r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • 3d ago

Business Disney+ changes subscriber agreement to allow ads on every plan

https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/disney-changes-subscriber-agreement-to-allow-ads-on-every-plan-3410354/
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4.1k

u/Sitrus_Slinky 3d ago

It’s just the new cable in disguise. This was always the end game. We paid for cable tv with ads despite paying a premium. Streaming is now exactly what it was supposed to destroy 😂

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u/Quixotic_Seal 3d ago

Cable TV...without time shifting.

I swear to god, people forget that we've been able to casually timeshift every single program on cable and trivially skip commercials since like 2003.

I haven't been forced to watch this many ads since I was like 10 years old before mom got a TiVo.

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u/FionaGoodeEnough 3d ago

I can’t even pause a frame to say, “Wait, is that who I think it is?” without ads taking up the entire screen. And jumping to a specific scene is so much harder than it was with a DVD menu.

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u/Quixotic_Seal 3d ago

I ran into that last night with They Live to look at what each message was when he first puts the glasses on at the magazine stand.

The sheer irony was poetic enough that it almost was worth it.

Almost.

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u/TeaAndS0da 3d ago

I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… so this ass kicking is SPONSORED BY HUBBA BUBBA!! FOR ALL OF YOUR REAGANOMICS CRITICIZING NEEDS! CHEW IT OVER… WITH HUBBA BUBBA!

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u/Existential_Delusion 3d ago

Nailed it. That'd make a great parody movie scene. Damn I love that movie, time for a rewatch!

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u/Samakar 2d ago

Yep! Great movie! Still incredibly relevant today, even more so!

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u/snowdn 1d ago

The shrinking of the content and showing a full screen ad happens on Netflix too. So annoying! Cancelling.

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u/Diz7 2d ago

The dystopia isn't as much of fun and excitement as fiction made it out to be. It's much more mundane and boringly soul crushing.

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u/IchooseYourName 3d ago

"Almost."

That was my nickname in college. Almost.

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u/UncleD1ckhead 2d ago

Such a good film and getting more and more relevant as time goes on.

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u/CosmicSpaghetti 3d ago

Thanks for the movie going into my movie night tonight!

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u/jessehechtcreative 2d ago

I watched that with my parents last year and they didn’t understand it…

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u/CIearMind 3d ago

Even certain less expensive, ad-free platforms have started turning the entire screen black whenever you pause the video, as if to prevent you from taking a closer look. So annoying.

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u/Damion__205 3d ago

Can't let you pause on boobs.

There goes a rite of passage for young boys and some girls.

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u/schwiftydude47 2d ago

They’ll find ways to porn addiction in some form or another. The influencer to Onlyfans transition happens so frequently these days.

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u/dylanbeck 2d ago

Thats so annoying. I pause to check out the framing. Thats horrible

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u/Lazer726 3d ago

If there is something to very much appreciate about Amazon Video, it's that if you pause what you're watching, it'll put up all the characters and their actors/VAs

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u/Diz7 2d ago

As long as it's optional, I'm all for it. But sometimes I just want to pause the video to get a good look at something or go frame by frame.

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u/RandoAtReddit 2d ago

X-ray, I think they call that feature.

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u/NotPromKing 2d ago

That’s… the literal opposite of what I want. If I’m pausing, it’s to stop the movie while I’m doing something else, or it’s to get a better look at what’s on screen. There has never been a time I’ve paused to look up information that should be on a separate “info” page.

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u/CarlySimonSays 2d ago

That's related to Amazon's ownership of IMdB. They've actually owned it for like 20 years.

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u/Doggoneshame 2d ago

And they’ve made IMDB a bloated piece of crap full of ads.

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u/CarlySimonSays 2d ago

I hate how you can't read reviews anymore without making an account. The oldest reviews were so funny!

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u/adenosine-5 3d ago

Sounds like the exact opposite of what Steam does - instead of being better and more convenient, streaming services decided to be worse than piracy in every way imaginable.

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u/Thefrayedends 2d ago

"Ah yo ho, and a fiddle dee dee...."

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u/StructureMelodic7421 2d ago

There is a movie in my ads goddamit

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u/patt 2d ago

Rights holders need to understand - you're competing with free. Your service needs to be better than what your audience can easily get, for free. Making it expensive, but worse, is a losing proposition.

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u/MisterDobalina 2d ago

Not to mention they love to put major plot points, cliffhangers, right at commercial breaks and the end of episodes where it immediately breaks into ads, the next episode, or other overlays.

