4 ms·

Did anyone actually read the linked wiki in full? It’s basically saying “if there are embedded ads in certain live (likely sports) content we carry you may see

Did anyone actually read the linked wiki in full? It’s basically saying “if there are embedded ads in certain live (likely sports) content we carry you may see them even on an ad-free plan because we don’t have an alternative. Also we might try to promote different tiers of Disney+ itself within the app so to the extent you see that as an ad, that’s an exception to ‘ad-free’” I’m all for consumer awareness but I’m begging everyone to stop freaking out over prosaic non-issues like this.

shakna 12d ago
This is the same terms of service that were stretched to indemnify against theme park accidents. [0] Why would anyone give them the benefit of the doubt? [0] https://lawcouncil.au/international-law/ils-insights/tangled-in-terms-disney-clause-a-wrongful-death-lawsuit-and-bad-pr https://lawcouncil.au/international-law/ils-insights/tangled...
- echelon 12d ago
  Your link doesn't appear to work for me. In case folks aren't aware, Disney tried to avoid an allergy-related wrongful death lawsuit from a restaurant at Disney Springs (large publicly available outdoor mall that doesn't even require tickets) because a couple had a Disney+ streaming trial: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go
  - gruez 12d ago
    The original lawsuit was spurious to begin with because the restaurant wasn't even operated by Disney.
    - oivey 12d ago
      Incredibly irrelevant. By asserting their ToS this way, they clearly would have tried to use it in any situation where they had potential liability.
      - gruez 12d ago
        >they clearly would have tried to use it in any situation where they had potential liability. That's just how lawyers work. They'll try to invoke any defense that's vaguely applicable, just like any plaintiff lawyer will try to invoke any cause of action that's vaguely applicable, like the plaintiffs in this exact case.
        LPisGood 12d ago
        That’s not true in general. Plenty of jurisdictions do not allow you to use contradictory arguments in hopes that one is persuasive.
        gruez 12d ago
        In the context of this story (ie. US), it's specifically allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_pleading#Civil_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_pleading#Civil_law
        Dylan16807 12d ago
        That sounds bad to me! The TOS argument was so awful it deserves some kind of bonus loss, but let's put that aside for now. Let's say I paint a fence, and my neighbor complains I ruined a particular segment that shouldn't have been painted. Why can't I argue that this segment was on my property and that my neighbor gave permission to use that paint on all segments on their property? Let's say there's a 15% chance the survey was wrong about the fence location, and a 15% chance the court disagrees with how I'm interpreting the agreement. If I can use both arguments I have a 2% chance of losing, which seems fair to me. Both arguments are reasonable, so why should I have to risk it on only one?
        ndriscoll 12d ago
        Don't excuse poor actions by saying these sorts of people just normally act poorly. It's their choice to act unethically.
deathhand 12d ago
Boohoo the billion dollar giant can't do the same thing that regional sports have been doing for the last 20! years with the likes of NFL and Baseball. Words matter. Words in advertising should matter. The slope is ice when we allow corporations to wordsmith around what they sell you.
fabian2k 12d ago
There are a few cases of ads that might not be practical to remove, though most of that would be more like sponsors and ad content that is a part of the show. You can certainly get live sports without ads, though you will of course still have the pauses in the game that allow the ads in the first place. But it's not unusual to see e.g. the halftime in soccer filled with analysis on public television that doesn't allow ads in that circumstance. And ads for their own services are still ads.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- hibikir 12d ago
  In most of these cases, you will see a place like D+ carry the same announcers as the TV station. Here Inbet it would be ESPN crews. So having a different, special crew just for ad breaks would not be exactly great. And given the density of ads in, say, the Super Bowl, you would be hard pressed making this a good experience.
rubyfan 12d ago
They already run ads for Disney parks, Hulu, ESPN, and other Disney owned content in the Premium tier. They just call them promos or sponsorships in the prior agreement. The new agreement allegedly introduces a third term “advertisements”. > We’ve clarified that all Service Plans may include: (i) promotional content, (ii) sponsorships, and (iii) advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content. I say allegedly because I haven’t received any communication from Disney yet but various reporting refers to email people in European markets have received. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/disney-putting-ads-ad-free-002625176.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/disney-putti...
