6mo ago

Subscriptions Are Ruining Our Lives. Here's Why They're Everywhere Now. | You'll own nothing and you'll be happy!

174 comments

That's why I used Kodi, a Plex server, and modded youtube. Fuck ads and fuck subscriptions
- I chatted with my uncle recently, and he told me about a movie from 2006. I asked where to watch it, he said you can watch it free on YouTube. Stop by my parents house, we decide to watch movie. It was 1 hour and 30 minutes, Runtime. There was 3 minute ads every 10 minutes. The movie was good, but heavily dampered by ADS. To the point you would start to get invested and zone into the movie. Then BAM ADS, the only other option was to buy the movie for $4 on prime or pay for a hulu subscription.
  I know subscriptions are stupid and i agree, but its just so infuriating! Pay $7.89 for streaming service which may or may not have the thing you want to watch. For it to most likely to be on streaming service B. Or you go buy the DVD assuming you can. Which now you own a movie that may be CRAP.
  You just cant ethically win :/
  
  IMO: Pirate it guilt-free without a second thought. If you enjoy it, and deem it worthy of a rewatch - then buy the DVD/Blu-Ray.
  Then rip a quality copy of it, and delete the previously downloaded one.
  
  Then seed HQ version to give back ;)
  NOTE: DON'T DO THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
  
  Thing is, corporations twist ethics so when we obey we lose and when they fuck us over they win
  
  How did you have the patience for that? Is immediately nope out
  
  When movies were on cable they'd at least edit the movie to fit between ad breaks. Modern streaming services have no concern for the content, and will just drop an ad wherever.
  
  I wish so much that I could browse what’s on a streaming site before signing up.
  
  You can!
  Www.justwatch.com
  
  But spoiler: Everything you want is spread across about 5 services, and there's gaps in it anyway.
  
  ..or it’s available on the service you subscribe to, but not in your region.
  
  Or it is available in your region, but you have to pay for it anyway.
- Plex has started to enshittify as well. I switched to jellyfin because Plex had features behind pay walls and kept going "oops I accidentally changed your settings so you have to look at the plex home screen with ads for our streaming service".
- Fuck ads and fuck subscriptions
  How do you imagine developers and content creators to get paid if neither of these two options is acceptable to you?
  
  Honestly mate, I am not a tankie or even politically left in my country, but when looking at the insane results for these enormous companies and the ever increasing greed with ads/price hikes, I’ve just had enough.
  I know it’s not morally right to steal, but I refuse to support companies like Alphabet paying their CEO 200+ million a year. If they manage to block me out when skirting their ads, then I’ll find something else to spend my time on.
  So you’re right, I just don’t care anymore.
  I do pay for Nebula though!
  
  100%
  Your local library usually has a host of FREE media types. Including regular ol books, which thankfully still remain ad-free.
  (But also movies, and digital readers, and news articles, etc).
  
  Pay por the permanent ownership of the sold product.
  As they say. If selling isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.
  If a seller doesn't give me option to own their products I will certainly never steal them.
  
  But how do you apply this to a platform like YouTube? I don't want to have to buy each video I watch.
  
  Sell "seasons".
  Put a prize on all videos released during each year. But once that's paid I can have those videos forever.
  No point on having to pay a monthly subscription forever to watch a video made 10 years ago from a youtuber that's no longer active (maybe even alive).
  
  by selling me a license that lets me run their software on my own machine, not theirs. Like in the old times
  
  Doesn't quite work with something like streaming services
  
  well stop fucking streaming and let me buy the damn content
  
  It could if they actually let you download the content for a change.
  And no I mean original quality, not split up undecipherable files that are hard to organize outside of their platform
  
  I tend to feel that if it’s a streaming service providing access to a wide range of videos, it could be argued that you don’t own them and, therefore, can’t download them either. However, you could still have the option to pay extra to actually purchase the video too. That money should go to the creator, though, who, of course, would also set the price. That could be free too. I, for example, have no issue with people watching my car repair 'tutorials' on YouTube for free.
  
  Man Google had it just right with Google music and books. Of course they threw it all away.
  I was a big fan of Google music because I was able to upload my own music on to the cloud and they would help me tag albums. The streaming of new music was just the cherry on top and it was awesome when Google told me to check out a new album based on what I uploaded previously. Not only that, but they let you pay for music that you wanted to keep offline as well.
  Now it's all crammed into YouTube, which is horrible for music as it was never designed for music anyway
  To this day, I still think this was the best compromise all around and it seemed very ethical and modern to the way we consume music.
  
  Am a developer, please do not pay for any software subscription if you don’t think it’s worth it.
  Us devs would love to give the best experience, but if the customer is willing to pay for a shit experience, guess which path management makes you take.
  
  Theres A difference between running a profitable buisness and ruining the whole user experience to please the shareholders.