Adobe’s employees are typically of the same opinion of the company as its users, having internally already expressed concern that AI could kill the jobs of their customers. That continued this week in internal discussions, where exasperated employees implored leadership to not let it be the “evil” company customers think it is.
This past week, Adobe became the subject of a public relations firestorm after it pushed an update to its terms of service that many users saw at best as overly aggressive and at worst as a rights grab. Adobe quickly clarified it isn’t spying on users and even promised to go back and adjust its terms of service in response.
For many though, this was not enough, and online discourse surrounding Adobe continues to be mostly negative. According to internal Slack discussions seen by Business Insider, as before, Adobe’s employees seem to be siding with users and are actively complaining about Adobe’s poor communications and inability to learn from past mistakes.
“If our goal is truly to prioritize our users’ best interests (which, to be honest, I sometimes question), it’s astonishing how poor our communication can be. The general perception is: Adobe is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to F its users,” one employee wrote, echoing sentiments that the company makes it way too easy to hate them.
“Let’s avoid becoming like IBM, which seems to be surviving primarily due to its entrenched market position and legacy systems.”
Others seem to agree, adding that the company’s communication strategy is poor and that blog posts aren’t enough to correct misinformation that spreads online, referring to the deluge of content published on YouTube and social media that either inaccurately reported the situation or left critical information out.
“Watching the misinformation spread on social media like wildfire is really disheartening,” another employee wrote on Slack. “Still, a loud ‘F Adobe’ and ‘Cancel Adobe’ rhetoric is happening within the independent creator community that needs to be addressed.”
Employees have apparently been told to avoid addressing the currently published Terms of Use directly and instead point concerned users to the blog published last week, although some argue that isn’t enough and that Adobe needs to get to the root cause of these communications fumbles instead of chasing after each and putting out fires as they arise.
An Adobe spokesperson tells Business Insider that it has plans to roll out the updates to its terms of use by June 18.
“At Adobe, there is no ambiguity in our stance, our commitment to our customers, and innovating responsibly in this space. We welcome the opportunity to clarify our terms and our commitments and address concerns with our customers and community,” they add.
For what it’s worth, this latest pushback against Adobe does appear to be changing how the company communicates — for now. Adobe reached out directly to PetaPixel last week and has retained an open line of communication since which is a divergence from prior years where an external public relations team would be the only point of contact and questions would often go unanswered.
Business Insider‘s full report should be read here.
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