Tech’s broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.
You say “broken promises” I say “the plan all along” and “bait and switch”.
Yep. The business model has always been “Lure them in and stifle competition with a low initial cost. Then when we have the market we can jack up the price.” Enshitification at its best.
Also known as the Wal-Mart business model.
A lot of these things were proudly unprofitable, which is basically their way of getting around anti-trust violations. If they had a revenue stream to make the business profitable (outside of investors handing them more cash) then they’d be hit with anti-trust lawsuits for offering services at a loss in order to drive the competition out of business. But instead they just convince investors to hang on long enough to achieve the same goal, then raise their prices when they’ve got too much power to fail.
Tech never promised anything. They cut the price for people to be dependent to them and then rise the price.
It’s just basic capitalism.
Right. This is how it works. The marketplace sustained a value for watching entertainment at home (cable tv). When pricing outstretched customer desire to use the product, the business changed to start selling the service connection in addition to advertising to create another revenue stream. It got so ubiquitous that people don’t even remember that OTA tv was the majority solution for decades and was completely funded by ads. Eventually, prices stabilize and the business can only make more money by acquiring a larger share of the market or innovating something new. They’ll always try to increase that price, but it is balanced by how many customers choose to give up the service.
When streaming platforms disrupted that business model, they were cheap because they had to convince the marketplace to change. As adoption got more prolific, pricing changes to recoup early losses… then to increase value to become more attractive to the customer and gain more market share… then to increase profits.
We are still at the point you can cancel the service and jump around on a monthly basis, but the days of 12 month contracts are right around the corner… and they’re coming fast.
It has honestly never been so reasonable to just buy the blue ray disks and just rip them to store locally. The other alternative is to pirate the media, but at least it’s still legal to rip your own media, and honestly for how much we’re all paying for streaming it’s not unreasonable to just buy the titles we repeat watch outright.
Of course, were probably not far from them phasing out DVD runs entirely, or for the DMCA to be amended to remove the fair use exception for personal use. I’m pessimistic enough to think they’ll outlaw VPNs in the US too, and then all we’ll have is SSD drops.
where I am currently living, you can’t even rip stuff for PERSONAL use, which I think is ridiculous. I understand making it illegal if you’re profiting off it, or selling it, etc. but if it’s only ever used personally by you, I don’t see why not?
If you see the law as an extension of collective democratic interests and compromise, then yea, it should absolutely be legal.
But if the law is an extension of the interest of capital, as it is in the US, then why should you be allowed to do that? Every ripped DVD is opportunity cost for streaming or renting services.
Edit: if IP holders got to litigate this is court, they’d argue that “most people” who rip DVDs only do that to illegally share them, and most “normal people” prefer the flexibility and choice in a streaming service. The same argument is now routinely used in defence against rent control and public housing: most people who rent want to be renters, otherwise they wouldn’t pay the HUGE FEE for the privilege over buying a house.
Completely blind to the coercion involved in making those choices the only reasonable options, and that it does NOT constitute consent
Depends on where you live.
In the Netherlands it is legal to “pirate” media, since they pay a small fee (2-5€) on every device that could play those media, and use this money to pay the artists.
That socialism thing sure does sound awful.
They will not outlaw VPNs. Every major company uses a form of VPN to allow workers to connect remotely. No chance this will happen.
They could still compel VPN providers to give them information about users and user activity, if something like the RESTRICT act passes in order to limit access to international networks/apps.
Not exactly a ban, but it would absolutely negate the intended purpose for most VPN users (myself included).
When I go to France, I’m blown away by the number of tv channels they get for free over the air. It’s incredible.
It really is crazy that you can have venture capitalists operate at a loss for a decade just to change the entire infrastructure of society to be dependent on them in the future. Really undermines any kind of microeconomic common sense that is supposedly the basis of capitalism.
Just goes to show that wealth distribution is so fucked if a small group of people can burn billions of dollars on essentially a bet. Just because they have enough bets placed that they know some will payoff.
On the flip side, piracy has never been easier.
Honestly, yes it has been. It’s not too bad, but it used to be easier.
I would argue it’s easier just in significantly different ways - the Arr stack of applications take more effort to learn and setup initially, but once you have it’s absolutely effortless.
the Arr stack of applications
The what now
Explain
P2P (eMule/Limewire/etc.)
