invoices are getting paid without double checking
This is why you could and should never be lazy to search how to cancel subscription.
Any corporation that does should just go bankrupt. Seriously, will you live fine without them? Of course. Will society continue to exist? Of course. Fuck these fucking scums.
I saw this coming, with no easy way to cancel the monthly subscription and decided to pay with a prepaid credit card instead…glad I did, it saved me from getting robbed.
Yeah, each time I “subscribe” for sth I use a prepaid card. Once the transaction is made, it destroys itself.
There used to be a “loophole”, where if you changed to a different plan, it restarted the 7 day period during which you could cancel with no fee. Not sure if they ever changed that though.
Thats how I got out of it without having to pay the hundreds of dollars in cancelation fees. I was fuming at the time too, and that was maybe close to 5 years ago now.
Apparently it still works. Came across a Short talking about it.
Funnily enough, I just had to sign up for the trial for reasons and made sure to cancel immediately after I was done. I was worried I’d just forget and pay for a month or something.
It’s so refreshing to actually have my tax dollars starting to fund consumer protection again.
If Trump gets in office again, it’s back to backsliding. Because apparently consumer protection is “big government” or some such shit.
It’s probably just your tax pennies unfortunately, your tax dollars are still going to the army and such.
I’ll take it over what the previous guy did.
Did EU bite USA?
let’s fucking goo
Great, now do Amazon
Over the barrel, please.
This gives warm and fuzzy feelings.