- mrweasel 12d ago
  I feel like they stopped doing that, but there was definitively ads for other movies and shows because some movies on Disney+, but I haven't seen it in a while. It was pretty badly done, because you'd get confused and assume you'd started the wrong movie, so maybe they rolled it back?
- exe34 12d ago
  The quoted text is identical to what I have received in an email from Disney+. I only tend to get a month at a time when I want to watch a given show, but if paying doesn't remove adverts, I'm not going to pay.
  - abirch 12d ago
    It sucks that Disney+ cancelled Bobba Fett and other great Star Wars series. One month at a time makes sense especially with the lack of new content that I want.
micromacrofoot 12d ago
In every large org, including disney, there are people who will fuck with you to the full extent of the terms and laws if they think it can increase profit... they do not care about quality, experience, or morals. I've fought these people about marketing emails at dozens of orgs as a consultant. I guarantee they will eventually use this to show more ads. The goldfish grows to fit its bowl.
- mitxela 12d ago
  They don't stop at terms and laws. They stop at what loses money, through customer churn or lawsuits.
- GuB-42 12d ago
  That's why I don't really care that much about terms and conditions. Just because they say they can doesn't mean that they will, conversely, the writing can be misleading to anyone who isn't a specialized lawyer, so most people can't really tell what the terms and condition let them do anyways. I usually go for reputation and precedent rather then legalese. And in the case of Disney, they had ads in their video tapes and DVDs, so I don't need to read the user agreement to know that it has a good chance to come to Disney+, whatever the legal pathway is.
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
- mohamedkoubaa 12d ago
  Typically the only restraining force is a founder who cares.
  - micromacrofoot 12d ago
    there are execs and product people that care, but it's rare and they often get worn out
  - mosura 12d ago
    Who they will paint as an asshole in order to get them ejected. And it will be true because the only way to defeat these people is actually being an asshole.
amelius 12d ago
Why can't they remove the embedded ads with AI? Sheesh ... they're a big company. This should be easy.
- TeMPOraL 12d ago
  They could. They won't, because those ads are probably - if you excuse a little Claudish - the load-bearing part of the contract that allows them to show the content in the first place. (More cynical take: the ads are the whole point, the content itself is just a vector to get those ads in front of people, and prime them to be receptive.)
- basisword 12d ago
  If you're talking about sports stuff: 1. Now you just have a blank screen. Sure some people might like that but others will think there's an issue with the stream. 2. They're purchasing the rights to show the sports stuff, not actually producing it themselves and removing the ads would make the cost of the rights astronomical. Even when expensive linear TV packages were the norm, they still came with ads. With live TV paying has never negated the need for ads.
  - oivey 12d ago
    1. There doesn’t have to be a blank screen. Major League Baseball’s streaming service, for example, plays highlights or a placeholder video saying a commercial break is in progress. 2. What? They own ESPN which is producing the content, right? Baseball literally has an ad-free tier for its live streaming service. I’m sure it’s not the only live service that does. None of your points seem well considered. Why run interference for these companies?
    - duckmysick 12d ago
      I'm not familiar with MLB, only with NBA. But even their "ad-free" really isn't - there are still ad banners inside the arenas, on the court itself, and on the jerseys, the announcers often read ads ("this segment was brought to you by ..."), and if there is arena feed during the regular breaks, the in-arena events like a half-court shot are often sponsored as well. Plus there's standard service ads that announce next games. Unless MLB blurs/bleeps all of these, it's not really ad-free.
DonsDiscountGas 12d ago
> Also we might try to promote different tiers of Disney+ itself within the app so to the extent you see that as an ad, that’s an exception to ‘ad-free’” Yes I see that as an ad. Do you not? Does anyone not? And if I'm on the highest paying ad free plan, what are they promoting to me?
- jmathai 12d ago
  I’ve been a paying customer of Dropbox’s consumer plan for over a decade. Each time I visit their website I am greeted with a full page modal ad asking me to upgrade to a different plan I have no use for. I’ve dismissed it every time. I don’t mind being shown that ad once. But it bothers me that they don’t care enough about my experience using their product to provide a “never show this again” option. Or just use some metrics to know that if I dismiss it 50 times then maybe I’m not interested.