DDL (Megaupload, Rapidshare, etc.)
Just these two were easier.
In addition, pirated physical media used to be an easy way for non techy people to acquire media in developing countries.
Used to be? As late as 2011 I saw entire businesses dedicated to selling pirated movies.
I mean, 2011 was 12 years ago.
True, but this was in kandahar, I expect not much as changed…Except perhaps the selection.
Literally everything was easy about it 5-10 years ago. Even 20yrs ago starting with Napster. Shit was the wild west you could pretty much do whatever you want. Apart from the various rogue virus laden crap. Torrent trackers got good about reporting bad ones though.
My usenet provider used to have EVERYTHING. Now they don’t.
It also used to have free indexers
Not sure how it’s easier I can’t get near a torrent site without getting dumb letters from ISP. "get a VPN… "
OK. Well that’s not easier than ever, is it lol.
I take it you’re in a country in which VPNs are stringently regulated or outright don’t exist?
The tricky part is making sure your VPN is set up correctly and verifying that your torrent client doesn’t try to fall back on using your unmasked IP if the VPN connection goes down.
Use Mullvad, $5/month prepaid and you can even mail them cash if you have no other way to pay. No subscription or other scammy stuff. Your entire login is a single auto-generated number, and if you use their app (Open source, 3rd party audited) you just punch it in and boom, VPN time.
I think from signup to using the service was under 5 minutes!
For the power users you can log in on their site and generate Wireguard keys, which you can use with Docker to wrap up all your piracy stuff inside a container that can only access the VPN connection for safety and convenience. But you don’t have to do that, you can just run the app and put everything through the tunnel when you’re downloading.
They don’t allow port forwarding
True but this was a reply to someone who wanted it easy, they’re not running a seedbox they’re just looking to leech and maybe seed back a reasonable ratio if the torrent is active. And that’s totally achievable without port forwarding.
I’ve gotten dumb angry letters since from ISPs since Napster.
But I’m hard pressed to remember a time when so much content was so readily available so quickly.
And a $4/mo Proton VPN is downright trivial when the cost of a good laptop has fallen from the $1000s to the low $100s.
We should have seen this coming. I remember the early 80s when cable was the new hotness, and it was cheap, with no ads unlike broadcast television. That was its major selling point.
Then over the next decade the ads crept in, and we were all paying for cable with ads, even though the whole point had been no ads. Then the price skyrocketed and the ads remained.
Steaming was always going to follow the same path. Cheap with no ads at first, then adding ads, then skyrocketing prices, then crazy prices with ads too.
They know as long as all of them raise their prices, where are we gonna go? They have exclusives. We can’t just take our money elsewhere.
The alternative is simple. The seven seas are calling out to you. :)
Or read a book, or do literally anything else.
Books would have ads.
Not if Anna has anything to say about it…
Aye matey.
Wait, there was a time when cable didn’t have ads???
Yeah, because you were paying for it. Where as broadcast was free over the air.
What’s surprising to me is that anyone didn’t see this coming. The ideal of online streaming being cheaper and better was very alive and well when Netflix was the only streaming service. However, I started to note that some content from specific copyright holders started getting removed from Netflix and from that single indicator, I saw this happening…
I could almost see them gearing up to launch their Netflix competition service which would be analogous to channel “packages” on cable. You get the Netflix package for x, y, and z shows, the $studioG package for shows a, b, and c, etc etc. Creating the exact problem that we’re trying to eliminate with going to streaming. From that moment, I committed myself to sail the seven seas and download all my own Linux ISOs. It seemed like everyone else couldn’t see what I saw, and nobody cared. Then it happened… HBO, Hulu, Prime video, Paramount+, Disney+, etc, all came out of the woodworks, and now this.
