6 ms·

You’re making a very different point to the article. The article is about how to pay for content, your point is that you don’t want to pay for content at all.

ballooney 2y ago
He does pay for prime. The fact that they have done a bait-n-switch and now _still_ show you adverts, despite you paying, is reprehensible.
- mortehu 2y ago
  Before that, they did a bait and switch and added free videos to their package delivery service. Beyond that, there's no lock-in to a video service beyond any exclusive show you're currently watching, so your decision to continue paying is on you.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Only if they didn't issue that as new Ts & Cs. If they just changed the service he should get his money back for an unagreed change of service.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    Unilaterally written terms are morally bankrupt. We gain nothing by helping Bezos.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      It doesn't matter if they're unilaterally written as long as they're bilaterally agreed.
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        It actually does matter.
  - account42 2y ago
    My personal T&Cs say websites don't get to show me any ads. Websites continue to agree to those T&Cs by sending me content.
    - benj111 2y ago
      Is this a 'do not track' extension
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Hah yes, a bit like "Kia agree to let me steal their cars by making cars so stealable".
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  But here's the thing: the subscription is not being cancelled. Amazon tries it, gets some people grumbling, but their bottom line is not affected and in fact goes up from this move because in addition to subscribers they also get ad revenue. A vocal minority doesn't outweigh hard numbers in this case. But that's one of the causes of enshittification, everything becoming metrics-driven.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Ah, the wonders of platform-exclusive content.
  - 0xEF 2y ago
    Indeed, the market gives permission to the offense. The funny part is we should have all learned our lesson from the cable television days. Perhaps it's been long enough that everyone forgot, or maybe most of the market is just too young now, but there was a time in the US when cable television was ad-free. Commercials started sneaking into that with some regularity even though part of the draw to paying for cable tv was that it was commercial free. My brain wants to say this happened around the late 1980's? I might be wrong on that time frame, but at some point, like a frog sitting in a pot of water, the heat slowly rose and we found ourselves boiled to death with more and more commercial interruptions in our paid cable tv channels. Then we watched the same thing happen with the Internet in the mid-2000's. Needless to say, I am a heavy user of ad blockers and Pi Holes. I especially loath sites that want to detect my ad blocker, and throw up a message trying to to guilt me into turning it off. The thing is I am not just blocking the ads, but also trying to block all the tracking that comes with those ads. It's not really just about being annoyed by ads this time around. It's also about the right to privacy.
    - miki123211 2y ago
      From my (admittedly non-US) experience, people actually get pretty annoyed when they have to watch a long movie or TV show without commercial breaks, especially when there's no "pause" feature available. Not so much of a problem on modern TVs / set top boxes, as they usually offer that feature (though things get complicated if you want to do some channel flipping to e.g. quickly check how a sports game is going), but it was definitely a pretty big deal back in the day. None of this applies to on-demand, of course.
- freddie_mercury 2y ago
  No, they just raised the price of the ad-free experience. You can pay $3 a month more than last year to remain ad-free.
ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
You can use uBlock and pay your content creators via Patreon if they have one. I believe that the ad-based freemium business model is harmful to society and unfixable due to the incentives it creates to engage and enrage rather than entertain and inform. So, I use uBlock to use YouTube for free to explicitly drain it of resources without giving Google any ad income, and then I pay the creators that I like using other platforms.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  I'm not a big believer in this. It simply doesn't scale. So I might donate chunks of income to 1, 2, maybe 5 or 10 people like this. What about everyone else? It's not a fair system. I engage with lots of youtube channels, read lots of things on dozens/hundreds of websites. Add a few podcasts to the mix and it starts adding up to quite a lot of mouths to feed with individual donations. It's not reasonable for all of them to expect something from me. At least with Spotify and Netflix there is some kind of rev share thing in place. It's not very fair of course and a bit biased towards rewarding content creators that I don't necessarily like (or are in need of more money). But it's better than having to cherry pick creators. Somehow publishers have resisted creating such a thing for written media. We have this broken model of ad supported media and media outlets taking most of that revenue and paying really shitty wages to journalists, many of whom are working on a freelance basis and get paid pitiful amounts per word. Why do we have all these middlemen?
  - ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
    Spotify doesn't solve that problem at all, it just helps you avoid feeling bad about it. I know artists who sell their music on both Bandcamp and on Spotify, and they all say that their income from Spotify is utterly insignificant unless you are already a big and established name with lots and lots of streams. You are not the only one consuming a given podcast or YouTube channel, and even if you don't subscribe to their Patreon, maybe someone who likes it even more will. Sure, some content creators will not get enough income to continue, but is that really a big problem? We have no shortage of musicians, blog authors and podcasters, and if you don't care enough about a podcast to give a little bit of money to it, then maybe you won't miss it that much if it disappears. Advocating for a different market structure than the ad-tech fueled one will of course change the supply side and I am not claiming otherwise. I just don't think it's necessarily going to be a problem, on the contrary it will optimize for content that people love rather than content that just stimulates them.
LaGrange 2y ago
I mean not the OP's point, but: - Rent seeking is not behavior I care for, and so much of the subscription service stuff is exactly that. - I'm more than happy to pay for quite a few patreon/similar things. - But _ultimately_ I don't just want to "consume" content, I want to share it. In fact I believe sharing the cultural artifacts I engage with is an essential part of a culture, and that getting in the way of that is morally wrong. So if your paywall gets in the way of _that_, I _will_ work around it. Edit: also, the other side of the problem is that there are too many websites now. When it was Netflix and nearly everything there, I payed for it. I no longer pay for shows and movies, because things got _completely_ nuts. Similar thing with news. Reality is I pay _way_ more for Patreon than most people I know - not because of any moral reasons, but because I can actually afford that. And a typical news site asks as much as what I give to some of my favorite writers and painters.

