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I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running. I

I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running. I don't have an issue with paying Youtube Premium Lite. Where I have an issue with the subs model is you're pay subs to so many services, YT Netflix Twitch, etc. It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. Then there's the issue of online magazines. I find most even including Wired, to be too random in terms of content. Itś really easy for me to rationalize the worth of YT : irreplacable. But all those online "news" site that churn out tons of SEO optimized articles and "top ten (insert random hardware)" lists etc? Really difficult for me to warrant a subscription. Now if someone maintained a really big forum, like there ś a few still running with tons of sub forums where you can spend an hour everyday and get a ton of interaction. Sure, I'd sub to that. Even Reddit for me it's hard to think why I'd pay for it, even though it is also irreplacable in some way. Perhaps because it is primarily a social site, there is so much abuse, so much idiocy, so much "hive mind" and so much negativity/sarcasm overall - it easily shadows the good side of reddit : the helpful/kind replies, the sharing of useful guides etc. So huh.. Maybe it is like the TWiT panel agreed, the "free for all" internet is dying, and some sites/ services may well disappear and maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe there are better ideas to replace them. If it was just me I´d bring back huge forums. There's gotta be a way to monetize those through Patreon/etc. Theres lots of small perks you can give to forum members. Maybe they still have a life in them, but they were just made seemingly obsolete for a while by "social media" sites like Twitter and Instagram.

