I’ve been unmotivated in the past but i think it’s time to sort out an alternative.
Because they know most people are too lazy, too addicted, too lacking in tech for any other solution, so they’ll take the abuse.
ironically I only use the free add supported ones except for amazon but thats more due to my wife.
already ditched them most of them and moved to self hosting movies, TV shows and music. I’m still paying for music but the latest drama of losing tons of classics on YouTube music due to SESAC licensing has me rethinking what I’m even paying for.
Their entire survival hinges on keeping investment money flowing, which means they essentially have to lie and over-promise.
A chronic issue plaguing the entire tech and media sector right now. Line must go up no matter the costs.
A: they’re betting most people will accept it, and they’re right. The same thing happened in the early 80s when cable television advertised themselves as the pay-for-ad-free service, then started sneaking ads in. People complained, sure, but we all saw the outcome. They got away with it.
B: Greed, capitalism, and fuck you.
A: they’re betting most people will accept it, and they’re right.
Yes. Remember when Netflix put a stop to password sharing and the internet went aflame with people declaring that Netflix had shot itself in the foot? Netflix subscriber counts went up.
The average person will put up with so much more of this nonsense than techie people will.
Exactly. These companies are governed by profits. To expect anything other than greed from them is foolish.
It’s why I highly recommend Fmovies, sudo-lol, and others. The barrier to entry is literally a browser and ublock origin and you can watch just about anything.
You can send someone a link to an episode and they can watch it. No sign ups, no ads (with ad block), and pretty decent service. No explaining what a torrent is. No VPN (though I recommend it of course).
Just pure content.
How important is a vpn - in your opinion?
It depends on your threat profile. I don’t go so far as to use it at home unless I’m downloading torrents or watching porn, since my legislators don’t have a fucking clue how the Internet works and thinks they can PrOtEcT tHe ChIlDrEn by blocking porn.
I’ve started to use VPN when I’m on guest wifis, even encrypted ones. I don’t want their owners to know what sites I visit.
Do you live in where I live, that sounds exactly like my country
I live in the US. If you live in a state or country that’s totalitarian, then yes a VPN is probably a good idea, tor if you can handle the latency.
It’s only a matter of time until both of those technologies are made illegal.
It’s time to start shaming people who think like this
Hey now, I don’t think like this, but sometimes it’s just not worth the effort to think unlike this.
I’m just as angry as the next guy but I’m not gonna shame my boomer mom for not being able to figure out pirating or how to stream things to her tv. Could barely get her to figure out her tv man.
Boomers are perfectly capable of figuring this stuff out. I mean they managed to figure out and ruin so many other tech related things.
Yeah nah, but a small remark about dropping the streaming service for doing something bad could be reasonable
Subscriber counts went down in the affected areas.
But total revenue increased.
I’m saying that it’s false to insinuate subscribers going up due to this change. That’s false. Anything about total revenue is a completely different sentence. And it likely decreased or stayed about the same as the United States is more or less the most expensive reigon.
Perhaps they hid it among a period of growth to fool investors.
Subscribers went down while monthly fees went up.
I’ll upvote dissenting opinions for the sake of argument.
Ohh right I didn’t account for that.
I already wasn’t using them by then. I couldn’t stop harder.
i haven’t had cable, or even a tv, in many years. stayed at a hotel the other day and flicked on the tv because the internet was out (helene), and was flabbergasted that for every 2 minutes of programming, there was at least 5 minutes of the same commercials over and over. people fucking watch this shit? on purpose?
When my wife and I stay at a hotel we watch cable and put on like QVC shopping channels.
It’s fun to overreact and be like “this is 100 genuine silver painted lead.” Some of the channels will have like changing infographics that flash and explode every second as the price keeps dropping so we make wooshing sounds as it keeps falling to a new low.
Ye ol bait and switch
Point A is covered by the last part of point B
Cable television never advertised that. Cable TV started as a “community antenna” system that served people in valleys with existing off-the-air broadcast channels (which had ads); the existence of those systems created a market for satellite-fed channels like HBO (which was always a separate subscription and ad-free) and TBS/CNN (which always carried ads). Other than the premium channels like HBO/Showtime/Cinemax, cable channels have had ads from the beginning.