My argument is that the MPAA needs to learn the same lesson that the RIAA did after the Napster lawsuits. Some people who were “sued” by the RIAA actually fought back. Most couldn’t because they didn’t have the money to pay for a drawn out legal battle, so they settled, but a few brave souls fought back… The story is long but it’s clear to me that the RIAA learned a very important lesson: it’s not profitable to sue everyone who pirates their content; and if you look at the music industry now, there’s very little piracy, and almost everyone has a music subscription service, whether Spotify, Apple music, tidal, YouTube music, or something else. Anyone without a subscription generally suffers through ads, with very little difference between which service you use (at least, regarding what’s available), or how you use it… There’s still people pirating the music (far fewer than in the days of Napster), and still people buying physical media, but long term, they’re safe from going under from P2P sharing. The vast majority of consumers are paying for the content either through ads or subscription and all music is available on all services.
The MPAA is still hard headed about all of this. Disney is trying to fix the problem by buying everything up, so other studios are forced to have their work on D+, because the big D bought them… I’d argue that Disney is doing a better job at squashing video media piracy than the MPAA… The problem right now is that the various video streaming services are all run by the studios that publish the content on them. A truly third party streaming service (that is not also a competing studio) is needed, who can license content from everyone… Most won’t license their content to a third party service because it’s not as profitable compared to running their own service… So we’re stuck. If the MPAA stepped in and made such a service, and not-so-politely asked the various studios to license their content to it, then made it affordable, I would hang up my black hat and skull flag and never look back.
The chances of this happening are so small that I’ll just go ahead and order a new flag… My current one has been flying for so long it’s looking a bit sun-bleached.
I have zero hope or expectation of this happening, and bluntly, if it did, whether we admit it or not, I think most of us would hang up our hats and relent, because it’s far easier to simply pay a (reasonable) monthly fee than to do all the crap associated with getting it another way. They won’t, so yo-ho-ho.
It’s economics 101, prices will rise to what the market will bare… Unfortunately the market is irrational and has access to credit cards.
As long as current economic/cultural model exists, there is no escape from advertisements. Consumerism can’t thrive without advertisements and any technology that gets mass adopted is perfect venue for that.
Today, its only entertainment platforms which are infected with this bug, tomorrow it’ll be your car, fridge and anything which needs internet connection(almost every home appliances).
None of those things need Internet access. They are doing this so that you’ll own nothing. Cars are a good example here. Why in the world would they introduce heated seats that are subscription based? Because they don’t want to sell you or me a car anymore. They are looking forward to self driving autos, and intend to sell fleets to cities and corporations. You and I will rent the cars much like a cab, but now the manufacturer can still make money charging $1 to roll down the windows, $5 for the radio, $7 for A/C, etc…
This is all by design. Once they have you/us/them captured again, we’re going to take another trip around the “raise prices and squeeze services until it’s unsustainable, because shareholder and CEO profit”. It has all happened before and it will all happen again.
The cloud is just someone else’s computer. The uber is just someone else’s car. Streaming is just someone else’s media library. They have you right where they want you, dependent on them.
I’m fifteen and this is deep.
The thing about unregulated capitalism is it will always fuck over society in favour of sociopaths. Unregulated capitalism rewards sociopaths because it focusses on profits above all else – shareholders get stupidly rich only if they don’t care about the damage done to workers and the public, sociopaths who don’t care about such damage can promise the highest profits, and that’s rewarded by a hyper-focus on the bottom line.
Unregulated capitalism rewards ruthless cost-cutting, treating people like robotic assets, slash-and-burn corporate policies, and a culture of near-slavery.
Adding new tech only makes inhumane policies easier to implement. It’s why people like Musk have more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. When the goal is to maximise profits at all costs, of course the consumer will get fucked. That’s rather the point.
E: in short, prices will continue to increase as these people try to find the ceiling. Ps: there is no real ceiling.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I think Musk as a unique ability to spend money.
Although prices are rising, the same work conditions remain for the workers, or get even worse. Take Uber for example. But the company will blame “regulations” from the government as the cause of rinsing prices, not its own greed.
The enshitification of capitalism? Color me shocked!
So stop using that shit, problem solved
And make new ones that aren’t scams. I blame us(mostly y’all though)
The goal is surely to capture every human need and package them as obnoxious subscriptions.
Rentiership is the goal of every capitalist.
LONG LIVE PIRACY!!!🏴☠️🏴
YO HO FIDDLE DEE DEE!!
