Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced.
We’ll also examine each streaming platform’s financial status to get an idea of what these companies are thinking (spoiler: They’re thinking about money).
Netflix starts killing its cheapest ad-free plan in June
Sony bumps Crunchyroll prices weeks after shuttering Funimation
Peacock is raising prices
Fubo cuts 19 channels
In a seemingly desperate push, many streaming services prioritize revenue and profits ahead of building the best streaming service for customers.
We could go on about how this might force people to reconsider their subscriptions, but we should publish before another service makes yet another policy change.
Why does it feel like lately more and more articles fit Not The Onion or A Boring Distopia?
We’ve been completely reduced to revenue streams for those that already have unimaginable wealth and it’s killing us. The transparent abuse and exploitation is so beyond parody it wraps around to sounding like a joke. Then you realize it isn’t a joke and get more depressed
Best part is how we went down the exact same path 100 years ago and learned absolutely nothing from it.
You will own nothing but make us happy by paying us more for less in your privileged lives of enshitified dependency. Please note that you‘ll all be punished anyway. Toodles!
Because we’re shoulders deep in late stage capitalism. It won’t be long before we start seeing consumer scarcity. People are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford much beyond basic needs. There are only so many hours in a day that people can work, so that’s not stretching much further. We’re rapidly approaching the breaking point. In a world with finite resources, a system seeking infinite growth will eventually collapse.
That’s why some of the most powerful capitalists are starting to look up. Our great-great-grandchildren are going to be indentured servants on an asteroid mine. They know what’s coming. They’ll pack each SpaceX Starship with 100s of them just like they did 200 years ago. That thing ain’t no exploration vessel. It’s a future slave ship. Private companies don’t do “exploration” unless it’s to find more things to make a profit on.
Because it feels like the triggers are finally being fired from the corporate capitalists in the world. They’ve bided their time and when they feel things are tender enough to practice their most devious schemes, then they’ll fire upon it.
They do this whenever there is a generational shift, in culture and how we do things. They’re always carrying their ideas over and applying them in even more devious ways.
While we all like to laugh at, joke about and make memes of these things. It stops being a joke when you become personally inflicted by it.
It’s the tech business model. Slowly building up a sustainable business has been replaced with coasting on investment money while attempting to capture an entire global market. Because these products can scale so easily. Now they’re entering the “oh shit we need to make money now” phase of the business model.
It’s not evil capitalists. It’s people acting rationally. The incentive structure leads to this behaviour. Eventually these services will consolidate into 2 or 3 major ones, like they do in every global tech market. Everyone will complain about it. But they’ll keep paying for it, because what other (legal) choice is there?
IOW, don’t hate the player, hate the game.
I have plenty of capacity to hate both.