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It appears like rationalization to you (edit for context: the parent comment said it was rationalizing before it was edited) because you've already made up your

It appears like rationalization to you (edit for context: the parent comment said it was rationalizing before it was edited) because you've already made up your mind about the malicious intent of companies who use this model. The reality is that companies can't know if they're "bleeding people for no services rendered" because of bingeing behavior. Someone watching a lot then staying off for a few months is difficult to distinguish from someone who has forgotten about their subscription for a few months. The easiest and most efficient way for a company to know that you're not providing value to them is by cancelling your subscription. I agree that companies making this difficult is bad, but many services don't make this difficult. Instead, you're asking them to read the mind of their customers which is not easy. Netflix does treat extreme periods of inactivity (IIRC more than a year I think?) as a reasonable signal that you've forgotten about it. > You get to exercise so much more Personal Responsibility when you aren't free-riding off other people, even. I don't think you're really understanding the point. People who don't exercise any personal responsibility over their finances are the ones who are free-riding off people who do. That's because when you don't manage your finances and you refuse to shoulder the cost for that, the time & effort and complexity it costs to accommodate that has to be paid by someone who isn't you. Edit: I'm not sure there's anything I can say to sway your mind about this since you've really honed in on the emotional angle to this but I think it's worth pointing out that this isn't really a moralizing thing to me, I have been and know many people who fall short, I don't treat it morally. It's largely about resource allocation and behavioral incentives. Asking central organizations like a corporation to infer the correct thing for lots of consumers is very difficult and costly, it's overall much more efficient to ask consumers to signal their desires themselves, it's why markets tend to be more efficient. Making consumers pay the cost of mismanaging their finances also discourages them from doing it, increasing efficiency.

_Algernon_ 3y ago
Not signing in to a service you have a subscription to is a pretty clear signal that it is not being used. I'm not aware of any streaming service that automatically pauses a subscription if you don't sign in for a full month.
- themacguffinman 3y ago
  I strongly disagree, I have media subscriptions right now that I won't sign into for a month or even multiple months but I don't intend on giving it up. This is especially true for niche streaming content where production costs aren't exactly cheap but their niche nature means not everyone is consistently in the mood for that content.
  - smogcutter 3y ago
    Ok so why do you want to pay for that time? Why not have payments paused during the period of inactivity, and resume when you want to use it? The point is that this is a choice by content businesses. Pausing and resuming payments could easily be frictionless, but it isn’t.
    - themacguffinman 3y ago
      I described the reason in more detail in my previous comments up-thread: because I understand the cost is amortized and it's an intuitive billing system that supports two different watching habits: consistent watching as well as bingeing. Refusing to pay because I binge means prices increase for people who don't binge. Pricing issues like this are really killer for niche streaming sites that I want to support. I generally disagree with dark patterns that make it onerously difficult to cancel, but many streaming services (like Netflix) don't make it that difficult and pausing and resuming payments is already easy enough. I just have to actually do it, not ask them to read my mind.
      - smogcutter 3y ago
        I mean, for starters this whole conversation is fantasy because streamers, or really, businesses in general, will never on their own initiative stop taking taking money from customers. Auto-cancellation or whatever is never ever going to happen. Unless forced by regulation I suppose, which I don’t see a reason for. We’re not talking about fraud or deception, just the general day-to-day scumminess of capitalism. All that said, I don’t think your argument carries the weight you think it does. “I’m happy my underutilization of a service subsidizes other users” isn’t a compelling story to me and doesn’t seem like a net benefit. To each their own. (Anyway, a binger whose usage is equivalent to a non-binge watcher, except concentrated rather than diffuse, is not actually underutilizing the service and isn’t really who we’re talking about here. I think.)
Hasu 3y ago
> People who don't exercise any personal responsibility over their finances are the ones who are free-riding off people who do. That's because when you don't manage your finances and you refuse to shoulder the cost for that, the time & effort and complexity it costs to accommodate that has to be paid by someone who isn't you. People who fail to cancel their subscriptions are not free-riding off anyone, they're paying $X per billing period. > Asking central organizations like a corporation to infer the correct thing for lots of consumers is very difficult and costly Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable.
- themacguffinman 3y ago
  > People who fail to cancel their subscriptions are not free-riding off anyone, they're paying $X per billing period. They're not free-riding currently, but what the parent is suggesting is that streaming subscriptions don't charge for months without activity. > Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable. Creating alternative usage-based billing models when most customers are happy with a monthly model is hard and has real costs. There are already storefronts with a more usage-based model: stuff like iTunes and Google Play Store let you pay per movie & episode, that's typically what consumers use when they don't like a monthly billing model.
- RHSeeger 3y ago
  > Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable. But, by that same logic, they should just be charging you by how much you watch. So it's no longer "don't charge them for the month they didn't view" but, instead, "charge them $X/minute watched". If you're going to go with usage based billing, go with usage based billing.