Removed by mod
There was never a world in which TV companies like Disney and NBC could lose cable subscribers (yes comcast manages the subs, but they pay Disney and NBC carriage fees from subscription fees) and make streaming cheaper than cable. So if you are losing a lot of money via cord cutting, and then you have the expense of standing up your own streaming service… Yeah, it’s going to probably cost the same as fees the cable company used to kick back to Disney. The difference is that if you want all the content from everyone, you need to then to get all the app subscriptions. However, you no longer get the bundled price that provided some discount via cable.
I don’t know that there was ever a promise that streaming would be cheaper. It could be more a la carte, but the cost for the content was never going to change in the eyes of the tv companies that now have the added operation cost of maintaining an app.
it’s MY fault that there are fewer cabs because other mother fuckers stopped using them?
Yep, my entire post was about was about TimewornTraveler and no one else. Its definitely all your fault. Pay no attention to the fact that I said ‘for believing tech bros’ which would exclude anyone who didn’t believe tech bros from the statement, Instead just get upset about nothing.
maybe don’t make such a general blanket statement that anyone could take offense from, next time maybe? maybe don’t blame anyone for corporate greed except the corporates who are greeding instead of getting upset about nothing
The ‘general statement’ had a very specific qualifier that the op ignored in order to make himself upset. It had nothing to do with generality and everything to do with ignoring half a sentence so someone could make themselves mad.
You can see the absurdity of my statement but not of yours… odd
You literally ignored half of the sentence you have a problem with so you could be contrarian. Odd.
I dont know why I’m still responding to this tedious, disingenuous bullshit but here goes… You made a statement: “It’s ‘your’ [sic] fault.” Then you gave a supporting statement: “Tech bros only want money.” Cool. I agree with the latter part. But you are using it to support a conclusion that I don’t agree with. Hence I attacked the fucking conclusion instead of the supporting details.
Do you understand now? Or did you always understand but you can’t take accountability for making a shitty statement and instead you harp on meaningless bullshit?
Instead of blaming the people who use these services - and make blanket statements as if we are all using those services - how about you either A) stick to criticizing the bad actors or B) shut the fuck up.
Okay? Thanks. Talk to you later.
And yet you still omit the very same words you omitted from the beginning. I get it though, you have no arguement if you acknowledge it was in the very same sentence qualifying my statement you wanna be mad at, keep digging friend. How many times are you gonna ignore it? Also how are you gonna use quotes if you don’t copy the actual sentence and just put your own period in it before my real sentence ended? You as good at citing things as you are at logic.
Remember when we could only watch what had recently been on TV and cable companies were trying to lock people in to specific cable boxes that couldn’t skip ads and we paid $120 per month for ad supported content and cable companies would attach random fees and everyone had to buy hundreds of channels to only watch 4?
And we’d build movie and music collections of physical media we had to keep in our homes and cars and we’d listen to the same three albums for months and if we were lucky enough to get a TV series box set, it’d set us back many hundreds of dollars and we’d have to remember which disc we were on and navigate arcane and slow menus?
And when we had questions, we had to find the answers ourselves by reading long form content and just be satisfied that there were many questions we couldn’t answer at all because the information wasn’t available?
Or when we wanted cabs, we’d not know how much a ride would cost until after we got to our destinations and they smelled like rotten farts and were covered in boogers and our only goal was to not touch anything and look out the window because what’s a smartphone?
And when we wanted to go somewhere, we had to ask for directions and use atlases to figure out how to get to the general area of the destination, then drive in circles, accidentally drive past a turn 5 times because the street we were supposed to turn onto had two different names and we had been given the wrong one?
I was there and anyone who pines for the old days can just go there. We have cable and encyclopedias and taxis and atlases. Go nuts.
I remember those days. People were happier then
I’d say not because of those things but due to overall socioeconomic well-being.
People socialized more naturally in those days.
So now we can only what the streaming providers have licensed, and those things which we’ve “purchased” can and do disappear from our devices. And our answers are increasingly becoming hidden behind paywalls that require specific subscriptions & unskippable ads.
“Today” is only better than yesterday due to a recent huge disruption called “the internet” and companies are absolutely scrambling to restore the “bad old days” status quo that you allude to.
We have all these conveniences now and somehow people are not happier. Maybe the improvements you showed weren’t improvements after all and society should have spent more time to focus on people instead of developing and selling the next great music platform.
