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The second Netflix introduces ads I would drop my subscription and never go back. If Netflix at the same time increased the cost of a "non adverstiment" produc

The second Netflix introduces ads I would drop my subscription and never go back. If Netflix at the same time increased the cost of a "non adverstiment" product that is just adding insult to injury. I have structured my media consumption such that I rarely see any ads, and never any tv-ads. If find them painful to watch in a real sense of the words. That means I have dropped a lot of services/products/venues/channels but I have never missed them and certainly not to a degree that would entice me to return. When I visit someone who has the telly on and it runs in the background I have to grind my teeth and try to find some solution to turning it off. A dentist I no longer see did an "upgrade" of the office and got TVs mounted in the ceiling and headphones. As the doctor was drilling away having fun, I was supposed to relax, watch tv and have fun. The drilling was less painful and annoying than having to watch ads every 5 minutes. Closing my eyes was a good option but still the headphones. My new dentist has logic and math puzzles that he or someone he knows has hand drawn artistically on a big sheet of cardboard that he then attatchs to the ceiling. This is so much better in every way. It is also a lot cheaper and better for nature. I have asked him about tvs and thankfully he has no intention of buying any. He changes them out once a month I think

jefftk 5y ago
The article is proposing offering a two tiers, one with ads and one without, which is what most of Netflix's competitors do. That would allow you and others who feel similarly to continue watching ad-free.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  > That would allow ̶𝗒̶𝗈̶𝗎̶ ̶𝖺̶𝗇̶𝖽̶ ̶𝗈̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖾̶𝗋̶𝗌̶ ̶𝗐̶𝗁̶𝗈̶ ̶𝖿̶𝖾̶𝖾̶𝗅̶ ̶𝗌̶𝗂̶𝗆̶𝗂̶𝗅̶𝖺̶𝗋̶𝗅̶𝗒̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗈̶ ̶𝖼̶𝗈̶𝗇̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝗇̶𝗎̶𝖾̶ ̶𝗐̶𝖺̶𝗍̶𝖼̶𝗁̶𝗂̶𝗇̶𝗀̶ ̶𝖺̶𝖽̶-̶𝖿̶𝗋̶𝖾̶𝖾̶.̶ ̶ Netflix to make more money out of nothing.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Imagine if we had a company that managed to produce its products with minimal waste and had an efficient recycling program. It would be a little bit more expensive to run because it was paying for the externalities, but the profit margins were high enough that a business could still be had without destroying itself. Now, a bunch of competitors show up and they just don't care about the environment. They dump all the waste on their neighbors. Their products cost a less than the main company, but they give you a "green option" where you can pay a bit more to offset (some) of the externalities. What you are proposing is that the company goes down in their principles to compete with their toxic competitors. For what?
  - jefftk 5y ago
    That is a pretty terrible analogy. For starters, there are no externalities in people choosing to subscribe to an ad-supported version.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Ads themselves are the toxic waste. You work with ads at Google (aka, the biggest mind polluter there is) so I understand why you might think otherwise.
      - jefftk 5y ago
        Ok, let's take a step back and look at your analogy. Pollution is a classic problem of externalities: one party is doing something that has costs, but those costs fall on people who are uninvolved. You have a company that is producing lots of pollution while creating products (A), the people who buy those products (B), and the people who are harmed by pollution (C). The reason that A doesn't take appropriate steps to avoid creating pollution is that neither A nor B suffer most of the costs of the pollution; those fall on C. Netflix adding an ad-funded option does not fit that model because, as I said above, there are no externalities. It is a transaction entirely between Netflix and its viewers, with no uninvolved third parties who receive "toxic waste". Each potential subscriber can decide whether they prefer to pay larger amount for the current experience, or a smaller amount and also have to view ads.
        rglullis 5y ago
        “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” > I said above, there are no externalities. A point that you are missing is one that is often overlooked and deserves a proper essay, but to keep it short: the quality of the products is affected by the business model. I contend that ads themselves are the waste, but it is not just those directly watching the ads that suffer from it. When a service becomes funded by ads, the best metric for quality (customers willing to pay for the product) gets separated from the best metric for its sustainability (revenue and profitability). This is why a large part of why journalism is horrible today: any news editor has to prioritize what gives them eyeballs over "quality reporting", so no matter how many actual subscribers a newspaper still has, it is still going to be over-polarized, play to outrage culture and more "infotainment" than actual journalism. More examples? - Spotify and the Joe Rogan drama. Whether you agree/disagree and support/disapprove of whatever he is talking about on his show, would you agree that this whole thing would be a nothingburger if his audience were limited to the people willing to pay money to hear him? - The whole of the sports industry. Remove "broadcast rights" and all the advertising that comes with it, and there would not be NBA kowtowing to China, or FIFA pushing a World Cup built in Qatar on the back of slave labor, or F-1 in bed with the Saudis, etc, etc. Streaming services are already bad in the sense that they rather cater to quantity over quality, but at least the fact that people have to pay something is some kind of filter on "minimum quality". With an ad-funded model this filter is completely removed and everything starts getting produced for the lowest common denominator.