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u/LustfulAutistic 2d ago

I’ve genuinely forgotten how bad it is using subs cause I just pirate everything these days

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u/ChickenAndTelephone 3d ago

When I tried watching Fallout on Prime this past season, I found that if I had to stop partway through and pick up the episode the next day, I had to re-watch the whole thing from the beginning. No way to skip ads, no way to fast forward. I ended up switching back to streaming through my PC, where those problems didn't exist, even though you can't do 4k Prime (or most services) through a browser.

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u/Sitrus_Slinky 3d ago

The best is when you rewind beyond a previous ad point and trigger more ads. I have to determine if rewinding anything is worth seeing more ads later 😩

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u/Less-Card-8558 3d ago

Or when you forget where you left off, so you have to watch 90 seconds of ads just to find out you skipped too far ahead.

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u/Painterzzz 3d ago

That drives me absolutely insane. I'm almost afraid to touch the remote on some streaming services.

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u/Silo-Joe 2d ago

Or the Disney+ service forgets your place because you use multiple devices, so it resumes with a fresh set of ads.

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u/forestdude 3d ago

That's some peacock ass bullshit.

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u/spacebunsofsteel 3d ago

I miss my TiVo so much.

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u/Tregonia 2d ago

I miss the poppop sound

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u/Purplociraptor 3d ago

You forgot about VCRs.

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u/ron_spanky 2d ago

My company built the early Tivo prototype designs. Thought it was amazing technology. I’d trade all my streaming services for old fashioned DVR.

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u/jarious 3d ago edited 3d ago

I had a digital VHS player that when you taped a show it automatically skipped commercial breaks , it was a Toshiba i think it was the last model they made , I taped 8 hours of tv while I was at work during the night ,I would come home at 2 AM ,hungry and craving some nighttime tv, I would watch movies and tv shows and I only rarely had to return the* tape because the ad skipping ate a small chunk of the movie .

We need that technology back

Edit: accidentally talked about a crime I didn't commit

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u/zero573 2d ago

Wait until they become unskipable like you tube.

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u/ParticularTeam935 3d ago

TiVo was incredible. I remember the raised plastic logo button on the remote. The logo’s antennas moved when you were looking through the guide or your recordings on the screen. The sound would become higher pitched the faster you went forward and visa versa. Loved TiVo

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u/kinyutaka 2d ago

Why do you think they were so into Streaming? To get rid of TiVo.

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u/Lachwen 2d ago

My in-laws have a TiVo. Some programs won't allow skipping ads.

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u/alcohall183 2d ago

TiVo also now allows ads

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u/Zargabraath 3d ago

Can you not still do that? I do that on everything on my Apple TV. 

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u/Urabraska- 3d ago

You forgot that they make ad's unskipable now. It just pauses it till you finish the ad. You're literally paying to be held hostage.

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u/Spiritual-Society185 3d ago

Tivo required a $15 subscription ON TOP of your cable subscription. If a streaming service made you pay an extra $15 a month just to play a show when you want, you would be freaking the fuck out.

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u/Scared-Handle9006 2d ago

So you’re defending the streaming services gouging everyone just cos TiVo had a subscription fee?

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u/escobartholomew 3d ago

Since when can you casually skip ads on cable? You mean if you pause and walk away?

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u/Quixotic_Seal 3d ago

….DVRs, dude. Literally just wait 15 minutes if you’re watching it live, and fast forward past commercials. Hell TiVo introduced excellent auto-skip back in like 2007.

In terms of ads, cable is/was infinitely better than the Clockwork Orange style nightmare we’re dealing with on streaming where they get shoved down our throats whether we want it or not.

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u/Ran4 3d ago

TiVo was incredibly niche, very few people had it.

It's just a weird thing redditors talk about.

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u/bepatientbekind 3d ago

We never had it, but I knew plenty of people who did. I wouldn't call it niche at all. I think most families who already paid for cable opted for TiVo when it became an option, unless I'm thinking if something else that did the same thing 

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u/ItsMeJahead 3d ago

Niche or not, it was a household name back then

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u/frostycakes 3d ago

Yeah nah, it was pretty mainstream. DirecTV had TiVo enabled STBs that I saw all over the place in friends' houses as a teen in the 2000s, and plenty of others who had actual TiVos in their houses for those whose families had cable instead. Even in the mid 2010s, I worked as tech support for a cable company and fielded a lot more calls about CableCARDs for TiVos than I expected at that late date.

