9 ms·

> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content I'm a bit more pessimistic I guess. Netflix at one point

> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content I'm a bit more pessimistic I guess. Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform. Now, Netflix is starting to fill up with 'sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content' and they really seem to want to become ad-fuelled. I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. For a while I thought that blockchain/crypto might be a good way to fix this. But nobody seems to be building blockchain stuff to do the right thing, they only do it to rip people off.

throwaway237289 2y ago
> I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. > I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. You mean you want... the cable TV bundle again? Literally the thing that the article rails against, because cable TV inherently produces "sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o'clock-news reporting." Amazing.
- wickedsight 2y ago
  > the cable TV bundle again? No, that's why I didn't write that. Spotify allows nearly everyone to put their music on the platform. Just this week I listened to some music with <1000 plays that I found in a random video somewhere. I choose what I want to listen to and a part of the fee I pay gets transferred to the creator. I don't need to buy 100 different subscriptions to labels and musicians, it's centralized. (Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I'm not using it as an example of a perfect end goal, I'm using it as an example of the only thing right now that gets somewhat in the neighborhood. And in the industry there are multiple platforms who distribute mostly the same content with only some 'exclusive' releases. Which is what I'd like to see for the web.)
  - alisonatwork 2y ago
    Is that really how Spotify works? What if you listened only to that one creator, would all of the artists' portion of your subscription go to that creator? I was under the impression that with Spotify everybody's subscription goes into a big pool of money which is then distributed between all of the artists based on total plays. So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to and who don't need my support anyway. This is why I prefer to use Bandcamp, where I know there is a direct relationship between what I buy and who gets the money for that.
    - wickedsight 2y ago
      > Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I wrote that paragraph for a reason. > So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to That mostly depends on how much you listen. If you listen more than average, your niche band will actually get more than they would've otherwise. At least if I have my brain math correct.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It was totally predictable that many of the same people who hated on the cable bundle also hate on a fragmented streaming landscape even though they probably pay significantly less than they did for cable TV unless they also pay for live TV anyway. (And they'd also hate on an all-inclusive integrated streaming service for the hundreds of dollars a month it would cost.)
  - wickedsight 2y ago
    > though they probably pay significantly less than they did for cable TV Might be a bit of a cultural difference though. I'm in the Netherlands. TV was never as expensive over here as in the US. We also got spoiled, I guess, because the hits from the US were also on TV over here but the smaller shows weren't, so we'd get the biggest shows from Fox, CBS and Comedy Central on the same channel in some cases. And from what I remember this was <$20 a month.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I paid about $100/month for cable TV in the US and that wasn't with a bunch of premium content. (Maybe just HBO.) That was Comcast so I assume that was pretty typical. And then any streaming channels, movie rentals (which were mostly not on standard cable), etc. were on top of that. And when I canceled cable TV I decided to just go cold turkey and do without the occasional sporting event on live TV. So depending upon how you count I'm probably paying less than $50/month for all my video entertainment these days.
    - geodel 2y ago
      > Might be a bit of a cultural difference though. It is more of content owner trying to get what they can from different part of the world. There are places in third world where HBO would be $1 / month , same thing in US is like 15-20 dollars. Buyers/local networks can always say this is price local market can pay else they will pirate.
- hightrix 2y ago
  I would LOVE a streaming bundle that included all the content for a discount if and only if it remained ad free. The big draw for me for streaming is not price, it is removal of ads.
matwood 2y ago
> or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content Cable still exists. People wanted the ability to sub to whatever they wanted (often leaving out sports for example). That's happened and now people want it all in one place. It turns out what people want is everything in one place for free, which is leading Netflix to have an ad-tier. Though, re-bundling is going to take some time as consolidation happens.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Don't worry by the way, cable boxes, Netflix, and televisions will give away your privacy even if you pay