  - avhception 12d ago
    Do you want to upgrade now or later? Will you upgrade now or do I need to nag you to death?
  - sbarre 12d ago
    [dead]
  - Gareth321 12d ago
    This is a bigger problem than it may appear. The business lifecycle is well understood, whereby a company innovates, expands, and then when it has a sufficiently large customer base, it monetises. I.e. it enshitifies its products - making them more expensive over time relative to the value. This process is death by a thousand cuts. A PM might see that having the modal you hate show every time you load the site increases conversion by 3%. That's $1M ARR you just made the company! Wow! You get a bonus and a promotion! The problem is you erode customer sentiment by some undefined unit. Many people think NPS measures this, but it doesn't. That measures how many people love and hate the product. It omits the vast majority of people in the middle. They just add it to the increasing list of annoyances until one day there are so many annoyances that they leave. At that time it's very difficult for the company to understand why the user churned. It wasn't any one thing. It was a concerted effort over years to squeeze every cent out of the user at minimum cost.
josefresco 12d ago
"because we don’t have an alternative" Ads embedded on the playing field? Sure. Billboards visible or sponsor logos on uniforms? I get it. Actual commercials? This is a solved issue for decades, there are "alternatives" as others have pointed out. This is a "Boiling frog" situation.
- scotty79 12d ago
  > Ads embedded on the playing field? Sure. Billboards visible or sponsor logos on uniforms? To be honest if I'm paying for no ads I'd be expect to have an option to blur that crap on inpaint it with AI. Monitors and TVs should have this option.
  - chrismorgan 12d ago
    A lot of the ads on the field and perimeter are themselves inpainted. And becoming more and more offensive over time, with animation and flashing and such as technical capabilities improve and viewers become accustomed and don’t revolt.
    - gosub100 12d ago
      I'm sure somewhere there's an ad exec ready to rollout personalized in-game ads that say "hey Chris Morgan, try Henson's ball wash!" From data provided by your smart TV and your secret profile from data brokers.
- ChrisRR 12d ago
  I read it more as a contract issue rather than a technical issue
- bena 12d ago
  No, there's nothing really to do. They aren't producing the feed, they're essentially hosting a stream from another broadcaster. For instance, if you have Paramount+, you can watch sports broadcast by your local CBS station through it. That station is going to be running commercials, Paramount+ has no input on it. The most they can do is run ads over their ads. I'm assuming there's something similar with Disney+. You can watch your local ABC broadcast or ESPN broadcast of a game, but you're just getting that broadcast as being currently aired. But even for broadcasts wholly owned and controlled by a streaming platform, like Thursday Night Football on Prime, there are just times when it would be dead air. I don't entirely mind commercials in that instance. Nothing else is going on.
reptileIllumina 12d ago
Advertising is just a front for the surveillance capitalism/state and the one of foundation to the digital prison system. Of course they want ads on your devices.
- GolfPopper 12d ago
  It's worse than that. Advertising is a vector for dumping who-knows-what into our minds. Would you let random corporate sponsors put whatever they wanted into your food after you'd already put in the work to choose what you're eating? To me, my time has value, and my thoughts have more. A party whose goal is to interfere with both, and who actively schemes to interfere with the integrity of both is not merely greedy, they are a hostile actor.
cyanydeez 12d ago
Guys, guys, tthe cook only turned the boil up a degree or two, ypu cant even feel it!
nicechianti 12d ago
[dead]
ChrisRR 12d ago
> I’m begging everyone to stop freaking out over prosaic non-issues like this. This fight was lost at least a decade ago. Everything must now be a constant source of outrage
- gatlin 12d ago
  Whereas you would never stoop to exaggeration or your own contribution to this fight since it’s already lost, right?
ghusto 12d ago
It's like HN has been taken over by Redditors. Nobody's interested in facts, just righteous indignation.
pluc 12d ago
I'd argue that since TiVo, if you're showing ads because "we don't have an alternative", you actually want to show ads or at least won't make any effort to implement a 20 year old technology for the sake of convenience.
myko 12d ago
Those are definitely ads and definitely not what I want out of a streaming service I am paying for. This is why I don't use Amazon Prime Video much, even Apple TVs subtle ads for other programs are distasteful and I get Apple TV for free, it still pisses me off.
