... you guys are paying?

🏴‍☠️

No, that's the evolution of venture capitalism.

Step 1: groundbreaking service comes in that fills a market hole

Step 2: people flock to service

Step 3: service gets VC funding to continue operations, subsidising the users

Step 4: service gets "copied", competitors crop up, use VC funding to eke out their own marketshare while making things worse for everyone but themselves

Step 5: expansion plateaus as interest in service generalises (basically, everyone who could be interested, is already using it)

Step 6: VC funding depletes, company has to start making a profit - leading to price hikes, which is followed by other players in the market as that's how capitalism works

Step 7: price hikes not being enough, service tries to capitalise on their userbase (think restricting features to a higher paid tier, introducing new tiers that strip away features, introducing ads, etc.)

Step 8: market is saturated with plateaud services, user movement is minimal, and everybody hates it because it's expensive, and reintroduced the same problem the initial innovative service meant to fix.

That's why you build your own streaming service (with blackjack and hookers) and share that with everyone ...

Used to have 1 service with damn near everything.

Now there are 30 and none of them have much worth watching.

Right back to "500 channels, and nothing's on."

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

Oh.. a random bookmark folder in my browser..

Hey now, back when they cancelled sharing I cancelled my Netflix, and eeeeeveryone else said they were going to as well. Mines still cancelled, apparently others buckled? That's on them.

Everyone in 2027:

Fmhy

Never paying for any subscription 🤴

Row, row, row your boat...

Worse than that, since they killed the sharing off now a Netflix account isn't your account, it's an account you buy for one "household" location using one internet connection.

If you try to sign in to netflix on hotel tvs it won't let you, because that isn't part of your "household." If you have multiple internet connections in your house you can have that same issue inside your own home, because Netflix will decide the internet connection you use most is your "household" connection and the other one doesn't count as being in your "household" even if it's in the next room.

If you travel a lot or have an atypical internet setup in your own house Netflix will deny you access and tell you to buy a subscription for that location.

Pay? Lol.

My proton account costs less than $80/yr.

That's less than $7/mo.

Considering a person can easily pay $45/mo for multiple services, I'm already ahead.

You know, once I break even on all of the storage and network equipment I bought for the home lab. Two years . Three, tops. I shouldn't need to buy any more storage for a long long…

How have I already used 16TB?

Subscriptions?
I only pay for prescriptions.

Refuse to pay. If we all just refused to pay, they would have to change.

But too many people don't care, so I guess we'll all just suffer.

I'm a Luddite

I'm still absolutely unaware of what the "fediverse" is, or how lemmy works

I took two months to figure out how to Chromecast to a TV when something changed and I couldn't follow basic instructions from Google

And yet, even I am able to easily find sites to watch the shit I want to that requires paying shitty 'Murican companies (mostly I enjoy SBS and ABC stuff, because I live in Australia and they have wonderful offerings for all who live here for free)

discs for the win

I cut the cord when netflix was just mail order CDs. The moment they started their bullshit with password sharing, I canceled my sub and never went back. Hulu got the axe too. If you live long enough, you either die a hero, or become the villain. Nextflix decided to become the villain.

Stremio baby

They planned it this way. Netflix admitted it at the demo to ad sales execs. They deliberately priced streaming low and ran off investor funds because they new they'd get valuable information for ads since streaming is much more monitoring than broadcast.

If you have a VPN then change to a cheap country and get cheaper services.

Jailbroken firestick. Its a bit of a cat and mouse game with which app will work, but its pretty great.

S T R E A M I O

I mean... it's entertainment. It's not like they are offering some basic utilities. Buy it if you think it's worth it, don't buy it if you don't. Plenty of cheap alternatives on TV or in a library. I really don't remember Netflix of Apple promising to entertain everyone as cheaply as possible. They were always there to make money.

If only they never caught on

I might be a unique form of grump: I recognize we get gypped by modern streaming services, but I still appreciate that the internet gave us greater breadth of choice than old cable options.

There’s indie and foreign streaming services that cost a lot less than the Netflix oligopoly, yet people never even seem to look for those, and just turn to piracy as their form of protest. “I can’t live without this show, and so I’ll give these services my vote of confidence, as well as political ammunition to enact higher levels of internet traffic spying!” What a genius self-serving plan.

I have every major steaming service, usually wait for a super deal like AMC + for $30 for 12 months. HBO max is included with my phone plan, peacock with my internet bill, paramount plus with another service I subscribe to, Amazon with Amazon prime subscription, I got more then I need with streaming service. Actually pay for Netflix and Apple plus