ballooney 2y ago

He does pay for prime. The fact that they have done a bait-n-switch and now _still_ show you adverts, despite you paying, is reprehensible.

mortehu 2y ago
Before that, they did a bait and switch and added free videos to their package delivery service. Beyond that, there's no lock-in to a video service beyond any exclusive show you're currently watching, so your decision to continue paying is on you.
robertlagrant 2y ago
Only if they didn't issue that as new Ts & Cs. If they just changed the service he should get his money back for an unagreed change of service.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  Unilaterally written terms are morally bankrupt. We gain nothing by helping Bezos.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    It doesn't matter if they're unilaterally written as long as they're bilaterally agreed.
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      It actually does matter.
- account42 2y ago
  My personal T&Cs say websites don't get to show me any ads. Websites continue to agree to those T&Cs by sending me content.
  - benj111 2y ago
    Is this a 'do not track' extension
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Hah yes, a bit like "Kia agree to let me steal their cars by making cars so stealable".
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
But here's the thing: the subscription is not being cancelled. Amazon tries it, gets some people grumbling, but their bottom line is not affected and in fact goes up from this move because in addition to subscribers they also get ad revenue. A vocal minority doesn't outweigh hard numbers in this case. But that's one of the causes of enshittification, everything becoming metrics-driven.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Ah, the wonders of platform-exclusive content.
- 0xEF 2y ago
  Indeed, the market gives permission to the offense. The funny part is we should have all learned our lesson from the cable television days. Perhaps it's been long enough that everyone forgot, or maybe most of the market is just too young now, but there was a time in the US when cable television was ad-free. Commercials started sneaking into that with some regularity even though part of the draw to paying for cable tv was that it was commercial free. My brain wants to say this happened around the late 1980's? I might be wrong on that time frame, but at some point, like a frog sitting in a pot of water, the heat slowly rose and we found ourselves boiled to death with more and more commercial interruptions in our paid cable tv channels. Then we watched the same thing happen with the Internet in the mid-2000's. Needless to say, I am a heavy user of ad blockers and Pi Holes. I especially loath sites that want to detect my ad blocker, and throw up a message trying to to guilt me into turning it off. The thing is I am not just blocking the ads, but also trying to block all the tracking that comes with those ads. It's not really just about being annoyed by ads this time around. It's also about the right to privacy.
  - miki123211 2y ago
    From my (admittedly non-US) experience, people actually get pretty annoyed when they have to watch a long movie or TV show without commercial breaks, especially when there's no "pause" feature available. Not so much of a problem on modern TVs / set top boxes, as they usually offer that feature (though things get complicated if you want to do some channel flipping to e.g. quickly check how a sports game is going), but it was definitely a pretty big deal back in the day. None of this applies to on-demand, of course.
freddie_mercury 2y ago
No, they just raised the price of the ad-free experience. You can pay $3 a month more than last year to remain ad-free.

ulrikrasmussen 2y ago

You can use uBlock and pay your content creators via Patreon if they have one. I believe that the ad-based freemium business model is harmful to society and unfixable due to the incentives it creates to engage and enrage rather than entertain and inform. So, I use uBlock to use YouTube for free to explicitly drain it of resources without giving Google any ad income, and then I pay the creators that I like using other platforms.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I'm not a big believer in this. It simply doesn't scale. So I might donate chunks of income to 1, 2, maybe 5 or 10 people like this. What about everyone else? It's not a fair system. I engage with lots of youtube channels, read lots of things on dozens/hundreds of websites. Add a few podcasts to the mix and it starts adding up to quite a lot of mouths to feed with individual donations. It's not reasonable for all of them to expect something from me. At least with Spotify and Netflix there is some kind of rev share thing in place. It's not very fair of course and a bit biased towards rewarding content creators that I don't necessarily like (or are in need of more money). But it's better than having to cherry pick creators. Somehow publishers have resisted creating such a thing for written media. We have this broken model of ad supported media and media outlets taking most of that revenue and paying really shitty wages to journalists, many of whom are working on a freelance basis and get paid pitiful amounts per word. Why do we have all these middlemen?
- ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
  Spotify doesn't solve that problem at all, it just helps you avoid feeling bad about it. I know artists who sell their music on both Bandcamp and on Spotify, and they all say that their income from Spotify is utterly insignificant unless you are already a big and established name with lots and lots of streams. You are not the only one consuming a given podcast or YouTube channel, and even if you don't subscribe to their Patreon, maybe someone who likes it even more will. Sure, some content creators will not get enough income to continue, but is that really a big problem? We have no shortage of musicians, blog authors and podcasters, and if you don't care enough about a podcast to give a little bit of money to it, then maybe you won't miss it that much if it disappears. Advocating for a different market structure than the ad-tech fueled one will of course change the supply side and I am not claiming otherwise. I just don't think it's necessarily going to be a problem, on the contrary it will optimize for content that people love rather than content that just stimulates them.

LaGrange 2y ago

I mean not the OP's point, but: - Rent seeking is not behavior I care for, and so much of the subscription service stuff is exactly that. - I'm more than happy to pay for quite a few patreon/similar things. - But _ultimately_ I don't just want to "consume" content, I want to share it. In fact I believe sharing the cultural artifacts I engage with is an essential part of a culture, and that getting in the way of that is morally wrong. So if your paywall gets in the way of _that_, I _will_ work around it. Edit: also, the other side of the problem is that there are too many websites now. When it was Netflix and nearly everything there, I payed for it. I no longer pay for shows and movies, because things got _completely_ nuts. Similar thing with news. Reality is I pay _way_ more for Patreon than most people I know - not because of any moral reasons, but because I can actually afford that. And a typical news site asks as much as what I give to some of my favorite writers and painters.