0manrho 12d ago
When you select play on the media, does that media play, or some other bullshit get inserted first? Call it what you want, if it's serving me content I didn't ask for, I'm not happy about it, especially if I'm paying extra for them to not do that explicit thing.
dml2135 12d ago
Their alternative is to not advertise a plan as “ad free” if that is a lie.
pickleglitch 12d ago
Our research shows that people with peanut allergies buy a lot of candy bars. We want to tap into that market, so we make a product call NoPeanutBars. But making them in a dedicated peanut-free facility costs a lot of money and extra work, and we really can't figure out how to do it. So we just put a disclaimer on the back that says NoPeanutBars may actually contain peanuts. What's the big deal? We don't put the peanuts in there on purpose!
dwedge 12d ago
I'll be clear that no I didn't - I read the announcement when Disney+ emailed it to me with no further context, plus adding this disclaimer was the reason for the email. So I disagree that this is our fault.
- ghusto 12d ago
  They mailed me too, and I did read it in full. There's a link right there in the e-mail. I read it, and understood it's not at all what everyone here is claiming.
  - dwedge 12d ago
    The email contains the full subscriber agreement (which is also the link in the email). The full text for that section: All Service Plans may include: (i) promotional content, (ii) sponsorships, and (iii) advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content. Perhaps you could share, from the email, what you read that everyone else is missing.
deaton 12d ago
Even in live sports, Disney fully controls ESPN, so they absolutely have an alternative.
epolanski 12d ago
> Also we might try to promote different tiers of Disney+ itself within the app so to the extent you see that as an ad, that’s an exception to ‘ad-free I don't like when I press play and an advertisement starts for some other freshly released content on the same platform.
giancarlostoro 12d ago
I don't mind self-ads especially if its like "Hey we're releasing this new movie in 2 weeks, are you aware?" just so long as I can skip them after the first time, and they are pre-cached when I open the app so you can download my movie / show in the background while this one plays. Guess I'm being wishful about good engineering. ;)
AlwaysRock 12d ago
Well they do have an alternative. ESPN and I'm sure plenty of other live events will often play ads. But if you have a pihole or some issue that causes the ad not to play, the screen will just display something like, "Ad cannot be loaded. Event will resume in 1 minute and xx seconds." Is that a GREAT alternative to seeing an ad? Nope. But in many peoples opions it sbetter than being force fed the same ads over and over when you paid for an ad free service. And if you read the wiki in full you will see it also is talking about preroll content. I dont HATE the HBO pre roll ads for their own shows that play before I start an episode but it is still an ad. Its for content I might actually enjoy instead of for paper towels or insurance but it is still an ad. This is something that is entirely optional and that disney/hulu has decided doesnt count as an ad.
bradly 12d ago
When I watch motorcycle races live on Peacock with my no-ab subscription they just go quiet for the commercial breaks that other providers/plans run. No announcers or on screen displays, but it does keep a live feed or the race. So the whole "we don’t have an alternative" part I do take exception with. fwiw... I believe Peacock is also allowed to run ads during live events, but at least during my motorcycle races they do not. a couple seasons ago they would go to a peacock banner and not show anything during the commercial breaks, but at some point they switched to just showing the raw video.
spying_lg_tv 12d ago
[flagged]
wat10000 12d ago
All that matters is the actual agreement. The agreement says there's an exception where "streaming rights or other limitations require certain Content to play with ads," and that "no ads" and "ad-free" tiers can contain "limited promotional content," with some examples of what "limited promotional content" might include, but no actual restrictions on it. That's extremely broad. They won't show you ads, unless "other limitations require" them to? Would "our internal agreement between our streaming division and our content division requires ads" qualify? What would qualify as "promotional content" and in what sense is it "limited"? This reads to me as "we can show ads anywhere we feel like it even if you paid us not to have ads." The only actual limitation will be their desire not to piss off paying subscribers.
jester997 12d ago
Honestly Disney+ app is the gold standard. No auto play like Netflix. Classy and thoughtful design. Amazon is the worst. Those Buy Now buttons on commercials good God what a load of crap.