  - mlindner 2y ago
    You don't get past the ads, but over-the-air TV still exists and is technologically impossible to track you individually. Also, if you're connecting your TV to the internet, that's a "you" problem.
    - stubish 2y ago
      For a while. Over here we expect to lose one of our three commercial TV stations in the next few years, because the market (ie. ad spending) has been moving online. Regional broadcast stations are already shutting down, because it is not worth the cost of maintaining the transmitters when people can get the same stream online.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  Cable is laced with advertising and is linear, whereas much of the world has moved on to on demand. Further, what folks always wanted back in the days before streaming was the ability not to pay for genres they didn't want. Netflix had a reasonable low price for a while so it was worth it even if you only really watched one or two genres they had, and ignored the rest of the content. But with higher prices, it is ever more difficult to justify. Disney used to offer Disney, Hulu, and ESPN separately or as a bundle, so if you didn't watch sports, you could just get Disney and Hulu. Or if you just wanted Disney, you could get that. But they have raised prices and increasingly pushed bundling. I for one would be perfectly willing to have an option where I could get Westerns for 2 or 3 bucks a month, Action/super heros for 2 or 3 bucks, SciFi for 2 or 3 bucks, Romance/RomCom for a buck. Kids/cartoons for a buck or two etc. And then choose what I want to subscribe to each month. But if you are going to charge me 20 bucks a month, you had better have 20 bucks a month worth of content that I actually want to watch. (and no ads). Oh, and stop making good shows with cliff hanger endings and then canceling them!
fzingle 2y ago
Our economic model encourages this kind of race to the bottom enshitification of everything. Unfortunately there are no high-tech solutions to this problem. The technology we need to improve is our political/economic system. Perhaps with wealthy country populations projected to fall dramatically we will finally be forced to find a way other than "growth" to value human endeavour. That would be the most likely path to a solution, I fear it will be rather painful.
- irdc 2y ago
  Our economic model (is supposed to) boil down to producing our goods and services using the least amount of resources. Sure, that yields planned obsolescence and enshittification, but also cheap multi-GHz laptops and widespread Internet availability.
steve-rambo-fan 2y ago
Brave is building something that sounds like it might be right up your alley, but adoption of their payment system has been rather low, and I doubt Mozilla has enough street cred to be more successful after the last ten years of their mismanagement and the market share hovering just above 0%.
- MostlyStable 2y ago
  If Mozilla's market share is an impediment to the adoption, then have I got some bad news for you about Brave.... (I say this as a happy user of Brave on Android)
whartung 2y ago
> needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. Mind this is sort of how it used to work. Outside of broadcast TV and radio, you either subscribed to everything (newspapers, magazines, newsletters) or you bought them ad hoc one by one at the newsstand. A problem with modern subscriptions is that they auto renew, and thus can be hard to cancel, and they tend to be quite expensive (everyone wants a “mere” $10/month).
- willyt 2y ago
  >...or you bought them ad hoc one by one at the newsstand... 100% This is what is missing. I don't want to subscribe to the New York Times for £90 per year because I only want to read about 5 to 10 NYT articles a year. Why can't I pay £1.50 for 15 articles? That would be about the same as buying a physical copy of a paper from a newsagent; if I buy a physical copy I probably read about that many articles from it before it gets recycled. Instead I either don't read the article I've found to or I try to find it on the internet archive which is really irritating. I would like to read articles in a range of papers; say 3-4 UK broadsheets, occasionally some international papers like the NYT, Le Monde and a couple of trade papers. If I subscribed to 4 UK broadsheet newspapers I would already be paying >£400/year in newspaper subscriptions. Who does this? I can't understand why newspapers can't see that no-one wants to be spending that sort of money and why they can't come up with a better solution. If the problem is card fees on micro transactions why don't they club together and create some kind of patreon type thing that agglomerates transactions together?
  - twoWhlsGud 2y ago
    Post News tried this and failed. Not sure why.
    - sgerenser 2y ago
      There was also Blendle which I thought was a great idea, but it flopped: https://www.pugpig.com/2023/08/18/why-micropayment-champion-blendle-ditched-the-model-and-where-it-might-fit-in-subscription-strategies/ https://www.pugpig.com/2023/08/18/why-micropayment-champion-...
