Because they HAVE to increase their share values year after year; just making billions isn’t good enough, they have to make more billions compared to the last year.
It’s truly pure greed, as streaming was amazing when it first started, and Netflix was making a killing even back then. But now, nope, fuck you all, we want more and more until we can’t squeeze anything more out from you.
It’s why I’ve increased my kodi/real debrid usage over the past few years
I’ve tried to argue a company that made $800k profit this year even tho they made $900k last year is still a profitable business and people unironically argue that company is dying and bad…
Big number = good Smaller number = bad
It works for them when dealing with shareholders
Even if the creators weren’t pissed, the entire selling point of streaming was on demand, ad free, and a large library to choose from. Every single streaming service that subdivided Netflix and Hulu’s content shares have reneged on that entire concept by creating smaller libraries, making them unaffordable, and now they’re shoehorning in ads if we won’t cough up more money.
It’s almost like a moral imperative to pirate from these fuckers.
Don’t forget that on-demand is being reduced as well now that many platforms are trickling out episodes for their marquee shows at a weekly rate. Looking at you Apple.
I much prefer the trickle of releases to a lump season dump.
It allows time to digest, discuss and catch up throughout the release schedule if you’re invested in the story. You can convince your friends to watch a few episodes to catch up and then watch the end of the season together. You can read fan theories online, formulate your own, and overall each weekly episode can result in a lot of engaging fun interactions.
With a series dump you have to binge it and wait for others to do the same in order to talk about it. The whole time you’re actively avoiding spoilers from friends/coworkers and avoiding reading about it online. The end result is you disengage from the fandoms/communities while you are getting through the show, which to me takes a lot of the fun out of a big show.
I compare the difference between Stranger Things and GoT. To me these are probably two of the most significant pop-culture releases in the last decade or so.
Game of Thrones resulted in hundreds of thousands of theories every week online and in public. T-Shirts were made based on popular online theories that never panned out in season. You would rag on friends who guessed the plot twist wrong and deify those who got their predictions spot on. Especially in my demographic the two months GoT was on was all about GoT.
Stranger Things on the other hand, while still wildly popular hits differently. It’s much more of a build up to release, a week or two of “man that was awesome” followed by “I hope they make the next season soon.” Retroactive discussions happen for a while, but the discussions and the hype fizzles much more quickly.
If I want to watch a trickle release show in one dump, I still can, I just wait until the whole season out, reactivate the subscription. Then I binge it.
For me it’s much more fun to have an episode or two a week and build momentum through a season than it is to set off a one time firework.
If you trust any corporate media concern to not succumb to enshittification, then you deserve to watch your stupid commercials. You paid for the privilege because you enabled the abuser.
I prefer to get what I pay for and I pay for nothing, media-wise. If I watch ads, it’s because I’m watching something like the Super Bowl with my OTA DVR that’s playing on network TV. It’s free, so OK - commercials. If I’m watching anything else, it’s on my Plex server and there are no commercials.
I do pay for entertainment. I pay for experiences, like going to the movies, going to live rock shows, going to performances or exhibitions - all IRL - but that’s about it. I might consider paying for other entertainment options but there is one thing I won’t ever do: I won’t pay for media that I don’t own and I won’t watch commercials for media I paid for.
Edit: look at all the butthurt. Go ahead and keep paying through the nose then if you like it so much. I’m sure all the millionaires and billionaires who profit off your largesse will continue to treat you with the same kindness as they have in the past.
You understand that someone has to pay for that entertainment shit you use to kill your time with? You are literally shitting on people who are paying for you.
This is why I’m sailing the high seas again.
Because the underlying conditions are the same as last time.
I haven’t used streaming services in a couple of years. Now I’m just doing all piracy and watching it through my Jellyfin server
It just requires so much more foresight in planning what you’re going to watch.
Streaming services aren’t much better, they regularly didn’t have what I wanted to watch and I’m not subscribing to more than one. Now I’m subscribing to none and watch what I want instead of what Netflix has available.
Well I just download more or less everything that comes out lol. It’s like having my own streaming service with thousands if movies and shows available.
Not with enough server space.
Jellyfin Jellyseerr Radarr Sonarr Jackett Transmission
Rock and roller cola wars, I can’t take it anymore!
I’ve migrated to prowlarr from jackett. It’s far faster in searches.