shakna 12d ago

This is the same terms of service that were stretched to indemnify against theme park accidents. [0] Why would anyone give them the benefit of the doubt? [0] https://lawcouncil.au/international-law/ils-insights/tangled-in-terms-disney-clause-a-wrongful-death-lawsuit-and-bad-pr https://lawcouncil.au/international-law/ils-insights/tangled...

echelon 12d ago
Your link doesn't appear to work for me. In case folks aren't aware, Disney tried to avoid an allergy-related wrongful death lawsuit from a restaurant at Disney Springs (large publicly available outdoor mall that doesn't even require tickets) because a couple had a Disney+ streaming trial: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go
- gruez 12d ago
  The original lawsuit was spurious to begin with because the restaurant wasn't even operated by Disney.
  - oivey 12d ago
    Incredibly irrelevant. By asserting their ToS this way, they clearly would have tried to use it in any situation where they had potential liability.
    - gruez 12d ago
      >they clearly would have tried to use it in any situation where they had potential liability. That's just how lawyers work. They'll try to invoke any defense that's vaguely applicable, just like any plaintiff lawyer will try to invoke any cause of action that's vaguely applicable, like the plaintiffs in this exact case.
      - LPisGood 12d ago
        That’s not true in general. Plenty of jurisdictions do not allow you to use contradictory arguments in hopes that one is persuasive.
        gruez 12d ago
        In the context of this story (ie. US), it's specifically allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_pleading#Civil_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_pleading#Civil_law
        Dylan16807 12d ago
        That sounds bad to me! The TOS argument was so awful it deserves some kind of bonus loss, but let's put that aside for now. Let's say I paint a fence, and my neighbor complains I ruined a particular segment that shouldn't have been painted. Why can't I argue that this segment was on my property and that my neighbor gave permission to use that paint on all segments on their property? Let's say there's a 15% chance the survey was wrong about the fence location, and a 15% chance the court disagrees with how I'm interpreting the agreement. If I can use both arguments I have a 2% chance of losing, which seems fair to me. Both arguments are reasonable, so why should I have to risk it on only one?
      - ndriscoll 12d ago
        Don't excuse poor actions by saying these sorts of people just normally act poorly. It's their choice to act unethically.

deathhand 12d ago

Boohoo the billion dollar giant can't do the same thing that regional sports have been doing for the last 20! years with the likes of NFL and Baseball. Words matter. Words in advertising should matter. The slope is ice when we allow corporations to wordsmith around what they sell you.

fabian2k 12d ago

There are a few cases of ads that might not be practical to remove, though most of that would be more like sponsors and ad content that is a part of the show. You can certainly get live sports without ads, though you will of course still have the pauses in the game that allow the ads in the first place. But it's not unusual to see e.g. the halftime in soccer filled with analysis on public television that doesn't allow ads in that circumstance. And ads for their own services are still ads.

deleted 12d ago
[deleted]
hibikir 12d ago
In most of these cases, you will see a place like D+ carry the same announcers as the TV station. Here Inbet it would be ESPN crews. So having a different, special crew just for ad breaks would not be exactly great. And given the density of ads in, say, the Super Bowl, you would be hard pressed making this a good experience.

rubyfan 12d ago

They already run ads for Disney parks, Hulu, ESPN, and other Disney owned content in the Premium tier. They just call them promos or sponsorships in the prior agreement. The new agreement allegedly introduces a third term “advertisements”. > We’ve clarified that all Service Plans may include: (i) promotional content, (ii) sponsorships, and (iii) advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content. I say allegedly because I haven’t received any communication from Disney yet but various reporting refers to email people in European markets have received. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/disney-putting-ads-ad-free-002625176.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/disney-putti...