lukan 2y ago
"> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content" I am also a bit pessimistic about this, but rather think the danger comes from LLMs making even more convincing clickbait and "facts". Cheap, easy to consume, if there are enough clicks, there is enough ad money. Something real was misrepresented, so there was a lot of outcry? Awesome, lots of clicks. Lots of money. We can later apoligize, that the LLM summarizing made a misstake there. As long as ads dominate where the money comes from for newspapers, not much will change.
- abakker 2y ago
  I think another alternative here, is the existence of broad spectrum “summary as a service” is that “content for content’s sake” and blog spam and SEO become less relevant. Maybe not, but I hope so.
  - lukan 2y ago
    Oh there will be for sure lots of nergy wasted, on producing long text out of nothing - and on the other side using lots of energy to make LLM summarize that garbage again. But yes, I also hope some good will come out of it and intent to stay in the good areas.
dageshi 2y ago
> Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform. In other words, we got competition. If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk that clouds Google, Amazon, Apple and the other trillion dollar corporations. If anything this is a good thing, competition happened before Netflix could dominate completely.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  > If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk.... Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, Tidal all manage to have almost comprehensive music catalogs for me to stream. It's rare that I find something on one platform that isn't on another (Some artist exceptions exist, and are rare). Pick 10 random films off the AFI top 100 list and tell me how to stream them. How many services do I need to watch them "for free". Consumers want a single point of access to content. If I want to listen to a song I go to my music platform, if I want to watch content I go to the web to find out who has it... That friction is what consumers dont want or need.
  - dageshi 2y ago
    That's because music costs barely anything to create vs tv/movies and the digitally distributed track is basically just advertising for the music creators merch, sponsorship deals, live gigs where they make their real money. You can tell that's the case because practically every piece of music created has been put on youtube while nobody puts tv/movies on youtube for free. So your spotify equivalent for tv/movies is going to cost $100+ a month, perhaps more because tv/movies are that much more expensive to make and that's what you were paying for cable back in the day. But people think everything could cost $20 at most, so that's why we're going to have 10 or so streaming services and frankly that's way better than the old cable days.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      No, that's because music licensing has been collected together into one or two monopolistic licensing schemes in every country. Most countries do it via a government agency, the US does it with BMI and ASCAP. It's actually kind of surprising the US hasn't broken up BMI & ASCAP with anti-trust, but they've got special dispensation just like the NFL. Legislatures could bring in a compulsory licensing scheme for movies similar to BMI and ASCAP.
LeifCarrotson 2y ago
I think we're past a low point of ad-fueled low-value content. Better alternatives will arise, grow, and become ubiquitous - but then they too will grow more expensive, become corrupted, and be circumvented in turn. Media, art, and info distribution are never static targets, and even if a stable equilibrium exists and can be reached that does not mean that society will not oscillate around it.
oska 2y ago
> Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy I think you have it the wrong way round. Piracy is the solution to Netflix (the bloated, enshittified 'content provider') just like piracy has been the solution to all the centralised media platform monopolies that came before it, that Netflix first disrupted and then joined. As an individual it's meritorious to pay creators and pay creative collectives (e.g. studios). But it's never meritorious to pay media platforms that act as middle men. They are in the business of ripping off both the creators and their audience ('consumers' in modern parlance). You're only a sucker if you buy into their self-serving moralising narratives. The right and moral thing is to parasite them to death, by piracy. (Or boycott them; also a valid choice.)
- tstrimple 2y ago
  Nope. They had it exactly right. Notice the past tense. You're just adding more context to what they said. I was able to skip out on usenet for quite a while during the Netflix golden years because Netflix made consuming content much easier than pirating at the time. But it's back to where things were before and we've got better tools for "alternate sources" of such content.
einpoklum 2y ago
> because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Only if your preference of content happens to match what NetFlix offers, which is not the case for many/most people.