Pet_Ant 3y ago
I mean I don't think the criticism that it costs more than traditional TV is valid. Traditional TV is a linear stream where you are sending out one signal for everyone. On demand is a different beast altogether, so even if it were the exact cost or more, then it'd still be a win. That's not even including the fact that the content that gets made of YouTube or Twitch wouldn't have ever been made on old TV. If you had told me 20 years ago that it would cost the same or even a bit more but you get all this, I'd've signed up in a heartbeat.
garciasn 3y ago
This is EXACTLY what cable companies predicted would happen when we went a la carte. They were using their monopoly power to drive down the overall price of packaged TV and by de-bundling, we end up paying more overall. For once they were correct and I apologize for questioning it 15 years ago. That said, I am ok with SOME advertisements to keep the web running. There are two big problems with this: 1. Market investors expect their stock to continue to rise, forever. When it doesn't, they push for more revenue, but instead of adding new products or functionality, they push for ad revenue instead. 2. Ad revenue as a model for revenue generation means that we need more ads, as opposed to building better products. This means that the entire web is inundated with advertisements that overwhelm the overall experience and will continue to get worse and worse over time. This is a product of investment and lack of reinvestment in new products/function and instead more immediate revenue gains as opposed to slow-and-steady rise in value. Investors want to cash in NOW and not over time and thus we have entered a time where 3 ads precede every video alongside in-video sponsorships and more traditional 15-30 second ads within each. It's absurd.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  we end up paying more overall A basic Fios TV package is $75/month today. Most streaming services are around $20-$30/month and allow month-to-month plans. You can fairly easily rotate among 4-5 services, using 2-3 at a time, to keep costs lower than with traditional cable. This works pretty well if you have non-specific TV interests. Where they really get you is with sports - that market is super fragmented and getting most of NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB can cost a fortune.
  - garciasn 3y ago
    FIOS is only available in limited areas of 9 states. It's not exactly widely available and should not be used as evidence to the contrary of this. If we're using anecdotal evidence, the only Internet I have available to me at my summer home is $110/month 25/2 DSL, without TV. That said, you are spot on, because we are no longer tied into long contracts you can absolutely swap in and out. The problem is that they carry primarily self-created content which, IMO, is far less attractive than what the main networks were able to push out previously which further degrades the usefulness of the a la carte model.
meristohm 3y ago
WIRED, among many other periodicals, is available online through https://libbyapp.com https://libbyapp.com at my local tax-funded public library (I'm in the USA). I do wonder how things would change if most people started using the library for most of their entertainment and education, as I do.
- WOTERMEON 3y ago
  Libraries would get charged more for a bigger number of magazines that are just a collection of ads. That’s what happens in the UK.
nonameiguess 3y ago
I can't agree that it costs more. I'm a pretty profligate spender and just subscribe to everything even though I don't actually watch that much television. So right now, my household is subscribed to YouTube Premium, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, Max, Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Curiosity Stream. I'm honestly not even sure what it costs, but guessing somewhere in the arena of $10 a month or so on average, since some are more, some are less. That's $100. The last time I was subscribed to premium cable with at least HBO, Showtime, and ESPN, it was $180 a month. In 2011 dollars. That was also linear, not on-demand, so quite a bit worse service. We had to pay extra for a DVR that could record stuff and I don't even remember how much extra that was.
- russh 3y ago
  This is my experience as well. We have at least 6 streaming services and it’s still $100/mo cheaper than my direct tv bill.
SoftTalker 3y ago
A problem with many paid services is that they still have ads. Was watching something with my wife the other day (I think it was on HBO streaming) and there were ads? I'm like "hang on we're paying for this, and still have to watch ads?"
- Aardwolf 3y ago
  People who pay for stuff are more valuable targets for ads
- lastofthemojito 3y ago
  Infuriatingly, Hulu sometimes shows ads even with their more expensive "No Ads" plans: https://help.hulu.com/s/article/ads-no-commercials https://help.hulu.com/s/article/ads-no-commercials
  - joenot443 3y ago
    >Due to streaming rights, a few shows in the Hulu streaming library will include a short ad break before and after each episode for Hulu (No Ads) subscribers. Man, that is aggravating. Blaming it on "streaming rights" as well, what a crock!
    - pests 3y ago
      Considering how odd it is and how few shows out of their catalog I'm sure it is an issue with streaming rights with a few shows. A few shows probably tied payments to the associated ad revenue and they wanted to ensure that didn't go to 0 with ad free streaming.
    - dangrossman 3y ago
      It's one single show out of the 2500+ in their catalog, one they licensed before the "no ads" offering existed (Grey's Anatomy). It's neither aggravating nor a crock.
      - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
itsoktocry 3y ago
>It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. I have trouble understanding this complaint. There's way more content than ever before; why wouldn't it be more expensive to get everything? You don't have to subscribe to it all, but the ability to pick and choose providers a la carte, as well as cycle subscriptions on and off seems like a huge win to consumers.
- damnesian 3y ago
  Well, true, except entertainment consumers want a good variety. And ideally, they'd like it priced like a utility, a monthly payment they can budget for. Before it was taken over by infomercials and reality tv, cable offered unprecedented variety, all for one manageable monthly payment. this is still what people want. This will be what the market gravitates towards, and we see it happening now with cheaper ad-supported tiers and even many 100% free with ads small players. Streaming is, in effect, slowly becoming cable tv all over again. Hell, some of these free channels- like PlutoTV- even look like cable. I predict eventually which aggregator you choose- Roku, Firestick, AppleTV- won't matter, it will be the same galaxy of choices.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Production values for TV shows have quite gotten out of hand. I like it, but that’s a lot of advertising or fees to pay for those.
dangus 3y ago
Don’t underestimate how much cable TV costs: I did my budget recently and added up all my services together, having Netflix (highest tier), YT Premium (family, includes music streaming), Discovery+ (ad-free), and Hulu (ad-free), an all comes in at about $62. That’s about the same price as live cable as a standalone product, and yet cable has advertisements which none of the above services have. About the only complaint you might have is that I haven’t covered every single television studio (not included: Max, Paramount+, Disney+), but you could always rotate subscriptions in and out and still have a lot of them active at the same time. Cable really just is that bad. Or, alternative take, cable sucks your dollars away and sends them to live sports and cable news.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
I think that will drive a lot more self-funded communities. People talk about how expensive it is to host websites, but they're talking about sites several orders of magnitude larger than what most communities need. A single Discord server could effectively be hosted on a Raspberry Pi, the market price among cloud hosts for which is "free", or at most ~$10 a month. That's not "We need to charge for access" level pricing that's "One motivated party funds the entire site" level cost.
- tornato7 3y ago
  To make this happen, we need better open source forum software. A group of us have been searching for a good self-hosted forum to replace /r/BuyItForLife and have trialed quite a few, but they are just... Really bad.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Define: really bad. I generally find the software is fine. The problem is login/security and spam control. Those are painful things that I really, really, really don't want to have to deal with. Yet they are the vast majority of the issue with self-hosting your own forums. Self-hosted forums are not a technical problem--they are a social problem.
    - tornato7 3y ago
      You're correct. I do think login/security is mostly solved if you're OK using Google/GitHub/Apple login. It's the moderation that's a tough part. Many forums end up with over-eager spam filters or captchas that end up driving away regular users. I do hope that with cost reductions in LLMs we'll be able to have effective AI moderators soon enough.
  - baud147258 3y ago
    as an user, xenoforo seemed fine? But then I never had to deal with the admin side of things
    - 3y ago
bradlys 3y ago
When people make the comparison to the cost of cable TV and so forth - I feel like people forget: you were paying for TV and still got shown a ton of advertisements. About a quarter of air time was just advertising. That is usually higher than anything you’ll see on the Internet even for content you aren’t paying for. I’m not even including all the weird product placement aspects and other such things. Paying for these services to not see ads is still a win compared to most cable tv…
sam0x17 3y ago
As someone who "grew up" on the internet and was very active in internet forums and places in the early 00s as early as age 10, I struggle to see how kids are going to continue to be a huge part of internet discourse and consumption if everything is behind a paywall. That's, like, literally the only problem I have with this line of thought. Other than that, I completely agree. I'd rather pay than have ads be there in the first place in most cases.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running." Most internet users pay for internet access. When I first got connected the fees were paid by employers and universities. Later, "ISPs" offered service to the home. The internet was never free. But there has always been free content on the internet, even before there were ISPs. Before the term "monetisation" was ever used to refer to websites, there was plenty of "free" content published on the internet. Will it disappear if advertising fails to suffice for "monetisation". There is no proof of this outcome. It is heavily biased speculation. There is proof however that free content can exist on an internet even in the absence of such "monetisation".