mrweasel 12d ago
I feel like they stopped doing that, but there was definitively ads for other movies and shows because some movies on Disney+, but I haven't seen it in a while. It was pretty badly done, because you'd get confused and assume you'd started the wrong movie, so maybe they rolled it back?
exe34 12d ago
The quoted text is identical to what I have received in an email from Disney+. I only tend to get a month at a time when I want to watch a given show, but if paying doesn't remove adverts, I'm not going to pay.
- abirch 12d ago
  It sucks that Disney+ cancelled Bobba Fett and other great Star Wars series. One month at a time makes sense especially with the lack of new content that I want.

micromacrofoot 12d ago

In every large org, including disney, there are people who will fuck with you to the full extent of the terms and laws if they think it can increase profit... they do not care about quality, experience, or morals. I've fought these people about marketing emails at dozens of orgs as a consultant. I guarantee they will eventually use this to show more ads. The goldfish grows to fit its bowl.

mitxela 12d ago
They don't stop at terms and laws. They stop at what loses money, through customer churn or lawsuits.
GuB-42 12d ago
That's why I don't really care that much about terms and conditions. Just because they say they can doesn't mean that they will, conversely, the writing can be misleading to anyone who isn't a specialized lawyer, so most people can't really tell what the terms and condition let them do anyways. I usually go for reputation and precedent rather then legalese. And in the case of Disney, they had ads in their video tapes and DVDs, so I don't need to read the user agreement to know that it has a good chance to come to Disney+, whatever the legal pathway is.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
mohamedkoubaa 12d ago
Typically the only restraining force is a founder who cares.
- micromacrofoot 12d ago
  there are execs and product people that care, but it's rare and they often get worn out
- mosura 12d ago
  Who they will paint as an asshole in order to get them ejected. And it will be true because the only way to defeat these people is actually being an asshole.

amelius 12d ago

Why can't they remove the embedded ads with AI? Sheesh ... they're a big company. This should be easy.

TeMPOraL 12d ago
They could. They won't, because those ads are probably - if you excuse a little Claudish - the load-bearing part of the contract that allows them to show the content in the first place. (More cynical take: the ads are the whole point, the content itself is just a vector to get those ads in front of people, and prime them to be receptive.)
basisword 12d ago
If you're talking about sports stuff: 1. Now you just have a blank screen. Sure some people might like that but others will think there's an issue with the stream. 2. They're purchasing the rights to show the sports stuff, not actually producing it themselves and removing the ads would make the cost of the rights astronomical. Even when expensive linear TV packages were the norm, they still came with ads. With live TV paying has never negated the need for ads.
- oivey 12d ago
  1. There doesn’t have to be a blank screen. Major League Baseball’s streaming service, for example, plays highlights or a placeholder video saying a commercial break is in progress. 2. What? They own ESPN which is producing the content, right? Baseball literally has an ad-free tier for its live streaming service. I’m sure it’s not the only live service that does. None of your points seem well considered. Why run interference for these companies?
  - duckmysick 12d ago
    I'm not familiar with MLB, only with NBA. But even their "ad-free" really isn't - there are still ad banners inside the arenas, on the court itself, and on the jerseys, the announcers often read ads ("this segment was brought to you by ..."), and if there is arena feed during the regular breaks, the in-arena events like a half-court shot are often sponsored as well. Plus there's standard service ads that announce next games. Unless MLB blurs/bleeps all of these, it's not really ad-free.

DonsDiscountGas 12d ago

> Also we might try to promote different tiers of Disney+ itself within the app so to the extent you see that as an ad, that’s an exception to ‘ad-free’” Yes I see that as an ad. Do you not? Does anyone not? And if I'm on the highest paying ad free plan, what are they promoting to me?