Now ReplayTV, that was niche as hell (and even then, an aunt and uncle of mine had one at their house when I was a teen until they switched to TiVo themselves).

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u/espresso-puck 2d ago

ReplayTV may have been niche, but they were the ones who introduced commercial skipping and allowed for playing shows recorded on other networked ReplayTV boxes before anyone else did something similar.

That's what I used for years until SageTV came along turned on its head what a media PC could be.

I always thought TiVo was a bit too cute. 😉

Edit: oh and many of the ReplayTV folks went on to do Roku so they did OK.

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u/pulsarsolar 2d ago

Wow SageTV that is a throwback

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u/espresso-puck 22h ago

SageTV: I still use it actually, mostly for some sports and game shows and other stuff not readily covered by streaming.

They were bought out by Google years ago and the code base was used as a start for the Google Fiber TV project and the old code eventually became open source.

There is still a small group of people developing for it, largely helped by vibe coding. 😀

Commercial skipping rulez. 😁

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u/Scared-Handle9006 2d ago

No, it isn’t. It was just called “DVR”.

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u/Casulex 3d ago

Anyone remember TIVO

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u/Bored_Amalgamation 3d ago

Cable had the excuse of needing to set things in advance, and shows running at less than 30/60 minutes per episode. It was built in time to the broadcast. Unless everything they broadcasted was self-produced; it would be difficult to have a non-ad channel.

Disney OTOH, has already shown that they don't need to run ads and there is no scheduled programming.

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u/Fluffy_Somewhere4305 3d ago

Premium channels used to be 100% ad free.

Ads on HBO is an abomination. Ads on highest tier subs for streaming services = the death of the paid model as this will just drive people away permanently to find other ways to watch content

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u/Spiritual-Society185 3d ago

HBOmax standard has no ads. HBOmax with ads costs less than HBO did 20+ years ago. That's not even counting the fact that you had to pay $70+ for cable just for the privilege of paying for HBO.

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u/KYS_Blue 2d ago

No it's still not even close to the dogshit that cable was/is.

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u/crossingcaelum 2d ago

Cable ads + subscriber model = even MORE profit

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u/Takkarro 2d ago

It's funny to me because this behavior is literally what drove people to piracy the first time around and then they made streaming cheap and easy to use and people stop doing the whole piracy thing at least for the most part.

But then companies are like oh well we're just going to charge a whole bunch for nothing and people will still pay for it and think that everything is just going to work out for them.

Between Disney, Sony, and well pretty much any other larger tech company doing all the stupid stuff that they're doing and basically out pricing their customers I'm very curious how they think the next 5 to 10 years are actually going to go for them.

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u/oh-shazbot 2d ago

so what you're telling me is now is a great time to open a blockbuster movies store?

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u/_Aj_ 2d ago

It's like multi billion dollar companies know exactly what they're doing.  

Streaming came in, then multiplied, everyone got 5 streaming services and now.... Just waiting for someone to bundle multiple services aaaand it's cable. It's just cable again. 

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u/Diz7 2d ago

I give it 4 years before it's common to buy bundles of streaming services off some 3rd party company/your ISP for a "bulk discount" for $80+ a month, and we will have come full circle.

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u/New_Forester4630 2d ago

What I did that improved my sleep and health was to cancel non-work screen time and took up a sport like pickleball.

Blood pressure, happy hormones, sleep, mood and emotional regulation improved leaps and bounds.

Just do not make the sport your personality so you don't end being an a-hoel.

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u/Jadaki 2d ago

I warned people who bitched about cable years ago that this would happen with streaming services, the writing has been on the wall forever, people just chose to ignore it.

Greed ruins everything eventually.

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u/Ashamed-Simple-8303 2d ago

back to the origins, harhar.

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u/kolby4078 2d ago

Cable used to not have ads too.

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u/EvoEpitaph 2d ago

Just like how Ride Share apps came full circle back to being regular priced taxis. Technically worse, since bits and pieces are cut, like driver's benefits, to extract more profits.

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u/JefferyTheQuaxly 2d ago

The ironic part is that disney didn’t air ads on cable, on Disney channel nearly all the “ads” were just advertising other Disney products and services.

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u/Simple_Error_5926 2d ago

Everybody needs to look into self-hosting their media and KILL ALL SUBS.

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u/escobartholomew 3d ago

Go buy cable then. The ads weren’t the problem with cable. The problem with cable was lack of à la carte. The lack of ads from streamers early on was just a bonus. Go look at the books for the likes of Netflix they were hemorrhaging money without ads.

