I’ve been unmotivated in the past but i think it’s time to sort out an alternative.

  • @LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    2072 months ago

    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.

    • SSTF
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      1022 months ago

      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.

      • @CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        192 months ago

        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.

          • @CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            42 months ago

            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.

              • @CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                42 months ago

                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.

      • Kairos
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        72 months ago

        Subscriber counts went down in the affected areas.

          • Kairos
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            32 months ago

            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.

        • Rhynoplaz
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          102 months ago

          Hey now, I don’t think like this, but sometimes it’s just not worth the effort to think unlike this.

        • @garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

          • The Snark Urge
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            22 months ago

            Yeah nah, but a small remark about dropping the streaming service for doing something bad could be reasonable

    • @solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      512 months ago

      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?

      • @Graphy@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        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.

    • @aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com
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      102 months ago

      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.

      • @LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        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:

        WILL CABLE TV BE INVADED BY COMMERCIALS?

        e: a quote:

        Indeed, even pay television, once assumed to be secure from commercial interests, is attracting some attention as a potential vehicle for advertising. Admittedly, such leading pay cable services as Home Box Office and Showtime, whose programming consists primarily of theatrically released films, staunchly maintain that they will never accept advertising.

        • JWBananas
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          52 months ago

          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.

      • @Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        52 months ago

        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.

      • @bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
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        32 months ago

        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.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️
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    2 months ago

    The answer is apathy.

    You have to remember that most users simply don’t care. The majority of consumers are some combination of either not technologically savvy or just outright intimidated by technology, are not very well educated, are incredibly reluctant to read, are not particularly observant, will not leave their routines or comfort zones without very significant motivation, and have spent their entire lives being the very frog in that gradually boiling pot of ever more numerous and intrusive advertising to the point that they just accept this as “normal.” They’re busy. They don’t read tech headlines. They don’t understand what’s going on under the hood, and nor do they want to.

    Normal people don’t see the world like us nerds do. I am positive that these streaming services (and many other businesses) have studied this and understand it very well. If they lose 1% of their business which was made up by vocal nerds, but whatever odious change the just rolled out results in an increase in profit that is greater than the revenue from those subscriptions lost, they’ll go ahead and do it anyway.

    They think they have a captive audience because by and large they functionally do have a captive audience. This stuff works, and people keep paying for it en masse.

    • @leisesprecher@feddit.org
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      362 months ago

      I mean, look at Reddit. Huge uproar last year, nothing happened really.

      Pretty much every service, platform, app has become worse over the last two or three years. But people keep using them. And not for a lack of alternatives. They are actively hostile against change and many really don’t care. They are so used to being fucked over, squeezed for pennies and bombarded with bullshit ads, that they gave up.

      The same thing happens in politics, btw. People just vote whatever - if at all, because they already expected to be fucked over. All those activists you see on TV or online are a tiny minority.

  • @Zorque@lemmy.world
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    522 months ago

    You might ditch, but they have enough data that says enough other people aren’t going to.

    Just remember whenever you’re annoyed by something and think “why is this a thing? This annoys me so it shouldn’t happen”, there’s thousands of other people who can live with it or just don’t give a shit.

  • @InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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    392 months ago

    Streaming services have a catastrophic problem they didn’t see coming.

    As they massively expanded the viewing market, they also gave very accurate viewing metrics compared to broadcast TV.

    Also, the many, MANY offerings cut the viewing pie into smaller pieces.

    And this is the expectation, mostly because while you might stay with a super hit like GoT, they’re super expensive, and huge risks if they don’t take off (see acolyte). Cost sensitive people are likely to subscribe for the season then cancel, or just subscribe the month the season finishes.

    The alternative is to try to hook you on a bunch of shows, which means having a ton of them and hoping they nail your niche. People are less willing to do this, but it works if you have more disposable income, or value streaming more.

    In any case, they can’t afford all the shows they have to put on, it’s all or nothing now, before they might watch lost on ABC one night, then CBS walker Texas ranger might let the kid fall on the ground the next, but now you have to keep them entertained most days, that’s a shit-ton of content. HBO has it worse, they’re losing their old cable revenue, and their productions are stupid expensive, and they’re one of the winners. Disney has it even worse because disney+ cannibalizes both their cinema sales and they have to put up their crown jewels, star wars and the mcu, all on the same service, devaluing both. Fortunately focusing on kids programming helps because parents basically have to have Disney+ just as a matter of course.

    This barely worked on broadcast because the different channels could share the load and cut the ad pie into larger pieces,

    If they could count on must-watch blockbusters (ie GoT, which really hurt them when they screwed the landing and killed rewatchability), they could pull it off, but that’s so risky, it’s betting everything on one spin of the roulette wheel.

    • I liked reading your response. Wish I had a meaningful response other than there is no way I’m going to feel bad for media companies. If they’ve painted themselves in a corner I’m sure it was greed that got them there.

      • @InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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        102 months ago

        Don’t feel bad at all for them.

