Just Youtube-things: Stock photo experiment - where pictures end up, how they are used

Image rights is a topic that not only keeps us busy as editors, but concerns every internet user who runs their own blog or website, or posts in social media. Because not every image that you find on the Internet via Google image search for lack of a suitable motif can be used for every purpose. If you want to stick to the rules, you have to check the image rights for the permitted forms of use and license rights, and in most cases give a source.

But what if you upload an image to a stock photo agency’s portfolio for almost completely free use and then just see what happens? So that you don’t have to do this experiment and don’t have to deal with possible consequences, STRG_F reporter Gunnar Krupp volunteered for this experiment … or rather his photo. For months and years he has been checking back and forth to see where his freely usable image is appearing. And some places where the use of stock photos seems to be the norm rather than the exception are creepy and spooky…or downright misleading indeed!

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What happens to my stock photo?

As early as 2019, Gunnar Krupp uploaded his photo of a very average, coffee-drinking normal guy to the Pixabay database for his experiment, which he accompanies with YouTube videos on the ARD and ZDF radio networks. Pixabay offers more than a million so-called stock photos for free and royalty-free use.

Gunnar and his colleagues came up with the idea after researching a company that sells relatively strange creams and jars. The boss presented on the company’s website, as it soon turned out, was a woman who used a stock photo that the photographer had made available on the Internet. So the boss of this company didn’t even exist. And that’s exactly what made the people at STRG_F really curious: Where do the images appear that are available on the Internet free of charge and license-free?

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Already in the first episode of the series, Gunnar quickly became a batminton enthusiast, his face ending up on Oktoberfest socks as a feasibility study, as a symbol in an article about Asperger’s or about how to recognize a sex offender. The first edition of the stock photo experiment is not only about Gunnar’s picture, but also about other stock photo motifs. You should take the 20+ minutes to check it out.

How is my stock photo doing after half a year?

A few months later, Gunnar has gone back on the hunt for his own photo and tried to get in touch with some of the people who used it. And right from the start it becomes clear that people are easily fooled with the stock photos.

For example, by using Gunnar’s likeness for invented product reviews or even as a profile picture on a dating portal. Talk about misrepresentation and such? A friend sent Gunnar an East Frisian booklet with Gunnar’s picture on the cover. Then he finally drives by to ask: “Why?” Or to Berlin to ask why a practice for speech therapy advertises with his face.

And after two years?

Even after two years, Gunnar is still making strange discoveries, and again and again one may ask oneself: How many of the pictures and opinions that we see on the Internet and in the real world are actually real – and how many are fake? Gunnar says in Episode 3 of his series: “People are being fooled with my picture.” However, Gunnar’s experiment is also a very interesting one because it can also show you what can happen with images. You really shouldn’t miss the series.