jmathai 12d ago
I’ve been a paying customer of Dropbox’s consumer plan for over a decade. Each time I visit their website I am greeted with a full page modal ad asking me to upgrade to a different plan I have no use for. I’ve dismissed it every time. I don’t mind being shown that ad once. But it bothers me that they don’t care enough about my experience using their product to provide a “never show this again” option. Or just use some metrics to know that if I dismiss it 50 times then maybe I’m not interested.
- avhception 12d ago
  Do you want to upgrade now or later? Will you upgrade now or do I need to nag you to death?
- sbarre 12d ago
  [dead]
- Gareth321 12d ago
  This is a bigger problem than it may appear. The business lifecycle is well understood, whereby a company innovates, expands, and then when it has a sufficiently large customer base, it monetises. I.e. it enshitifies its products - making them more expensive over time relative to the value. This process is death by a thousand cuts. A PM might see that having the modal you hate show every time you load the site increases conversion by 3%. That's $1M ARR you just made the company! Wow! You get a bonus and a promotion! The problem is you erode customer sentiment by some undefined unit. Many people think NPS measures this, but it doesn't. That measures how many people love and hate the product. It omits the vast majority of people in the middle. They just add it to the increasing list of annoyances until one day there are so many annoyances that they leave. At that time it's very difficult for the company to understand why the user churned. It wasn't any one thing. It was a concerted effort over years to squeeze every cent out of the user at minimum cost.

josefresco 12d ago

"because we don’t have an alternative" Ads embedded on the playing field? Sure. Billboards visible or sponsor logos on uniforms? I get it. Actual commercials? This is a solved issue for decades, there are "alternatives" as others have pointed out. This is a "Boiling frog" situation.

scotty79 12d ago
> Ads embedded on the playing field? Sure. Billboards visible or sponsor logos on uniforms? To be honest if I'm paying for no ads I'd be expect to have an option to blur that crap on inpaint it with AI. Monitors and TVs should have this option.
- chrismorgan 12d ago
  A lot of the ads on the field and perimeter are themselves inpainted. And becoming more and more offensive over time, with animation and flashing and such as technical capabilities improve and viewers become accustomed and don’t revolt.
  - gosub100 12d ago
    I'm sure somewhere there's an ad exec ready to rollout personalized in-game ads that say "hey Chris Morgan, try Henson's ball wash!" From data provided by your smart TV and your secret profile from data brokers.
ChrisRR 12d ago
I read it more as a contract issue rather than a technical issue
bena 12d ago
No, there's nothing really to do. They aren't producing the feed, they're essentially hosting a stream from another broadcaster. For instance, if you have Paramount+, you can watch sports broadcast by your local CBS station through it. That station is going to be running commercials, Paramount+ has no input on it. The most they can do is run ads over their ads. I'm assuming there's something similar with Disney+. You can watch your local ABC broadcast or ESPN broadcast of a game, but you're just getting that broadcast as being currently aired. But even for broadcasts wholly owned and controlled by a streaming platform, like Thursday Night Football on Prime, there are just times when it would be dead air. I don't entirely mind commercials in that instance. Nothing else is going on.

reptileIllumina 12d ago

Advertising is just a front for the surveillance capitalism/state and the one of foundation to the digital prison system. Of course they want ads on your devices.

GolfPopper 12d ago
It's worse than that. Advertising is a vector for dumping who-knows-what into our minds. Would you let random corporate sponsors put whatever they wanted into your food after you'd already put in the work to choose what you're eating? To me, my time has value, and my thoughts have more. A party whose goal is to interfere with both, and who actively schemes to interfere with the integrity of both is not merely greedy, they are a hostile actor.

cyanydeez 12d ago

Guys, guys, tthe cook only turned the boil up a degree or two, ypu cant even feel it!

nicechianti 12d ago

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ChrisRR 12d ago

> I’m begging everyone to stop freaking out over prosaic non-issues like this. This fight was lost at least a decade ago. Everything must now be a constant source of outrage

gatlin 12d ago
Whereas you would never stoop to exaggeration or your own contribution to this fight since it’s already lost, right?

ghusto 12d ago

It's like HN has been taken over by Redditors. Nobody's interested in facts, just righteous indignation.

pluc 12d ago

I'd argue that since TiVo, if you're showing ads because "we don't have an alternative", you actually want to show ads or at least won't make any effort to implement a 20 year old technology for the sake of convenience.

myko 12d ago

Those are definitely ads and definitely not what I want out of a streaming service I am paying for. This is why I don't use Amazon Prime Video much, even Apple TVs subtle ads for other programs are distasteful and I get Apple TV for free, it still pisses me off.