throwaway237289 2y ago

> I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. > I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform. You mean you want... the cable TV bundle again? Literally the thing that the article rails against, because cable TV inherently produces "sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o'clock-news reporting." Amazing.

wickedsight 2y ago
> the cable TV bundle again? No, that's why I didn't write that. Spotify allows nearly everyone to put their music on the platform. Just this week I listened to some music with <1000 plays that I found in a random video somewhere. I choose what I want to listen to and a part of the fee I pay gets transferred to the creator. I don't need to buy 100 different subscriptions to labels and musicians, it's centralized. (Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I'm not using it as an example of a perfect end goal, I'm using it as an example of the only thing right now that gets somewhat in the neighborhood. And in the industry there are multiple platforms who distribute mostly the same content with only some 'exclusive' releases. Which is what I'd like to see for the web.)
- alisonatwork 2y ago
  Is that really how Spotify works? What if you listened only to that one creator, would all of the artists' portion of your subscription go to that creator? I was under the impression that with Spotify everybody's subscription goes into a big pool of money which is then distributed between all of the artists based on total plays. So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to and who don't need my support anyway. This is why I prefer to use Bandcamp, where I know there is a direct relationship between what I buy and who gets the money for that.
  - wickedsight 2y ago
    > Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I wrote that paragraph for a reason. > So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to That mostly depends on how much you listen. If you listen more than average, your niche band will actually get more than they would've otherwise. At least if I have my brain math correct.
ghaff 2y ago
It was totally predictable that many of the same people who hated on the cable bundle also hate on a fragmented streaming landscape even though they probably pay significantly less than they did for cable TV unless they also pay for live TV anyway. (And they'd also hate on an all-inclusive integrated streaming service for the hundreds of dollars a month it would cost.)
- wickedsight 2y ago
  > though they probably pay significantly less than they did for cable TV Might be a bit of a cultural difference though. I'm in the Netherlands. TV was never as expensive over here as in the US. We also got spoiled, I guess, because the hits from the US were also on TV over here but the smaller shows weren't, so we'd get the biggest shows from Fox, CBS and Comedy Central on the same channel in some cases. And from what I remember this was <$20 a month.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I paid about $100/month for cable TV in the US and that wasn't with a bunch of premium content. (Maybe just HBO.) That was Comcast so I assume that was pretty typical. And then any streaming channels, movie rentals (which were mostly not on standard cable), etc. were on top of that. And when I canceled cable TV I decided to just go cold turkey and do without the occasional sporting event on live TV. So depending upon how you count I'm probably paying less than $50/month for all my video entertainment these days.
  - geodel 2y ago
    > Might be a bit of a cultural difference though. It is more of content owner trying to get what they can from different part of the world. There are places in third world where HBO would be $1 / month , same thing in US is like 15-20 dollars. Buyers/local networks can always say this is price local market can pay else they will pirate.
hightrix 2y ago
I would LOVE a streaming bundle that included all the content for a discount if and only if it remained ad free. The big draw for me for streaming is not price, it is removal of ads.