Lio 5y ago
Right with you on that. I hate the loss of control when made to watch ads. I've already dropped 1 streaming service (NowTV) for forcing me to watch trailers before the shows I actually pay to watch. I'm considering dropping Prime for the same reason. With Prime you can at least skip trailers but why can't I just opt out of the bloody things the first place? Auto-playing anything is tedious annoying. Auto-playing, _unskippable_ anything is an abomination in my personal opinion and not something I will pay for.
survirtual 5y ago
I just want to say, I am so happy you and others here are voicing this opinion on ads. I agree whole heartedly and avoid them like the plague — because they are a plague. A social disease infecting nearly every facet of modern reality, and rotting away at it. In my own spaces, nothing with a logo is allowed to be displayed. This makes for a significantly better feeling space. In the past, people have walked in and made comments like “it feels so good in here!” — I attribute it in large part to eliminating the nonstop psychic bombardment of advertising. When buying new products, I go to significant lengths making sure the item has an ad that can be managed. If I cannot find a product with a logo that’s easily removable, I do not purchase for the most part. If a streaming service shows an ad to me, it goes off or I leave the area. It is simple. Other people do not have the right to intrude in my cognition against my will, ESPECIALLY these gluttonous people running megacorporations. They are reducing consciousness for a quick buck against our will. Put another way, they are injecting their ego and greed into anyone possible against their will. I find it to be a type of psychic assault analogous to certain depraved physical assaults relating to self-propagation. My intuition says ads make us dumber, more compliant, poorer, worse thinkers, more impulse driven, and more subject to external authority; among other pacifying and stupefying impacts. It is a disease worth fighting against.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  I haven't used TV for any kind of broadcast, or literally anything that would in any way contain ads for past cca 15 years. TV I have has no wifi connection, never had one, never will have. I've become physically allergic to ads, anywhere. The way they are done reminds me of those drawings showing some nasty fugly stuff being squished into consumer's brain. This causes minor issues sometimes when we visit some friends and they have a TV blasting all the time, with their kids being fairly addicted to general media consumption. Anytime this happens and I see how they are glued to phones or consoles is a stark warning about choosing different path for my small kiddoz. Such a path you can lead them on by example. The amount of time we have thanx to this to spend on more important matters in life is non-trivial.
- TheBozzCL 5y ago
  Man, I try to explain the diseased nature of the modern advertising and people look at me like I'm crazy. But look at TV/radio broadcasts. Look at the streets you walk on. The websites you browse. It's literally everywhere, and its only purpose is to catch your eye to make you feel like you need to buy stuff. And they will stop at nothing to achieve that, including making you feel inadequate or abusing your weaknesses. And in the last 15 years, we've let these unscrupulous people gather all sorts of data on who we are and what we do, which they use to target us with the ads that manipulate us the best. That is what sounds crazy to me. Preaching to the choir, I know. It amazes me that most people don't seem to care all that much. I wonder if we're just overly sensitive to interruptions and manipulation.
lvl102 5y ago
I am so tired of these comments about Netflix: “I am going to cancel if Netflix splits disc from streaming.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix raises prices.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix makes it difficult to share passwords.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix cancels my shows.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix introduces ads.” Netflix did more to free the market from the stranglehold the networks had for decades. If you want to go back to paying $150 per months for cable, be my guest. People seriously have issues with Netflix raising prices 25-30% in the past DECADE while their catalog has increased significantly?
- batch12 5y ago
  I will absolutely cancel Netflix if they introduce ads. I will cancel Netflix if they cancel shows I want to watch. I don't owe them anything in addition to the money I have already paid them for their service. Their business model and disruption of cable doesn't entitle them to my future money.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Piracy is still free.
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  The alternative is actually torrenting. If there was an ad free service, where you can easily watch ANY tv show or movie when you want it, I'd pay $50+/month for it.
  - lvl102 5y ago
    No it’s not. Streaming tech is leaps and bounds better than pirating. Same goes for music services.
    - hoseja 5y ago
      Huh? In what important way? I don't care it's technically impressive I'm being served a DRM-protected datastream through a global CDN network. I can download any show in 5 minutes and have it as a file, wholly on my own disk.
destroy-2A 5y ago
When Foxtel or Optus (cant remember probably both) entered Australian cable TV market they promised no adds, and there were zero adds, a few years later they introduced adds and increased the price in the same letter to subscriber. most people kept it.
kup0 5y ago
Glad to see a number of others that feel the same as I do. I would love for this sentiment to grow.