I’ll do the same
Just here to remind everyone while piracy is important, it’s also very important to teach the less tech savy among your acquaintances how to pirate too. Conglomerates only learn when their bottom line is effected after all, so teach all your friends how to hoist that black flag.
IF you go down that route, there needs to be a warning: Do it properly, use a VPN if you are torrenting, get a usenet account if you want fast speeds that encrypts the connection and so on - basically, teach it correct. Because some countries or rather law agencies WILL hunt you down if they even get some hint of your actual IP-Address…
Or they send a DMCA to your ISP, and then your ISP gives you 3 warnings and a boot. VPN is the way.
Used DVDs at pawn shops and thrift stores ftw.
This. Just yesterday I bought a batch of films, DVD’s 1$ and Blu-Rays 1,5$ a piece. And they were mostly new films.
DVD’s are perfectly fine for TV and Blu-Rays for my projector.
I never jumped to the streaming bandwagon and my disc collection has grown exponentially in the last few years, since most people gave up on discs. Their loss.
And it’s a heave-ho-hi-ho, comin’ down the Bay
Stealin’ films and movies and all the other games
And it’s a ho-hey-hi-hey, corpos bar your doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Francisco’s mighty shores!
Well, you’d think the local corpos would know that I’m at large
But just the other day I found an unprotected RAR
I snuck up right behind them and they were none the wiser
I copied their film and shared it, and screwed the advertisers
Beautiful take on the Arrogant Worms classic! <3
Thanks! It’s one of my favourite songs, though I usually prefer the Captain Tractor version, heh
Paid services with ads are unconscionable and should not be supported, but I do watch Tubi or Pluto sometimes, and it’s not nearly as bad as the amount of ads I see on my parents’ screen with cable
I’m amazed that they have any customers paying to listen to ads. I wont stand for it and I find it surprising others would.
Yo-ho, all together, hoist the coooolors high…
It is worse than broadcast.
If you learn anything about screenwriting, there are certain patterns and structures you follow (like acts in a play) to accommodate commercials, like to build suspense and keep the viewer interested and not changing the channel.
Streaming never had this, if you look at shows written for these platforms. The writers either ignored or didn’t even know about these conventions.
Now adding commercials later, it is even more annoying to the viewer as the original material was not meant to accommodate them.
Streaming just keeps fucking up. I already canceled my netflix. I’m on basic cable for network tv and I just pirate everything else.
Why are you on basic cable for network tv? It’s broadcast over the air in HD for free.
Some people live in areas with poor service even with beefy antennas.
Wait… They add advertising in the middle of shows? I thought it would be at the beginning, between episodes, on the UI, etc.
Nope, it’s classic ad breaks, but since the shows weren’t made expecting them the ads just appear suddenly every X minutes instead.
I let all my streaming subscriptions die off when my debit card expired this year and I haven’t looked back. Gaming is cheaper and more entertaining. All the new movies I would want to watch never make it to streaming services anyway (without an additional rental fee)
That’s all fine and good but I want to point out so everyone can watch out for this - sometimes if you have a subscription and your card expires or gets lost/stolen and replaced, companies can somehow get your new card info without you giving it to them and keep your shit active. So you can’t assume that a new card will take care of old subscriptions that you totally forgot about. You have to check your statements.
What I want to know is how much money could insurance companies (cough, Liberty Mutual, cough) POSSIBLY be saving people when they are buying ads on every video on Youtube.
I always wondered what if someone started an insurance business that didn’t spend billions on advertisements, it just offered genuinely lower rates. When you sign up you have to sign something promising you’ll tell 2 other people.
There are plenty of insurance companies that are like this. They’re significantly cheaper than the nationally advertised insurance options.
The Market Basket of insurance companies - solid, quality products, at a reasonable price, because they simply don’t do any marketing.
I have a hard time understanding why a option to view it either with ads or pay money to not show ads is bad.
I understand it’s frustrating that you already pay and still see ads.
In the end you choose to buy something from a company which sells something. Either you pay with your money or with your attention if you don’t want to pay, just don’t use their service.
I much rather have the option to pay to get rid of ads than not having it like it was in the 90ies.