matwood 2y ago

> or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content Cable still exists. People wanted the ability to sub to whatever they wanted (often leaving out sports for example). That's happened and now people want it all in one place. It turns out what people want is everything in one place for free, which is leading Netflix to have an ad-tier. Though, re-bundling is going to take some time as consolidation happens.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Don't worry by the way, cable boxes, Netflix, and televisions will give away your privacy even if you pay
- mlindner 2y ago
  You don't get past the ads, but over-the-air TV still exists and is technologically impossible to track you individually. Also, if you're connecting your TV to the internet, that's a "you" problem.
  - stubish 2y ago
    For a while. Over here we expect to lose one of our three commercial TV stations in the next few years, because the market (ie. ad spending) has been moving online. Regional broadcast stations are already shutting down, because it is not worth the cost of maintaining the transmitters when people can get the same stream online.
ensignavenger 2y ago
Cable is laced with advertising and is linear, whereas much of the world has moved on to on demand. Further, what folks always wanted back in the days before streaming was the ability not to pay for genres they didn't want. Netflix had a reasonable low price for a while so it was worth it even if you only really watched one or two genres they had, and ignored the rest of the content. But with higher prices, it is ever more difficult to justify. Disney used to offer Disney, Hulu, and ESPN separately or as a bundle, so if you didn't watch sports, you could just get Disney and Hulu. Or if you just wanted Disney, you could get that. But they have raised prices and increasingly pushed bundling. I for one would be perfectly willing to have an option where I could get Westerns for 2 or 3 bucks a month, Action/super heros for 2 or 3 bucks, SciFi for 2 or 3 bucks, Romance/RomCom for a buck. Kids/cartoons for a buck or two etc. And then choose what I want to subscribe to each month. But if you are going to charge me 20 bucks a month, you had better have 20 bucks a month worth of content that I actually want to watch. (and no ads). Oh, and stop making good shows with cliff hanger endings and then canceling them!

fzingle 2y ago

Our economic model encourages this kind of race to the bottom enshitification of everything. Unfortunately there are no high-tech solutions to this problem. The technology we need to improve is our political/economic system. Perhaps with wealthy country populations projected to fall dramatically we will finally be forced to find a way other than "growth" to value human endeavour. That would be the most likely path to a solution, I fear it will be rather painful.

irdc 2y ago
Our economic model (is supposed to) boil down to producing our goods and services using the least amount of resources. Sure, that yields planned obsolescence and enshittification, but also cheap multi-GHz laptops and widespread Internet availability.

steve-rambo-fan 2y ago

Brave is building something that sounds like it might be right up your alley, but adoption of their payment system has been rather low, and I doubt Mozilla has enough street cred to be more successful after the last ten years of their mismanagement and the market share hovering just above 0%.

MostlyStable 2y ago
If Mozilla's market share is an impediment to the adoption, then have I got some bad news for you about Brave.... (I say this as a happy user of Brave on Android)

whartung 2y ago

> needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content. Mind this is sort of how it used to work. Outside of broadcast TV and radio, you either subscribed to everything (newspapers, magazines, newsletters) or you bought them ad hoc one by one at the newsstand. A problem with modern subscriptions is that they auto renew, and thus can be hard to cancel, and they tend to be quite expensive (everyone wants a “mere” $10/month).

willyt 2y ago
>...or you bought them ad hoc one by one at the newsstand... 100% This is what is missing. I don't want to subscribe to the New York Times for £90 per year because I only want to read about 5 to 10 NYT articles a year. Why can't I pay £1.50 for 15 articles? That would be about the same as buying a physical copy of a paper from a newsagent; if I buy a physical copy I probably read about that many articles from it before it gets recycled. Instead I either don't read the article I've found to or I try to find it on the internet archive which is really irritating. I would like to read articles in a range of papers; say 3-4 UK broadsheets, occasionally some international papers like the NYT, Le Monde and a couple of trade papers. If I subscribed to 4 UK broadsheet newspapers I would already be paying >£400/year in newspaper subscriptions. Who does this? I can't understand why newspapers can't see that no-one wants to be spending that sort of money and why they can't come up with a better solution. If the problem is card fees on micro transactions why don't they club together and create some kind of patreon type thing that agglomerates transactions together?
- twoWhlsGud 2y ago
  Post News tried this and failed. Not sure why.
  - sgerenser 2y ago
    There was also Blendle which I thought was a great idea, but it flopped: https://www.pugpig.com/2023/08/18/why-micropayment-champion-blendle-ditched-the-model-and-where-it-might-fit-in-subscription-strategies/ https://www.pugpig.com/2023/08/18/why-micropayment-champion-...