jefftk 5y ago

The article is proposing offering a two tiers, one with ads and one without, which is what most of Netflix's competitors do. That would allow you and others who feel similarly to continue watching ad-free.

peoplefromibiza 5y ago
> That would allow ̶𝗒̶𝗈̶𝗎̶ ̶𝖺̶𝗇̶𝖽̶ ̶𝗈̶𝗍̶𝗁̶𝖾̶𝗋̶𝗌̶ ̶𝗐̶𝗁̶𝗈̶ ̶𝖿̶𝖾̶𝖾̶𝗅̶ ̶𝗌̶𝗂̶𝗆̶𝗂̶𝗅̶𝖺̶𝗋̶𝗅̶𝗒̶ ̶𝗍̶𝗈̶ ̶𝖼̶𝗈̶𝗇̶𝗍̶𝗂̶𝗇̶𝗎̶𝖾̶ ̶𝗐̶𝖺̶𝗍̶𝖼̶𝗁̶𝗂̶𝗇̶𝗀̶ ̶𝖺̶𝖽̶-̶𝖿̶𝗋̶𝖾̶𝖾̶.̶ ̶ Netflix to make more money out of nothing.
rglullis 5y ago
Imagine if we had a company that managed to produce its products with minimal waste and had an efficient recycling program. It would be a little bit more expensive to run because it was paying for the externalities, but the profit margins were high enough that a business could still be had without destroying itself. Now, a bunch of competitors show up and they just don't care about the environment. They dump all the waste on their neighbors. Their products cost a less than the main company, but they give you a "green option" where you can pay a bit more to offset (some) of the externalities. What you are proposing is that the company goes down in their principles to compete with their toxic competitors. For what?
- jefftk 5y ago
  That is a pretty terrible analogy. For starters, there are no externalities in people choosing to subscribe to an ad-supported version.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Ads themselves are the toxic waste. You work with ads at Google (aka, the biggest mind polluter there is) so I understand why you might think otherwise.
    - jefftk 5y ago
      Ok, let's take a step back and look at your analogy. Pollution is a classic problem of externalities: one party is doing something that has costs, but those costs fall on people who are uninvolved. You have a company that is producing lots of pollution while creating products (A), the people who buy those products (B), and the people who are harmed by pollution (C). The reason that A doesn't take appropriate steps to avoid creating pollution is that neither A nor B suffer most of the costs of the pollution; those fall on C. Netflix adding an ad-funded option does not fit that model because, as I said above, there are no externalities. It is a transaction entirely between Netflix and its viewers, with no uninvolved third parties who receive "toxic waste". Each potential subscriber can decide whether they prefer to pay larger amount for the current experience, or a smaller amount and also have to view ads.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” > I said above, there are no externalities. A point that you are missing is one that is often overlooked and deserves a proper essay, but to keep it short: the quality of the products is affected by the business model. I contend that ads themselves are the waste, but it is not just those directly watching the ads that suffer from it. When a service becomes funded by ads, the best metric for quality (customers willing to pay for the product) gets separated from the best metric for its sustainability (revenue and profitability). This is why a large part of why journalism is horrible today: any news editor has to prioritize what gives them eyeballs over "quality reporting", so no matter how many actual subscribers a newspaper still has, it is still going to be over-polarized, play to outrage culture and more "infotainment" than actual journalism. More examples? - Spotify and the Joe Rogan drama. Whether you agree/disagree and support/disapprove of whatever he is talking about on his show, would you agree that this whole thing would be a nothingburger if his audience were limited to the people willing to pay money to hear him? - The whole of the sports industry. Remove "broadcast rights" and all the advertising that comes with it, and there would not be NBA kowtowing to China, or FIFA pushing a World Cup built in Qatar on the back of slave labor, or F-1 in bed with the Saudis, etc, etc. Streaming services are already bad in the sense that they rather cater to quantity over quality, but at least the fact that people have to pay something is some kind of filter on "minimum quality". With an ad-funded model this filter is completely removed and everything starts getting produced for the lowest common denominator.

