4 ms·

It is very easy to be a monopoly, especially one that was first in a certain market, or which can use various tactics to make you use their service. You dont re

by rvba 3y ago

It is very easy to be a monopoly, especially one that was first in a certain market, or which can use various tactics to make you use their service. You dont remember how Apple would upload some album into your device without your consent? I find it fascinating how many people allow monopolies for just laziness: "Steam is so great because I have all games in one place - I dont need 20 shortcuts on my desktop". Then Steam (for years - I think they fixed it now and it opens in few seconds, without asking you to login every day), takes 2 minutes to start because it was written by cheapest bidder + it can close your account so you lose all your games. Multiple services are a way for actual market competition. Otherwise everything becomes Disney, who churns multiple crappy Marvel movies every year (current blockbuster cinema is mostly rubbish), or everything becomes Neflix where quality is trash, but hey actors were chosen by an algorithm (Ozark - or what was the show name, basically took popular actors and a popular theme and made a show with no interesting plot, no interesting dialogue). So scary to see that people agree with that, because they are lazy. This is some Idiocracy level. By the way, since we are on hacker news: nearly all, if not all shows are on the pirate websites.

alexpotato 3y ago
> everything becomes Neflix where quality is trash, but hey actors were chosen by an algorithm I always thought that the algorithm had some successes (at least "back in the day") e.g. The myth is that House of Cards came out of Netflix realizing that there were a lot of fans of Kevin Spacey, people wanted a complex story line etc. [0] More recently, I kind of agree that the "enshittification" is starting to kick in but not sure how much of that is monopoly vs oligopoly. Which is sad b/c the big data, when used correctly, DOES lead to "sleeper" hits with different story lines/plots, old actors in new roles etc. This in turn makes me wonder if things were better under the old advertising/commercial supported model where ratings led to more ads which led to better writing etc. In other words, the networks knew exactly what was bringing in the revenue so they sent dollars to those shows. With Netflix, you know what people are watching but not necessarily what brought them to Netflix in the first place. 0 - Good explanation of this here: https://filmmakermagazine.com/64544-house-of-cards-the-netflix-algorithms-and-me/ https://filmmakermagazine.com/64544-house-of-cards-the-netfl...
- ethbr1 3y ago
  I always assumed that enshittification was a consequence that {more volume} + {lower costs} was more profitable than {less volume} + {higher costs}. Which is why you don't see it in growth companies (they have organic growth as they acquire customers), but you do see it once growth plateaus (financial optimization very quickly leads to "minimally-acceptable content for most-users").
Ntrails 3y ago
The point is that 20 streaming services with all the shows would be _fine_. They could compete on UI, delivery and price, not on exclusive content. Steam having every game is great for me. I am happy for loads of other game stores to exist and sell me stuff and store my saves and let me download infinitely etc. I don't want no competition, I want no exclusive games and high fragmentation
rcxdude 3y ago
The point is there isn't actually competition on the streaming services: there's competition between the media companies on the production of content, who then restrict the availability of said content to a subset of services. Instead of the situation with music where it's normal that an album is at the very least available on the big 3, if not many others. And there's generally not a shell game where things start and stop being available as well. An actually competitive market would separate the streaming services from the content production and the incentive would be for the content to be available on as many platforms as possible and the platforms would compete on quality and features instead of how much of a catalog they can license this month. (similarly with steam: the blowback on epic was due to exclusive games, not the mere existence of it. Steam-exclusive games are also a problem, but generally one which comes naturally from its market position and not artificially through contracts)

by rvba 3y ago

alexpotato 3y ago

> everything becomes Neflix where quality is trash, but hey actors were chosen by an algorithm I always thought that the algorithm had some successes (at least "back in the day") e.g. The myth is that House of Cards came out of Netflix realizing that there were a lot of fans of Kevin Spacey, people wanted a complex story line etc. [0] More recently, I kind of agree that the "enshittification" is starting to kick in but not sure how much of that is monopoly vs oligopoly. Which is sad b/c the big data, when used correctly, DOES lead to "sleeper" hits with different story lines/plots, old actors in new roles etc. This in turn makes me wonder if things were better under the old advertising/commercial supported model where ratings led to more ads which led to better writing etc. In other words, the networks knew exactly what was bringing in the revenue so they sent dollars to those shows. With Netflix, you know what people are watching but not necessarily what brought them to Netflix in the first place. 0 - Good explanation of this here: https://filmmakermagazine.com/64544-house-of-cards-the-netflix-algorithms-and-me/ https://filmmakermagazine.com/64544-house-of-cards-the-netfl...

ethbr1 3y ago
I always assumed that enshittification was a consequence that {more volume} + {lower costs} was more profitable than {less volume} + {higher costs}. Which is why you don't see it in growth companies (they have organic growth as they acquire customers), but you do see it once growth plateaus (financial optimization very quickly leads to "minimally-acceptable content for most-users").

Ntrails 3y ago

The point is that 20 streaming services with all the shows would be _fine_. They could compete on UI, delivery and price, not on exclusive content. Steam having every game is great for me. I am happy for loads of other game stores to exist and sell me stuff and store my saves and let me download infinitely etc. I don't want no competition, I want no exclusive games and high fragmentation

rcxdude 3y ago

The point is there isn't actually competition on the streaming services: there's competition between the media companies on the production of content, who then restrict the availability of said content to a subset of services. Instead of the situation with music where it's normal that an album is at the very least available on the big 3, if not many others. And there's generally not a shell game where things start and stop being available as well. An actually competitive market would separate the streaming services from the content production and the incentive would be for the content to be available on as many platforms as possible and the platforms would compete on quality and features instead of how much of a catalog they can license this month. (similarly with steam: the blowback on epic was due to exclusive games, not the mere existence of it. Steam-exclusive games are also a problem, but generally one which comes naturally from its market position and not artificially through contracts)