6 ms·

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 go

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.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
    Also non-US, but I never remember this being a problem - the immersion breaking outweighed the lack of a built-in pause every time. But VHS also launched very early in my life and completely eliminated any upsides to ads, as well as many of the downsides!
EugeneOZ 2y ago
I did cancel my subscription to Amazon Prime because of this exact reason.
- secondcoming 2y ago
  Me too, not 100% due to ads but it was the final straw.
zmgsabst 2y ago
Amazon’s downstream impact calculations and Prime attribution model were notoriously bad inside the company. That’s part of what led to the massive Devices cull a few years back — and the 2018 hiring freeze was because Prime overvalued Video, inappropriately routing hundreds of millions a year away from Retail. I believe the metrics exist; I don’t believe they tell anyone useful information.

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.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago
  Also non-US, but I never remember this being a problem - the immersion breaking outweighed the lack of a built-in pause every time. But VHS also launched very early in my life and completely eliminated any upsides to ads, as well as many of the downsides!

EugeneOZ 2y ago

I did cancel my subscription to Amazon Prime because of this exact reason.

secondcoming 2y ago
Me too, not 100% due to ads but it was the final straw.

zmgsabst 2y ago

Amazon’s downstream impact calculations and Prime attribution model were notoriously bad inside the company. That’s part of what led to the massive Devices cull a few years back — and the 2018 hiring freeze was because Prime overvalued Video, inappropriately routing hundreds of millions a year away from Retail. I believe the metrics exist; I don’t believe they tell anyone useful information.