Lio 5y ago

Right with you on that. I hate the loss of control when made to watch ads. I've already dropped 1 streaming service (NowTV) for forcing me to watch trailers before the shows I actually pay to watch. I'm considering dropping Prime for the same reason. With Prime you can at least skip trailers but why can't I just opt out of the bloody things the first place? Auto-playing anything is tedious annoying. Auto-playing, _unskippable_ anything is an abomination in my personal opinion and not something I will pay for.

survirtual 5y ago

I just want to say, I am so happy you and others here are voicing this opinion on ads. I agree whole heartedly and avoid them like the plague — because they are a plague. A social disease infecting nearly every facet of modern reality, and rotting away at it. In my own spaces, nothing with a logo is allowed to be displayed. This makes for a significantly better feeling space. In the past, people have walked in and made comments like “it feels so good in here!” — I attribute it in large part to eliminating the nonstop psychic bombardment of advertising. When buying new products, I go to significant lengths making sure the item has an ad that can be managed. If I cannot find a product with a logo that’s easily removable, I do not purchase for the most part. If a streaming service shows an ad to me, it goes off or I leave the area. It is simple. Other people do not have the right to intrude in my cognition against my will, ESPECIALLY these gluttonous people running megacorporations. They are reducing consciousness for a quick buck against our will. Put another way, they are injecting their ego and greed into anyone possible against their will. I find it to be a type of psychic assault analogous to certain depraved physical assaults relating to self-propagation. My intuition says ads make us dumber, more compliant, poorer, worse thinkers, more impulse driven, and more subject to external authority; among other pacifying and stupefying impacts. It is a disease worth fighting against.

saiya-jin 5y ago
I haven't used TV for any kind of broadcast, or literally anything that would in any way contain ads for past cca 15 years. TV I have has no wifi connection, never had one, never will have. I've become physically allergic to ads, anywhere. The way they are done reminds me of those drawings showing some nasty fugly stuff being squished into consumer's brain. This causes minor issues sometimes when we visit some friends and they have a TV blasting all the time, with their kids being fairly addicted to general media consumption. Anytime this happens and I see how they are glued to phones or consoles is a stark warning about choosing different path for my small kiddoz. Such a path you can lead them on by example. The amount of time we have thanx to this to spend on more important matters in life is non-trivial.
TheBozzCL 5y ago
Man, I try to explain the diseased nature of the modern advertising and people look at me like I'm crazy. But look at TV/radio broadcasts. Look at the streets you walk on. The websites you browse. It's literally everywhere, and its only purpose is to catch your eye to make you feel like you need to buy stuff. And they will stop at nothing to achieve that, including making you feel inadequate or abusing your weaknesses. And in the last 15 years, we've let these unscrupulous people gather all sorts of data on who we are and what we do, which they use to target us with the ads that manipulate us the best. That is what sounds crazy to me. Preaching to the choir, I know. It amazes me that most people don't seem to care all that much. I wonder if we're just overly sensitive to interruptions and manipulation.

lvl102 5y ago

I am so tired of these comments about Netflix: “I am going to cancel if Netflix splits disc from streaming.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix raises prices.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix makes it difficult to share passwords.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix cancels my shows.” “I am going to cancel if Netflix introduces ads.” Netflix did more to free the market from the stranglehold the networks had for decades. If you want to go back to paying $150 per months for cable, be my guest. People seriously have issues with Netflix raising prices 25-30% in the past DECADE while their catalog has increased significantly?

batch12 5y ago
I will absolutely cancel Netflix if they introduce ads. I will cancel Netflix if they cancel shows I want to watch. I don't owe them anything in addition to the money I have already paid them for their service. Their business model and disruption of cable doesn't entitle them to my future money.
rglullis 5y ago
Piracy is still free.
mewpmewp2 5y ago
The alternative is actually torrenting. If there was an ad free service, where you can easily watch ANY tv show or movie when you want it, I'd pay $50+/month for it.
- lvl102 5y ago
  No it’s not. Streaming tech is leaps and bounds better than pirating. Same goes for music services.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Huh? In what important way? I don't care it's technically impressive I'm being served a DRM-protected datastream through a global CDN network. I can download any show in 5 minutes and have it as a file, wholly on my own disk.

destroy-2A 5y ago

When Foxtel or Optus (cant remember probably both) entered Australian cable TV market they promised no adds, and there were zero adds, a few years later they introduced adds and increased the price in the same letter to subscriber. most people kept it.

kup0 5y ago

Glad to see a number of others that feel the same as I do. I would love for this sentiment to grow.