lukan 2y ago

"> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content" I am also a bit pessimistic about this, but rather think the danger comes from LLMs making even more convincing clickbait and "facts". Cheap, easy to consume, if there are enough clicks, there is enough ad money. Something real was misrepresented, so there was a lot of outcry? Awesome, lots of clicks. Lots of money. We can later apoligize, that the LLM summarizing made a misstake there. As long as ads dominate where the money comes from for newspapers, not much will change.

abakker 2y ago
I think another alternative here, is the existence of broad spectrum “summary as a service” is that “content for content’s sake” and blog spam and SEO become less relevant. Maybe not, but I hope so.
- lukan 2y ago
  Oh there will be for sure lots of nergy wasted, on producing long text out of nothing - and on the other side using lots of energy to make LLM summarize that garbage again. But yes, I also hope some good will come out of it and intent to stay in the good areas.

dageshi 2y ago

> Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform. In other words, we got competition. If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk that clouds Google, Amazon, Apple and the other trillion dollar corporations. If anything this is a good thing, competition happened before Netflix could dominate completely.

zer00eyz 2y ago
> If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk.... Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, Tidal all manage to have almost comprehensive music catalogs for me to stream. It's rare that I find something on one platform that isn't on another (Some artist exceptions exist, and are rare). Pick 10 random films off the AFI top 100 list and tell me how to stream them. How many services do I need to watch them "for free". Consumers want a single point of access to content. If I want to listen to a song I go to my music platform, if I want to watch content I go to the web to find out who has it... That friction is what consumers dont want or need.
- dageshi 2y ago
  That's because music costs barely anything to create vs tv/movies and the digitally distributed track is basically just advertising for the music creators merch, sponsorship deals, live gigs where they make their real money. You can tell that's the case because practically every piece of music created has been put on youtube while nobody puts tv/movies on youtube for free. So your spotify equivalent for tv/movies is going to cost $100+ a month, perhaps more because tv/movies are that much more expensive to make and that's what you were paying for cable back in the day. But people think everything could cost $20 at most, so that's why we're going to have 10 or so streaming services and frankly that's way better than the old cable days.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    No, that's because music licensing has been collected together into one or two monopolistic licensing schemes in every country. Most countries do it via a government agency, the US does it with BMI and ASCAP. It's actually kind of surprising the US hasn't broken up BMI & ASCAP with anti-trust, but they've got special dispensation just like the NFL. Legislatures could bring in a compulsory licensing scheme for movies similar to BMI and ASCAP.

LeifCarrotson 2y ago

I think we're past a low point of ad-fueled low-value content. Better alternatives will arise, grow, and become ubiquitous - but then they too will grow more expensive, become corrupted, and be circumvented in turn. Media, art, and info distribution are never static targets, and even if a stable equilibrium exists and can be reached that does not mean that society will not oscillate around it.

oska 2y ago

> Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy I think you have it the wrong way round. Piracy is the solution to Netflix (the bloated, enshittified 'content provider') just like piracy has been the solution to all the centralised media platform monopolies that came before it, that Netflix first disrupted and then joined. As an individual it's meritorious to pay creators and pay creative collectives (e.g. studios). But it's never meritorious to pay media platforms that act as middle men. They are in the business of ripping off both the creators and their audience ('consumers' in modern parlance). You're only a sucker if you buy into their self-serving moralising narratives. The right and moral thing is to parasite them to death, by piracy. (Or boycott them; also a valid choice.)

tstrimple 2y ago
Nope. They had it exactly right. Notice the past tense. You're just adding more context to what they said. I was able to skip out on usenet for quite a while during the Netflix golden years because Netflix made consuming content much easier than pirating at the time. But it's back to where things were before and we've got better tools for "alternate sources" of such content.

einpoklum 2y ago

> because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Only if your preference of content happens to match what NetFlix offers, which is not the case for many/most people.