Once the small cable systems and the media publishers both got consolidated, we started seeing content licensing deals and higher costs to the subscriber to pay for it - but the channels (MTV, Nickelodeon, etc) always carried ads.
That’s not correct. My parents were early adopters and I remember there were newspaper articles when the first channel started showing ads.
…a newspaper is like a primitive early printed facebook.
It definitely did. I remember it vividly (I was alive back then). And I’m talking about the premium services, specifically (e: which was the point of my comparison: the premium paid services back then advertised no-ad service, then included ads, just like the premium streaming services are doing today).
Here’s an article from the NYT in 1981 on the topic:
Literally the first sentence of that article:
Although cable television was never conceived of as television without commercial interruption, there has been a widespread impression - among the public, at least -that cable would be supported largely by viewers’ monthly subscription fees.
The premium services mentioned in your quote (HBO, Showtime) also still do not run ads even today.
Yes and no. Networks had ads but cable began inserting their own ads in addition to the network ads. When I ran a company I did large media buys with cable companies. I would buy ads from the regional cable company which would air in between the national ads of Comedy Central, Discovery, etc.
My steamers don’t have any ads.
Well, I might add to it soon enough if the cramps are any indication…
They’re banking on their service still being better. In the short term they assume their particular selection of content will provide some inertia to your decision to move, and long term they expect all of the other options are going to do the same thing. Eventually, you’ll only be able to stream with commercials, and they’ll be back to the balance of their content being the only deciding factor.
I think that’s definitely part of it. I think another part is that they don’t do ads right away so people will switch to them, then they add them assuming people will either forget to cancel, or just decide that since they’re already there they may as well keep it anyway.
I think about this a lot. In the 2000s, there would be all these music services that hype themselves up. The Downloadable Music Wars. We all used Napster or whatever pirating tool and it was just easier than paying. In the end, they were all smoke and mirrors and the services died out, while Apple and their iPods won.
In the late 2010s was the PC gaming Wars, Steam was really getting some heat. Not just other e-commerce stores like Epic, but also game streaming services like onLive and PC Game Pass. Again, all these wack ass companies (wtf Origin) and most of them have either folded or are on life support and migrated to Steam.
We’re currently in the Streaming Wars. Probably the second or third version of this war, since the first war killed Blockbuster. I honestly don’t believe many of them will survive past 2030. For sure Netflix and Hulu. Maybe half of them die, and six more will crop up. Who knows.
But what I do know is that whenever these “wars” occur, you see a lot of the shittier companies get worse and worse. And if you never picked a side and did your own thing (ignore them or sail the open seas), you get to look back and laugh at these clowns.
The merging of Hulu and Disney got me thinking that in the end they’ll probably all merge into one streaming service with individual channels for each, like ‘the Hulu channel’, etc. Essentially just reinventing cable.
🏴☠️
Because they’re also going after piracy as hard as they can
Meh, for less than the cost of any streaming service, a VPN subscription gets someone else to laugh at all those letters.
Because netflix tested it and it was worth it for them. The increased revenue from ads more than made up the subscription fees of users lost.
What in turn is short sighted. A new age of Piracy is on the rise my friends… time to sail again.
As Netflix constant raises showed, not enough people leave so they will enshitify to the max
Wife and I started watching the boys on prime. That’s when I realized Amazon is putting ads in the stream.
I just ended up downloading all the seasons in an hour and it’s been no ads on Kodi since.
Because how else am I going to get those deep creases out of my blouses!
Do your own ironing! It’s quite easy. Heat the iron to the proper temperature. Not too hot. Use steam liberally. Use an ironing board and a sleave attachment. Turn your garment around so you can reach everywhere. Some creases are meant to be there. Make sure they are straight before ironing them.
Excellent advice 👚
Do you remember when EXTREME IRONING!!! was a thing?
I’ve ditched all of them except the Disney/Hulu bundle, and that’s only because Amex gives me back $7 a month of the cost.
Amazon Prime used to be okay as a Prime customer, but now you can’t watch a 24 minute show without seeing like five ads. I tried to watch an episode of Invincible and there were two ads before the show even started, two in the middle of the show, and one at the end. It’s freaking insane.
I barely even watch video these days, I get way more mileage out of a good music service like Qobuz or Tidal.
