... you guys are paying?

🏴‍☠️

The Pirate Bay's rates haven't changed for twenty years!

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."

Everyone in 2027:

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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.

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.

Row, row, row your boat...

Pay? Lol.

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.

Fmhy

Never paying for any subscription 🤴

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?

The difference between owning the means of production and being gifted a bribe to establishing a new customer base.

Subscriptions?
I only pay for prescriptions.

discs for the win