I’ve been unmotivated in the past but i think it’s time to sort out an alternative.
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.
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.
Which is functionally a captive audience.
Remember when Netflix was totally dead and doomed when they cracked down on password sharing? And then it turned out people just upgraded to the new plan and kept on consuming.
Consumers do be fickle
Which new plan?
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.
Already lots of great answers, but I’ll add a note about intentional barriers to exit.
Many services tend to make it easy to sign up and comparably more difficult to quit. So while people always can leave and take their business elsewhere, they might not have the motivation to do it. I imagine each additional click in a form deters more and more people. OP mentioned being unmotivated, and these barriers play into that.
It’s like wandering around in Ikea. You could use a map and chart out the fastest route to find what you need and get out. But it’s so much easier to follow the little path they draw out on the floor and look at everything, which makes you way more likely to impulsively buy something extra.
You are a statistic. The question isn’t do you exist but how many of you exist. When there is enough money to be made by serving people like you with fewer ads someone will do it. Until then though you are not worth the money it costs too keep you so good riddance.
of course the above is why some demographics don’t watch much tv. They somewhat care but not enough to serve those demographict.
may I suggest you take up tatting, mandolin, welding, bike riding… there are a long list of other things you can do with your time either on a theme/variation from above or not mentioned. These are all hobbies and you can find some to fill all that time you free o up.
How about i just keep doing the things I enjoy. Thanks.
Are you like an ad guy or something. Cause you write like one.
Oh, sorry. Could be worse. Could like me and just be bad a writing, naturally. Jk I’m super dyslexic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I already wasn’t using them by then. I couldn’t stop harder.
It’s time to start shaming people who think like 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
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.
Exactly. These companies are governed by profits. To expect anything other than greed from them is foolish.
Ye ol bait and switch
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.
Point A is covered by the last part of point B
If you even started using streaming services, I’ve got bad news for you.
If you started using steaming services on the other hand, you might be a god danged genius
Because they know most people are too lazy, too addicted, too lacking in tech for any other solution, so they’ll take the abuse.
Hulu is treating me with impunity when I reported errors with their apps. Hulu, an eminently cancelable service that a lot of people never paid for in the first place.
Sail the seven seas, friends. These people deserve despondency.
Everyone here forgets cable was under threat of piracy until streaming came along. They think the US has cracked down but pirates have gotten more advanced. I just can’t get over these streaming services not realizing if you take away the only safe port then all that is left is piracy.
If a million porn sites can make streaming video work, then YouTube is replaceable.
I wonder if they police copyright videos, or if we’ll all just be watching the office on xxx.com soon
didnt full movies used to be uploaded to pornhub?
I know I’ve heard of some sports broadcasts like world cup getting uploaded to various sites. Wouldn’t be surprised if movies were already there as well.
That’s where I first saw the Rexenge of the Sith ultimate edition.
It’s easier to ignore ads on porn sites because they’re usually also porn, and that’s why you’re there in the first place.
As Netflix constant raises showed, not enough people leave so they will enshitify to the max
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.
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.
Eh, the cycle of collapse and consolidation will hit the streaming system exactly the same as it would any other industry. I feel like the system will stabilize around 3-5 big services - maybe amazon, hbo, and disney, with youtube premium and apple TV as the “also rans” - which will all have premium price points and ads, and the average person who subscribes to them will be paying about as much (after inflation) as they used to pay for cable.
That’s exactly what will happen.
There will just be a lot more fuckery involved, a super-premium tier that doesn’t cycle out content but costs 3x as much and such.
ironically I only use the free add supported ones except for amazon but thats more due to my wife.