0manrho 12d ago

When you select play on the media, does that media play, or some other bullshit get inserted first? Call it what you want, if it's serving me content I didn't ask for, I'm not happy about it, especially if I'm paying extra for them to not do that explicit thing.

dml2135 12d ago

Their alternative is to not advertise a plan as “ad free” if that is a lie.

pickleglitch 12d ago

Our research shows that people with peanut allergies buy a lot of candy bars. We want to tap into that market, so we make a product call NoPeanutBars. But making them in a dedicated peanut-free facility costs a lot of money and extra work, and we really can't figure out how to do it. So we just put a disclaimer on the back that says NoPeanutBars may actually contain peanuts. What's the big deal? We don't put the peanuts in there on purpose!

dwedge 12d ago

I'll be clear that no I didn't - I read the announcement when Disney+ emailed it to me with no further context, plus adding this disclaimer was the reason for the email. So I disagree that this is our fault.

ghusto 12d ago
They mailed me too, and I did read it in full. There's a link right there in the e-mail. I read it, and understood it's not at all what everyone here is claiming.
- dwedge 12d ago
  The email contains the full subscriber agreement (which is also the link in the email). The full text for that section: All Service Plans may include: (i) promotional content, (ii) sponsorships, and (iii) advertisements before/after playback of Content and in channels, live/as-live, special events, and any third-party services content. Perhaps you could share, from the email, what you read that everyone else is missing.

deaton 12d ago

Even in live sports, Disney fully controls ESPN, so they absolutely have an alternative.

epolanski 12d ago

> Also we might try to promote different tiers of Disney+ itself within the app so to the extent you see that as an ad, that’s an exception to ‘ad-free I don't like when I press play and an advertisement starts for some other freshly released content on the same platform.

giancarlostoro 12d ago

I don't mind self-ads especially if its like "Hey we're releasing this new movie in 2 weeks, are you aware?" just so long as I can skip them after the first time, and they are pre-cached when I open the app so you can download my movie / show in the background while this one plays. Guess I'm being wishful about good engineering. ;)

AlwaysRock 12d ago

Well they do have an alternative. ESPN and I'm sure plenty of other live events will often play ads. But if you have a pihole or some issue that causes the ad not to play, the screen will just display something like, "Ad cannot be loaded. Event will resume in 1 minute and xx seconds." Is that a GREAT alternative to seeing an ad? Nope. But in many peoples opions it sbetter than being force fed the same ads over and over when you paid for an ad free service. And if you read the wiki in full you will see it also is talking about preroll content. I dont HATE the HBO pre roll ads for their own shows that play before I start an episode but it is still an ad. Its for content I might actually enjoy instead of for paper towels or insurance but it is still an ad. This is something that is entirely optional and that disney/hulu has decided doesnt count as an ad.

bradly 12d ago

When I watch motorcycle races live on Peacock with my no-ab subscription they just go quiet for the commercial breaks that other providers/plans run. No announcers or on screen displays, but it does keep a live feed or the race. So the whole "we don’t have an alternative" part I do take exception with. fwiw... I believe Peacock is also allowed to run ads during live events, but at least during my motorcycle races they do not. a couple seasons ago they would go to a peacock banner and not show anything during the commercial breaks, but at some point they switched to just showing the raw video.

spying_lg_tv 12d ago

[flagged]

wat10000 12d ago

All that matters is the actual agreement. The agreement says there's an exception where "streaming rights or other limitations require certain Content to play with ads," and that "no ads" and "ad-free" tiers can contain "limited promotional content," with some examples of what "limited promotional content" might include, but no actual restrictions on it. That's extremely broad. They won't show you ads, unless "other limitations require" them to? Would "our internal agreement between our streaming division and our content division requires ads" qualify? What would qualify as "promotional content" and in what sense is it "limited"? This reads to me as "we can show ads anywhere we feel like it even if you paid us not to have ads." The only actual limitation will be their desire not to piss off paying subscribers.

jester997 12d ago

Honestly Disney+ app is the gold standard. No auto play like Netflix. Classy and thoughtful design. Amazon is the worst. Those Buy Now buttons on commercials good God what a load of crap.