this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023

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Fuck Subscriptions

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Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.

Expect use of strong language.

Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.

No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.

Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.

New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.

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Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:

Right to Repair/Ownership

Hedges Development

DeGoogle Yourself

Stallman Was Right

Some other useful links:

FreeMediaHeckYeah

Louis Rossman's YouTube channel

Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:

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Remember what "subscription" used to mean? (self.fucksubscriptions)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by WhoRoger to c/fucksubscriptions

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The article about the "subscription" HP ink made me realise something.

Subscriptions aren't a new idea at all. You could subscribe to paper magazines. And you got to keep them.

I'm just clearing up my old house and it's filled with tons of old tech magazines. Lots of useful knowledge here. Wanna know how Windows and Mac compared in 1993? It's in here. All the forgotten technologies? Old games, old phones, whatever? You'll find it.

Now, granted. You'd only get one magazine a month. Not a whole library of movies or games or comic books.

But still, the very definition of subscription has shifted. Now, the common meaning is "you only get to use these things as long as you're paying". Nobody even thinks it could mean anything else.

Besides, it doesn't only apply to services that offer entire libraries. Online magazines still exist in a similar form as the paper ones. But you only get to access them while your "subscription" is active. Even the stuff you had while you were paying.

BTW I'm not throwing my old magazines away. I won't have the space, but a friend is taking it all. If they wouldn't, I'd give them to a library or let someone take them. The online and streaming stuff of today and tomorrow? In 30 years it'll be gone, forgotten and inaccessible.

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[–] WhoRoger 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where I live, they do. (And they distribute donated stuff to libraries that are missing stuff.)

[–] PostmodernPythia 4 points 1 year ago

My bad. I stand corrected. Librarians here get so sick of donations we can’t use that there are endless memes on librarian social media groups complaining about people ignoring signs and policy and dumping media they no longer want in or near the library because they can’t be bothered to dispose of it properly. (And they do.) If that’d not a problem in your area, kudos for helping the library. I apologize.