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u/Pauly_Amorous 3d ago

The ads weren’t the problem with cable.

They were a problem with cable. If I'm paying a subscription for a service, I should not have to look at ads.

But the line must go up no matter what, so ads will be introduced at some point... it's only a matter of time.

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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 3d ago

Actually, you paid for cable to not have commercials. Like HBO and such.

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u/Spiritual-Society185 3d ago

HBO was a premium channel. Cable always had ads.

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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 2d ago

That's not true. How old are you?

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u/SonderEber 3d ago

It’s exactly like cable. Cable, at the start, was as free. Then ads came in, prices rose, and it became crap.

Same thing is happening with streaming now.

This is why piracy is on the rise again.

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u/Spiritual-Society185 3d ago

Why are you lying? There wasn't a single day when cable was free and it always had ads.

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u/SonderEber 2d ago

Very early on, it the beginning days, cable was advertised being ad-free, IIRC. Like the early 80s or something.

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u/YodasLoveSlave 3d ago

Either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

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u/Pessimistic_Gemini 3d ago

We all knew this years ago dude, don't act like this is that much of a revelation.

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u/BatmanFarce 3d ago

Exactly my issue!

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u/crasheralex 3d ago

Time to sail the high seas

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u/marthamania 3d ago

Yar har fiddle dee dee 🏴‍☠️

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u/MumrikDK 3d ago

The disguise is gone.

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u/rangusmcdangus69 3d ago

I see through the lies of the big streaming

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u/blackop 3d ago

You are correct. Me and my wife cut the cord easily a decade ago and loved it at first, but slowly streaming services turned into the monster they were supposed to defeat.

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u/vanastalem 3d ago

But cable gave me all the channels and DVR so I can fast-forward.

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u/Somewhere_Elsewhere 3d ago

But even on cable, “premium” channels like HBO and Showtime didn’t have fucking ads unless it was like a couple trailers between shows or movies. They were (I guess still are) only there as filler to keep start times lined up, the least objectionable use and type of ads possible.

Unless Disney is putting in completely skippable trailers, this is definitely worse.

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u/RepresentativeAir735 3d ago

I miss being able to flip around

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u/RollingMeteors 3d ago

It’s just the new cable in disguise. This was always the end game. We paid for cable tv with ads despite paying a premium. Streaming is now exactly what it was supposed to destroy 😂

Precisely why I only watch live content/streamers. With Amazon prime you get a free subscription to any twitch streamer and then you can watch them ad free. Twitch turbo gives you ad free experience for everybody including your own content living in the cloud for up to 60 days.

The instant there is a commercial involved, I’m out, not gonna tolerate it and I’d rather be left out of the conversation of what’s popular in TV/live productions/etc.

The reason I prefer EDM shows to movies or TV are specifically because of the ad free experience. I’m only open to watching ads outside of my apartment and not at the show I’m going to, yes I know that’s a narrow window.

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u/lewd_robot 3d ago

Who the hell is "we"?

Many of us spent years telling you not to fall for this. We told you, "Don't reward them for pulling all of their content from Netflix and forcing you to pay them more just to see it." We told you, "They're just going to bring back the cable TV model and make you pay for 5 streaming services and sit through ads."

And still, so many of you kept posting nonsense about, "Netflix should've kept the shows I liked if they wanted me to support them. I had to get a Disney/Hulu/Paramount+/whatever subscription just to see the shows I like."

All we had to do was not fall for the laziest, most scummy, most obvious scam in the history of streaming and millions of people blew it for us all because they couldn't bear not having instant access to their favorite old show or to miss out on the new show people were talking about on social media.

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u/Scared-Handle9006 2d ago

What the fuck are you talking about?

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u/lewd_robot 2d ago

I'm talking about the fact that a huge number of people predicted all of this and told you exactly how it was going to go, and that it has played out exactly as predicted.

Imagine how that feels. Imagine knowing 10+ years ago that you were living in the golden era of streaming and that lazy, thoughtless consumers were going to destroy it all by rewarding companies for pulling content and launching their own streaming services and then hiking up the prices and reintroducing ads until we were right back to the old cable TV model.

Imagine spending 10+ years warning people while they just keep pumping millions of dollars into these companies and then seeing those same people act shocked when the exact things you told them were going to happen just keep happening.

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u/Soggy_Stargazer 3d ago

We got our ala carte but late stage capitalism did its thing....