61–70 of 102 posts
The entire tech industry is going through some massive enshittification. This ads nonsense is everywhere now. Why the f should anyone pay for a subscription if they are going to be shown some ads?
People do it all the time. Cable tv.
"There's nothing new under the sun"...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I will gladly suffer the inconvenience of buying stuff from other retailers in the future Tried it and failed. Higher prices, costly 5 day "express" shipping and questionable / non-existent return policies - the time and effort required to wade through is not worth it. I want to not use Amazon too - but other retailers make it really really hard.
What are you buying that you experience this? Household goods from target (bonus probably not fake), electronics Best Buy and B&H, Costco for a lot of misc, and clothing from old navy and h&m etc. all have easy returns and often better prices than I see at Amazon (even for books oddly — Target must track Amazon prices to the penny).
The whole point of me paying is to make it easier for me. If you’re going to fuck me over even more for paying then I’ll just go hack to pirating 4k rips of the content for free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People do it all the time. Cable tv.
Old man yelling at clouds here. These same arguments were brought up with cable TV back in the day; one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told, was there wouldn't be any ads since we were paying for it. "There's nothing new under the sun"...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I will gladly suffer the inconvenience of buying stuff from other retailers in the future Tried it and failed. Higher prices, costly 5 day "express" shipping and questionable / non-existent return policies - the time and effort required to wade through is not worth it. I want to not use Amazon too - but other retailers make it really really hard.
What are you buying that you experience this? Household goods from target (bonus probably not fake), electronics Best Buy and B&H, Costco for a lot of misc, and clothing from old navy and h&m etc. all have easy returns and often better prices than I see at Amazon (even for books oddly — Target must track Amazon prices to the penny).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing Pull, not push. If I want to know once I'll look it up. If I want to be reminded regularly I'll subscribe to their new movie feed.
Non-flamebait question: But how do you know to look it up in the first place? Word of mouth from friends or reviewers, i.e. influencers? Unless we're defining "ads" to mean "interstitial video|aural ads", then I'll concede the point.
There's a crucial difference between what Netflix did and this. Netflix added a new lower-priced ad-supported option, leaving existing subscribers as they were. Amazon however is pushing ads onto existing subscribers and adding a new ad-free option to which one has to upgrade. This burns a lot of goodwill. It just ain't nice. I will be cancelling the subscription once this hits my country as a matter of principle.
While this is true, Netflix hiked prices massively over the years. Their 4K/HDR offering is 17.99 EUR per month here. Amazon Prime including Prime Video is still 8.99 EUR/month, cheaper if paid yearly, without any surcharge for 4K/HDR. So that's more than twice the price for a comparable streaming service.
The entire tech industry is going through some massive enshittification. This ads nonsense is everywhere now. Why the f should anyone pay for a subscription if they are going to be shown some ads?
People do it all the time. Cable tv.
Which means it is time for the alternative to rise again - piracy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing Pull, not push. If I want to know once I'll look it up. If I want to be reminded regularly I'll subscribe to their new movie feed.
Non-flamebait question: But how do you know to look it up in the first place? Word of mouth from friends or reviewers, i.e. influencers? Unless we're defining "ads" to mean "interstitial video|aural ads", then I'll concede the point.
What I'm pushing back against is the idea that advertising is necessary for society to function. I'm defining advertising in the broadest sense I can for the purposes of the thought experiment - information that you pay to have put in front of people. It can be entirely replaced by information that I pay to access.
It always will exist of course, because the incentives of a seller aren't aligned with mine, but it isn't necessary.