You are missing the point when you tell people to go back to cable, encyclopedias etc. because it’s not about those things, it’s about escaping into an idealized past while being depressed in the present. They should have your sympathy.
when we wanted cabs, we’d not know how much a ride would cost until after we got to our destinations
Any cab I’ve ever been in had the mileage cost clearly posted in the taxi along with all of the other regulations. And they didn’t change their rates depending on 'busy times of day’band inflate charges 2-5x as much.
they smelled like rotten farts and were covered in boogers and our only goal was to not touch anything and look out the window because what’s a smartphone?
This sounds pretty much like the experience people tell me in any Uber or Lyft, except for the cell phone but you can use your cell phone in a taxi just fine, so I’m not sure why this is even relevant.
Hotels >>>>> Airb&Bs
My bigger beef is with a centralised platform taking enough of a cut that they can buy whole neighbourhoods to rent out.
I’ve seen some pretty shit hotels.
Ehh… I have a family and there’s something to be said about getting an air bnb with a kitchen and not having to worry about your kids being too loud
I can’t cook food in a hotel though. Also they kinda suck with kids.
It might be because I am European, but I could cook in every hotel I have been in.
I lived and travelled in Europe for 6 years and never saw a hotel room with anything more than a kettle. Actually no I saw a couple of more hostel type places that had a common kitchen. Still not great for families though.
Look for suites when booking hotels not just rooms. You will of cplourse pay more.
Well then we get down to it, Airbnb is just much cheaper than that for a family. I don’t like what AirBnB are doing to cities and tourist towns etc, but hotels just aren’t as good.
I pretty much exclusively stay at Embassy Suites when traveling with the family so the children have a separate room and fold out couch and I almost never (regardless of city) have had to pay more than $200 per night… Usually closer to $150.
I’ve stayed in a few Airbnbs also over the years and they’ve gotten so expensive that there’s almost never a comparable value available anymore, especially on short notice.
And that’s not even really taking into account the excellent breakfast and Manager’s reception (with free drinks and snacks) that are included or for that matter the pool and hot tub at Embassy.
Maybe if you’ve got a really large family and need multiple rooms for your kids or something but otherwise I just don’t see it.
Maybe you have more hotels in your country. Last AirBnB I stayed in was a little house in a small surf town and I don’t think there were any hotels with decent facilities for miles. Was a 5 minute walk down to the beach for a morning surf. Hard to beat.
I suppose that’s a fair point if you’re talking about Costa Rica or somewhere like that. The Hilton chains like Embassy Suites certainly aren’t as common there as in the US.
I think we’ve started to discover what the ??? steps before profit were.
The model was:
- Start streaming service
- ???
- Profit
It’s now:
- Start streaming service
- Subsidise it heavily creating premium content whilst undercutting competition.
- keep doing it until competitors go broke
- Raise prices to an actually sustainable level
- Profit (although we’ve lost a ton of capital)
This is a form of market manipulation which is outright illegal in some countries (e.g. Australia) and can be illegal in the US and EU if it meets certain criteria. It falls under anti-trust and monopoly prevention laws.
Basically our regulators aren’t doing their job well enough, but what’s new?
The regulators are doing their jobs, alright… It’s just not us they’re working for anymore.
You are paying money for streaming movies? Why?
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YAHAR!! We be sailing again boys!
Convenience - it’s a hassle to watch pirated stuff on my TV. But the cost of having to have a bunch of streaming subs means sometimes piracy’s hassle is worth it compared to the alternative.
Same, but it’s only a matter of time before it’s less of a hassle to pirate vs purchase.
And it varies depending on how much I want to see the particular movie/show.
Nowadays piracy isn’t a hassle, and it’s certainly not a hassle to get things to play on your tv. Just set up a Plex/jellyfin server and install the appropriate app on your tv or tv box. With the arr suite + overseer + qbittorrent + Plex/jellyfin piracy is heaps more convenient than streaming services
Just set up a Plex/jellyfin server
With the arr suite + overseer + qbittorrent + Plex/jellyfin
im a home media guy too but all this is not more convenient for people compared to just installing the netflix app
I consider setting up a Plex server a hassle. Especially since I have to download my own movies (necessitating the cost of a VPN) rather than just being able to use a free streaming site.