Pet_Ant 3y ago

I mean I don't think the criticism that it costs more than traditional TV is valid. Traditional TV is a linear stream where you are sending out one signal for everyone. On demand is a different beast altogether, so even if it were the exact cost or more, then it'd still be a win. That's not even including the fact that the content that gets made of YouTube or Twitch wouldn't have ever been made on old TV. If you had told me 20 years ago that it would cost the same or even a bit more but you get all this, I'd've signed up in a heartbeat.

garciasn 3y ago

This is EXACTLY what cable companies predicted would happen when we went a la carte. They were using their monopoly power to drive down the overall price of packaged TV and by de-bundling, we end up paying more overall. For once they were correct and I apologize for questioning it 15 years ago. That said, I am ok with SOME advertisements to keep the web running. There are two big problems with this: 1. Market investors expect their stock to continue to rise, forever. When it doesn't, they push for more revenue, but instead of adding new products or functionality, they push for ad revenue instead. 2. Ad revenue as a model for revenue generation means that we need more ads, as opposed to building better products. This means that the entire web is inundated with advertisements that overwhelm the overall experience and will continue to get worse and worse over time. This is a product of investment and lack of reinvestment in new products/function and instead more immediate revenue gains as opposed to slow-and-steady rise in value. Investors want to cash in NOW and not over time and thus we have entered a time where 3 ads precede every video alongside in-video sponsorships and more traditional 15-30 second ads within each. It's absurd.

alistairSH 3y ago
we end up paying more overall A basic Fios TV package is $75/month today. Most streaming services are around $20-$30/month and allow month-to-month plans. You can fairly easily rotate among 4-5 services, using 2-3 at a time, to keep costs lower than with traditional cable. This works pretty well if you have non-specific TV interests. Where they really get you is with sports - that market is super fragmented and getting most of NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB can cost a fortune.
- garciasn 3y ago
  FIOS is only available in limited areas of 9 states. It's not exactly widely available and should not be used as evidence to the contrary of this. If we're using anecdotal evidence, the only Internet I have available to me at my summer home is $110/month 25/2 DSL, without TV. That said, you are spot on, because we are no longer tied into long contracts you can absolutely swap in and out. The problem is that they carry primarily self-created content which, IMO, is far less attractive than what the main networks were able to push out previously which further degrades the usefulness of the a la carte model.

meristohm 3y ago

WIRED, among many other periodicals, is available online through https://libbyapp.com https://libbyapp.com at my local tax-funded public library (I'm in the USA). I do wonder how things would change if most people started using the library for most of their entertainment and education, as I do.

WOTERMEON 3y ago
Libraries would get charged more for a bigger number of magazines that are just a collection of ads. That’s what happens in the UK.

nonameiguess 3y ago

I can't agree that it costs more. I'm a pretty profligate spender and just subscribe to everything even though I don't actually watch that much television. So right now, my household is subscribed to YouTube Premium, Peacock, Paramount+, Disney+, Max, Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Curiosity Stream. I'm honestly not even sure what it costs, but guessing somewhere in the arena of $10 a month or so on average, since some are more, some are less. That's $100. The last time I was subscribed to premium cable with at least HBO, Showtime, and ESPN, it was $180 a month. In 2011 dollars. That was also linear, not on-demand, so quite a bit worse service. We had to pay extra for a DVR that could record stuff and I don't even remember how much extra that was.

russh 3y ago
This is my experience as well. We have at least 6 streaming services and it’s still $100/mo cheaper than my direct tv bill.

SoftTalker 3y ago

A problem with many paid services is that they still have ads. Was watching something with my wife the other day (I think it was on HBO streaming) and there were ads? I'm like "hang on we're paying for this, and still have to watch ads?"

