cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/28397398

The suspension triggered strong responses across social media and beyond. Hashtags like #CancelDisneyPlus and #CancelHulu trended as users shared screenshots of their canceled subscriptions.

With cancellations surging, many subscribers reported technical issues. On Reddit’s r/Fauxmoi, one post read, “The page to cancel your Hulu/Disney+ subscription keeps crashing.”

    • Bongles@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      On one hand, could be a “crash”. On the other hand, tons of websites break when they get a little extra traffic.

      Side tangent, seems odd to me this is still a thing. Most company websites aren’t hosted on premises, so do these services like (i assume) AWS not scale for when there’s traffic? Squarespace has been advertising for years that it will scale up if there’s extra traffic. I’ve never tested it but still.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        If your page is just static, e.g. no login, no interaction, everyone always sees the same thing then it scales easily. Scaling means you copy the site to more servers. Now imagine a user adds a comment. Now you need to add the comment to every copy of your site, so that everyone sees it regardless of which server they use. So a comment creates more work the more servers you use. And this is where scaling becomes a complex science, that you need to manually prepare for as a software developer. You need to figure out what data will be stored where and accessed how.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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          1 month ago

          Caching servers, they self replicate when a change is committed, then send back a signal to main server that task has completed

            • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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              1 month ago

              Oh right, I skipped a part. It is not really a dev complexity prep issue. You build the database that serves the comments etc in as of in one place, then you deploy cache servers for scaling. They self replicate, so a comment in California gets commited to the dbase, the server in new York pulls the info over from the Cali change, it sends back that it is synced with the change. And vice versa. The caching servers do the work, not your program.

              • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
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                30 days ago

                That entirely depends on your application. What you described is one possible approach, that will only work in specific circumstances.

                • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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                  30 days ago

                  Besides application specifics, its how the internet works currently to give low latency. AWS, Azure, Linode etc have data centers across the globe to replicate data near where the people are.

      • okmko@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        It could also be poor graceful failure. What we see as a crash may be from some unavailability deep in a long pipeline of services.

      • Kissaki@feddit.org
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        1 month ago

        You have to design for scalability. Bottlenecks may be wherever. Even if their virtual server CPU and RAM can scale up, other stuff may be bottlenecks. Maybe the connection to the DB. Maybe the DB is elsewhere and doesn’t scale. Can’t really reasonably guess from the outside.

        Mass cancellation is not usually a thing they would design around bottle-necks. It also doesn’t add value to them.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I feel like Disney has internal stuff? I listened to a podcast where an ex employee changed the fonts on a bunch of stuff to be wingdings, etc, and made everything unusable.

  • drath@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The classic card payment and subscription model is actually insane. You literally have to beg companies to stop taking money from you. Good thing it is changing with more modern payment systems - you literally just stop paying for services you don’t need and it’s on them to stop providing them to you. Nothing is ever charged off my account without an explicit action from me.

  • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I cancelled my Disney sub when the Gaza genocide first started. Glad its catching on. Disney is run by assholes.

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    crashes

    Maybe, but could it also be an intentional dark pattern to make it difficult to cancel?

    • nalinna@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      They use AWS and specifically design their software to be able to dynamically scale, ever since Wandavision crashed their playback.

      Is it possible that they never entertained having to make their cancellation page scalable? Sure. Is it more likely that they intentionally haven’t made it scalable? Yes.

      • MajinBlayze@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Could also be a decision to limit how much the service scales as more people use it. It’s not like they are incentivised to throw a bunch of hardware at the problem when the problem in question is “people are unable to leave the platform”

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      Unlikely. I was trying to contact support and that was completely broken also. Unlikely if they were just trying to make cancellation harder. Likely if they were overloaded.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      Anytime I want to cancel something and the company makes it difficult I just cancel the credit card side of it. Sod them. That’s what they get if they want to play silly buggers.

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      even if that is the case it’s a good sign imo. it means people were causing an impact big enough for them to notice and take action.

    • Wynnstan@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It’s amazing to think that people were fooled into thinking a greedy litagatious mega global corporate conglomerate like Disney was actually progressive in the first place instead of just following market trends for maximum shareholder profit.

    • ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      Nah, cancellation resources are always minimal. Doesn’t make sense to pay for serious hardware to please people on their way out the door. Every service I’ve ever had to cancel has always been a maze and generally more annoying, slow, and cumbersome than the signup process.

      • DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        Yeah well when the laws regarding this allow mass psychological manipulation for profits then it’s on the countries for enabling the greediest pieces of shits to do this.

        Edit:Antilaw suits everywhere but Mark Zuckerberg creating an entire algorithm dictating your view on Instagram and Facebook is completely fine using psychology to manipulate everyone.

  • LOGIC💣@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I canceled my Hulu/Disney+ subscription two days ago. A long time ago, I had an absolute boycott on Disney because I hated their hypocrisy when it came to copyright law. They tried to extend their copyrights indefinitely, even though the majority of their IPs came from the public domain. They were like a dog who only knows how to fetch the ball, but won’t ever release it.

    When Disney acquired Pixar and was the American distributor for Studio Ghibli, and bought Star Wars, and distributes Marvel, at some point I eventually relented and stopped my boycott. I stopped caring as much about hypocrisy, in general. But never again. It was obviously a mistake to ever give them money. They will never get anything from me again.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’ll admit, I’m hypocritical on some things. Disney became an easier choice for me when all their stuff became kinda bad.

    • Jaysyn@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Same here, except I stopped giving a shit about Marvel & Star Wars when they bought them.

      • SavageCoconut@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Same here. When they bought SW, 1313 was cancelled. I remember i had a friend who had faith in disney owning SW… he isn’t my friend anymore (because other things) but he won’t stop bashing disney for what they did to the IP, lol.

        • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          i had optimism they’d handle star wars well given how they handled marvel up to that point. unfortunately they learned absolutely zero lessons from that success.

  • Eezyville@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    MAGA hates Disney because of their current movies perceived “wokeness” so the big brained executives decided to piss of the Left as well by attacking the 1st Amendment and bowing down to the Right. Big brain move there.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      30 days ago

      the thing to understand is that for Disney it’s not always about the money. they control so much power over all media that they can inflict their world view on everyone through their propaganda streams. the performative wokeness that still sits within overall metanarratives about the value of the status quo? that’s for the dollar. cutting Jimmy Kimmel loose? that’s in alignment with their core values

    • Zron@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      “If we don’t let you leave you might forget you were mad at us and keep giving us money”

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      No it’s definitely crashing. Definitely nothing happening here, they’re not worried, or panicking, or anything. Everything Is Fine I Wouldn’t Say There’s A Problem At All. EVERYTHING IS ABSOLUTELY FINE. IT’S FINE