        They celebrated like crazy when things were good, now the economics is hitting them like it should.

        They, like everyone else in life, will have to figure out how to manage, or not.

  • @Etterra@lemmy.world
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    372 months ago

    Because for every one person like you and me with zero ad tolerance, there’s hundreds, thousands of plebs who can’t be bothered to drop the service. It’s the inverse of the whale (re. microtransactions) problem.

    • @BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      152 months ago

      I know a few people that actually claim to like watching ads. They have made consumerism part of their identity and they are proud of it.

      • @WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Not having commercials has really only been a thing for, at best, like 15 years. Broadcast and cable TV has always had commercials with the exception of specialty channels like HBO and Showtime and a few others.

        Streaming only overtook cable TV in viewership in 2020. Even in 2022, cable and broadcast TV still made up 56% of viewership.

        • @Narauko@lemmy.world
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          32 months ago

          Cable TV started out as “pay for your access and you won’t get ads”. It enshitified into its current state, and streaming is literally a rerun. Give it a few more years and you will have price bundles for streaming services where you have to pay for peacock to get Disney. They might even bundle it with ISP services.

          • @WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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            32 months ago

            No, cable was developed to deliver standard TV (i.e., programming with regular commercials) to places that couldn’t get broadcast TV. It has always been a subscription service and has always had commercials. It was also always “bundled” with a selection of channels. You couldn’t even choose what came in your bundle until much later.

            • @Narauko@lemmy.world
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              12 months ago

              That depends. Yes, the cable standard did carry broadcast TV with commercials, but a big selling point in the beginning was also the existence of cable only paid TV channels that did not have commercials. Premium cable as an offshoot of cable only networks also did not have commercials, it was a major selling point. As the medium expanded and the channel breakdown shifted commercials came back in a big way, and even many premium channels got commercials. Prime examples would be USA Networks, HBO, Nickelodeon, and quite a few more.

  • @Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca
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    322 months ago

    Wait till they drop you as a customer by cancelling your payment tier,then send you countless begging letters over the next month begging you to return. If you wanted my money that badly, why did you cancel me NETFLIX???

    • @Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      102 months ago

      Was at the fair and some lady was loudly announcing selling a streaming device that would stream all movies and shows for free. I asked how she could do that legally? She said Congress in 2011 passed the streaming act. Said any movie or show that is streamed once is by law afterwards public domain.

      Someone should tell Disney Plus. Does anyone heard of this?

        • @Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          What I was thinking. I.was trying to figure out how she was allowed to have a booth at the fair. Damn wish I taken a pic it was a large booth and she had several tvs up. It was definitely a streaming device that was pirating shows and movies.

          I heard of these boxes online before but if I remember correctly they worked for a time before suddenly being blocked or whatever then you just have a brick of a device.

          • @yamanii@lemmy.world
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            32 months ago

            They can’t brick the box, they take down the IPTV server and most people just don’t have the knowledge to find another and put the url in the app.

            • @Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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              22 months ago

              Well this is the Tulsa Oklahoma state fair most people that would buy one of those boxes are not the brightest bunch.

  • @ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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    302 months ago

    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.

    • Bene Gesserit Witch
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      2 months ago

      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.

  • @wildcardology@lemmy.world
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    262 months ago

    Remember Netflix’s password sharing ban outrage? It didn’t work, they gained more subscribers. People stay because they don’t know how to sail the high seas or are too lazy to do it.

  • @blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works
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    252 months ago

    If they increase prices by 20% and lose 15% of their customer base, that’s an increase in profit.

    If they increase their ad duration by 50% and lose 15% of their customer base, that’s a huge increase in profit.

  • Obinice
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    242 months ago

    Because how else am I going to get those deep creases out of my blouses!

    • @rammer@sopuli.xyz
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      52 months ago

      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.

      • Obinice
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        22 months ago

        Excellent advice 👚

        Do you remember when EXTREME IRONING!!! was a thing?

  • @_pete_@lemmy.world
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    222 months ago

    Because the “you wouldn’t steal a car” nonsense scares a lot of people off

    Because some people want to support the creators of content but digital downloads from iTunes or whatever are more expensive than getting a month of a streaming service

    Because there is a level of convenience of having thousands of hours of content at your fingertips without having to store content locally or finding it on a “dodgy” website. Setting up torrents / usenet is more work than giving someone your credit card number

    Because a lot of people don’t know where to find content and if they did they don’t know the difference between a 480p avi vs a 2160p HDR DV MKV and get confused with torrents and file formats and how to get them on their TV.

    Because - at the moment - the ads aren’t that bad, I got one ad at the start and one episode in the middle of an episode of Gen V - obviously they’ll add more until it’s as bad as cable but they’re not there yet.

  • @Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    212 months ago

    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.

    • Zement
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      22 months ago

      What in turn is short sighted. A new age of Piracy is on the rise my friends… time to sail again.

  • @marx2k@lemmy.world
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    182 months ago

    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.