Aardwolf 3y ago
People who pay for stuff are more valuable targets for ads
lastofthemojito 3y ago
Infuriatingly, Hulu sometimes shows ads even with their more expensive "No Ads" plans: https://help.hulu.com/s/article/ads-no-commercials https://help.hulu.com/s/article/ads-no-commercials
- joenot443 3y ago
  >Due to streaming rights, a few shows in the Hulu streaming library will include a short ad break before and after each episode for Hulu (No Ads) subscribers. Man, that is aggravating. Blaming it on "streaming rights" as well, what a crock!
  - pests 3y ago
    Considering how odd it is and how few shows out of their catalog I'm sure it is an issue with streaming rights with a few shows. A few shows probably tied payments to the associated ad revenue and they wanted to ensure that didn't go to 0 with ad free streaming.
  - dangrossman 3y ago
    It's one single show out of the 2500+ in their catalog, one they licensed before the "no ads" offering existed (Grey's Anatomy). It's neither aggravating nor a crock.
    - IIsi50MHz 3y ago

itsoktocry 3y ago

>It adds up pretty quickly, and costs way more than traditional TV used to cost. I have trouble understanding this complaint. There's way more content than ever before; why wouldn't it be more expensive to get everything? You don't have to subscribe to it all, but the ability to pick and choose providers a la carte, as well as cycle subscriptions on and off seems like a huge win to consumers.

damnesian 3y ago
Well, true, except entertainment consumers want a good variety. And ideally, they'd like it priced like a utility, a monthly payment they can budget for. Before it was taken over by infomercials and reality tv, cable offered unprecedented variety, all for one manageable monthly payment. this is still what people want. This will be what the market gravitates towards, and we see it happening now with cheaper ad-supported tiers and even many 100% free with ads small players. Streaming is, in effect, slowly becoming cable tv all over again. Hell, some of these free channels- like PlutoTV- even look like cable. I predict eventually which aggregator you choose- Roku, Firestick, AppleTV- won't matter, it will be the same galaxy of choices.
hinkley 3y ago
Production values for TV shows have quite gotten out of hand. I like it, but that’s a lot of advertising or fees to pay for those.

dangus 3y ago

Don’t underestimate how much cable TV costs: I did my budget recently and added up all my services together, having Netflix (highest tier), YT Premium (family, includes music streaming), Discovery+ (ad-free), and Hulu (ad-free), an all comes in at about $62. That’s about the same price as live cable as a standalone product, and yet cable has advertisements which none of the above services have. About the only complaint you might have is that I haven’t covered every single television studio (not included: Max, Paramount+, Disney+), but you could always rotate subscriptions in and out and still have a lot of them active at the same time. Cable really just is that bad. Or, alternative take, cable sucks your dollars away and sends them to live sports and cable news.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

I think that will drive a lot more self-funded communities. People talk about how expensive it is to host websites, but they're talking about sites several orders of magnitude larger than what most communities need. A single Discord server could effectively be hosted on a Raspberry Pi, the market price among cloud hosts for which is "free", or at most ~$10 a month. That's not "We need to charge for access" level pricing that's "One motivated party funds the entire site" level cost.

tornato7 3y ago
To make this happen, we need better open source forum software. A group of us have been searching for a good self-hosted forum to replace /r/BuyItForLife and have trialed quite a few, but they are just... Really bad.
- bsder 3y ago
  Define: really bad. I generally find the software is fine. The problem is login/security and spam control. Those are painful things that I really, really, really don't want to have to deal with. Yet they are the vast majority of the issue with self-hosting your own forums. Self-hosted forums are not a technical problem--they are a social problem.
  - tornato7 3y ago
    You're correct. I do think login/security is mostly solved if you're OK using Google/GitHub/Apple login. It's the moderation that's a tough part. Many forums end up with over-eager spam filters or captchas that end up driving away regular users. I do hope that with cost reductions in LLMs we'll be able to have effective AI moderators soon enough.
- baud147258 3y ago
  as an user, xenoforo seemed fine? But then I never had to deal with the admin side of things
  - 3y ago

bradlys 3y ago

When people make the comparison to the cost of cable TV and so forth - I feel like people forget: you were paying for TV and still got shown a ton of advertisements. About a quarter of air time was just advertising. That is usually higher than anything you’ll see on the Internet even for content you aren’t paying for. I’m not even including all the weird product placement aspects and other such things. Paying for these services to not see ads is still a win compared to most cable tv…

sam0x17 3y ago

As someone who "grew up" on the internet and was very active in internet forums and places in the early 00s as early as age 10, I struggle to see how kids are going to continue to be a huge part of internet discourse and consumption if everything is behind a paywall. That's, like, literally the only problem I have with this line of thought. Other than that, I completely agree. I'd rather pay than have ads be there in the first place in most cases.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"I agree with recent TWiT discussion on this : we've had it good for a while - the promise of free internet but all those services cost money to keep running." Most internet users pay for internet access. When I first got connected the fees were paid by employers and universities. Later, "ISPs" offered service to the home. The internet was never free. But there has always been free content on the internet, even before there were ISPs. Before the term "monetisation" was ever used to refer to websites, there was plenty of "free" content published on the internet. Will it disappear if advertising fails to suffice for "monetisation". There is no proof of this outcome. It is heavily biased speculation. There is proof however that free content can exist on an internet even in the absence of such "monetisation".