_Algernon_ 3y ago

Not signing in to a service you have a subscription to is a pretty clear signal that it is not being used. I'm not aware of any streaming service that automatically pauses a subscription if you don't sign in for a full month.

themacguffinman 3y ago
I strongly disagree, I have media subscriptions right now that I won't sign into for a month or even multiple months but I don't intend on giving it up. This is especially true for niche streaming content where production costs aren't exactly cheap but their niche nature means not everyone is consistently in the mood for that content.
- smogcutter 3y ago
  Ok so why do you want to pay for that time? Why not have payments paused during the period of inactivity, and resume when you want to use it? The point is that this is a choice by content businesses. Pausing and resuming payments could easily be frictionless, but it isn’t.
  - themacguffinman 3y ago
    I described the reason in more detail in my previous comments up-thread: because I understand the cost is amortized and it's an intuitive billing system that supports two different watching habits: consistent watching as well as bingeing. Refusing to pay because I binge means prices increase for people who don't binge. Pricing issues like this are really killer for niche streaming sites that I want to support. I generally disagree with dark patterns that make it onerously difficult to cancel, but many streaming services (like Netflix) don't make it that difficult and pausing and resuming payments is already easy enough. I just have to actually do it, not ask them to read my mind.
    - smogcutter 3y ago
      I mean, for starters this whole conversation is fantasy because streamers, or really, businesses in general, will never on their own initiative stop taking taking money from customers. Auto-cancellation or whatever is never ever going to happen. Unless forced by regulation I suppose, which I don’t see a reason for. We’re not talking about fraud or deception, just the general day-to-day scumminess of capitalism. All that said, I don’t think your argument carries the weight you think it does. “I’m happy my underutilization of a service subsidizes other users” isn’t a compelling story to me and doesn’t seem like a net benefit. To each their own. (Anyway, a binger whose usage is equivalent to a non-binge watcher, except concentrated rather than diffuse, is not actually underutilizing the service and isn’t really who we’re talking about here. I think.)

Hasu 3y ago

> People who don't exercise any personal responsibility over their finances are the ones who are free-riding off people who do. That's because when you don't manage your finances and you refuse to shoulder the cost for that, the time & effort and complexity it costs to accommodate that has to be paid by someone who isn't you. People who fail to cancel their subscriptions are not free-riding off anyone, they're paying $X per billing period. > Asking central organizations like a corporation to infer the correct thing for lots of consumers is very difficult and costly Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable.

themacguffinman 3y ago
> People who fail to cancel their subscriptions are not free-riding off anyone, they're paying $X per billing period. They're not free-riding currently, but what the parent is suggesting is that streaming subscriptions don't charge for months without activity. > Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable. Creating alternative usage-based billing models when most customers are happy with a monthly model is hard and has real costs. There are already storefronts with a more usage-based model: stuff like iTunes and Google Play Store let you pay per movie & episode, that's typically what consumers use when they don't like a monthly billing model.
RHSeeger 3y ago
> Usage based billing isn't that hard. It's just less profitable. But, by that same logic, they should just be charging you by how much you watch. So it's no longer "don't charge them for the month they didn't view" but, instead, "charge them $X/minute watched". If you're going to go with usage based billing, go with usage based billing.