Because it’s a gradual death-march to pricing out the ad free tiers entirely. Right now we’re in the ‘illusion of choice’ phase. But ad free tiers will continue to become more and more expensive until one day corporations can turn around and justify removing them by blaming consumers. “We’re getting rid of our ad-free plans due to lack of consumer interest.” It won’t be a lack of interest. It’ll be a lack of affordability. And you can be damn sure once the ad-free plans are gone those ad based plans will end up priced at the rate for the old ad-free options. It’s corporate gaslighting and it’s happening right now.
Then stop paying for the service if you’re not happy with it. Vote with your wallet.
Like, corporations need to make money… People understand that, right? They going to try to do things to make money. As a consumer, you decide the point at which the value is no longer there for you.
You’re not entitled to streaming services. It’s not a human right. I understand that it sucks to be priced out of a service you like.
Then don’t be part of society is the root of that argument.
Don’t want to be tracked? Don’t use a phone. Or a car.
Don’t want to support exploitative publishers? Don’t read.
Can’t afford rent?
Can’t find a job?
It’s all just blaming people for corporate bullshit.
I would not equate any of those things with streaming entertainment, but okay.
For the record, I’m not blaming people. I don’t even know how you could read that from my message. Of course it’s the corp’s fault for raising prices. But as a consumer, you do get to decide when the value is no longer there. No one is forcing you to pay for Netflix.
The point everyone is making is that this, along with everything else we have the “choice” to consume, is all a greater trend. I’m sure you’ve heard the word “enshittification,” well it was the word of the year and it’s on everyone’s lips for a reason.
Things are getting worse but the price keeps going up. This has long been a trend, called many names, from “shrinkflation” to “enshittification” to “planned obsolescence.” For decades this has been happening. Products aren’t built to last, companies aren’t competing for quality and customer satisfaction. The price goes up across the board, but everyone is making cheaper products. We’re just being squeezed harder because people have less money to spend. And people are tired of this process. We are the only ones paying. There is an imbalance in the way capitalism is running—and those anti capitalists among us will point out this has always been inevitable…but that’s another story. Operating under the assumption that capitalism is the system we are clinging to:
The tipping point for all of this is that corporate profits have been at record highs. Stock buybacks and rising CEO pay and out of control inequality. It’s all part of the same problem: we aren’t the “consumers” as such in this late stage capitalist world. We are being squeezed harder and harder across the board, our paychecks dwindle in buying power…the answer to this isn’t “well, stop paying for Netflix.”
People are pissed because this is one small kernel of the larger problem. We are products and we are the sacrificial lambs for the almighty stock price. We aren’t catered to as an integral part of the capitalist system. We are pushed further and further down to make space for record profits.
They take away account sharing, then they raise the price, then they lay off workers, then they force ads in our face…and then report how well they’re doing. It’s not just about Netflix, it’s not just about ads. It’s about everything. Our very apparent place in this system. We are an integral part of their capitalist system. But we’re treated like fodder. It kind of should piss you off.
So back in the day we did this thing called boycotting and it worked pretty well. If people didn’t care they just kept their mouth shut and their lives improved anyway
I’m using this streaming service called Sonarr+plex. No ads so far.
Kinda, Plex still changes my homepage with their ads once in a while
One of many reasons to use Jellyfin instead of Plex.
Okay, I need to say it: having an ad for your own programming is still an ad.
Paramount. I’m looking at you, Paramount. I don’t want to watch your shitty movie/TV show/whatever about the shitty mom from the His Dark Materials series losing another kid. Stop playing the same goddamn ad for it before every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Especially since you feel the need to double whatever goddamn volume I have set in the opening to the ad. I pay for the subscription, I already bought your product. Fuck off with your shitty ad.
I mean, others do it too and it pisses me off, but I’m on Season 2 of TNG and I may just have to get it some other way and canceling Paramount because that ad has started really getting to me.
Still annoying, but hit back and restart the episode. So far that’s caused it to start without the ad for me.
That is the problem. Why should i be doing that? Aren’t I paying them for my convenience? At this rate pirating sites make me do lesser hassle than the legit sites.
Oh I know. Having issues with my plex server, so I’m currently subscribed to Disney/Hulu, Netflix, paramount & max. Paramount is straight trash, so many issues. Max won’t save my play history half of the time, one show it won’t even put in the continue watching section so I have to search for it every time. Shouldn’t have to deal with all this crap when you’re paying for it.
