this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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The difference is, that Netflix (or Spotify, or whatever) does bring value on its own. I am paying money to comfortably and legally stream content, which itself is paid for and licensed by the streaming provider. From the perspective of a lazy end user, it's worth it, because you do not need to care about downloading, finding releases, opsec and whatnot. I don't want to protect Netflix, fuck corporations and subscription services, but password sharing was always only tolerated at most. From the same end user perspective, reddit is just an empty platform. The content is brought in free of charge by the community. And now not only they want the same community to pay, but also for an objectively worse experience? I don't think that you can compare that.
Agree with you, but small nitpick, password sharing was encouraged at some point, at least from the PR side of the business.
Yeah let's not be like, "poor guys, they needed to get rid of password sharing", if we start to agree that they were never encouraged that's how people forget stuff.
I can somewhat understand both perspectives. Although I too sail the high seas, if you don’t have the aptitude to self host, and you only care to binge a show over the weekend, $12 (or whatever it costs now) is a somewhat justifiable expense. I mean, 1 comic book is $4-$6 on average these days. One of those might provide 15 minutes of entertainment and a month of anticipation. $12 is a good value.
Everything I want to watch is readily available for streaming. Why self host unless you want to keep copies?
Because it’s available to stream NOW for $ but it may not be available LATER for $ or not
Sadly my children's children won't be able to find "Is it cake? S3E5" on their grandpa's old hard drive.
And they’re lives will worse for it /s their primary concern is where their next dose of clean water will come from
Yeah well the first reason they won't find it is the drive melted away in the heat wave of 37', got blown up in the second War of the Rhine in 39', and since 52' lies at the bottom of the Central European Ocean.
But also because I streamed instead of torrenting.
I didn't say I was paying :)
Well, sure… not everyone has to self host to see what they want to see either, but my reasoning remains the same. The people signing up and paying for Netflix all of a sudden likely lack the aptitude or don’t care enough. I got a sandwich yesterday that was > $12.
Funny on the topic of sandwiches.
Two weeks ago I decided to make my own sandwiches and coffee, and all of a sudden I have $200 extra a month.
Mostly because if you set it up right it's near entirely automated and you don't have to worry about media availability on your subscribed service.
Edit: also a lot of the time we (Canada) miss out on a lot of content on streaming services
I also like the wide range of sources to pull down content and have it available vs sometimes having to wrestle with a streaming site in the moment.
Sure, but I meant to imply that I can stream without paying without issues.
A big part of it for me was seeing streaming companies removing episodes due to "modern sensibilities". Multiple censored IASIP episodes, removing the D&D episode of Community. I think this is going to happen more and more and I want all the content. Not just what was approved by some diversity group.
Agreed. I am as progressive as one can be, but there are limits.
Just a few months ago I realized I haven't seen one episode of The Office because Netflix removed it.
Just give the option to "show/hide" them. But don't hide them completely.
What episode of the office did they remove? That’s insane.
The one with the blackface joke. One of the characters - can't remember his name right now - appeared wearing blackface just for a few seconds as part of a joke implying that blackface was, well, inappropriate.
The strange thing, to me atleast, is that you can even just stream shows and movies on websites like bflix with subtitles for every language. I have friends and family that would pay netflix their left leg if they asked them to. And now they're stuck with a bunch of subscriptions to multiple streaming services because everything is split between multiple platforms.
Is there any risk to streaming movies in bflix? Do you need anything special to use that site (like a VPN)? There is a little knowledge barrier to doing things like this.
Also trying to use a site to stream media on a smart TV sucks so bad
Honestly not really. Torrents expose your ip directly to everyone downloading and uploading the torrent. But only the website itself sees your ip. Companies will join the torrent and add your ip to a list. Then ask your isp to send you a notice. With a website, companies cant see who is watching on a streaming website.
Been using putlocker. Honesty a better experience than netflix since everything is there without question.
Even if only spend a few hours a month watching, it's still pretty cheap entertainment.
Hell, some good beers while binging a season will literally cost more than the monthly fee.
Weirdly, I've been using my parents' Netflix credentials still and haven't been kicked off yet. They live hours away so there's no mistake there about being in the same household.
Hopefully I'm not tempting fate too much by talking about it on the Internet lol
Plot twist: Your parents can't access their Netflix anymore but aren't tech savvy enough to understand why, so they're back at watching classic broadcast television.
Lol I was actually wondering something similar. That, or they haven't said anything out of fear of sounding rude.
I talk to them regularly though, and told my dad that I'm still logged in and watching it, so I hope he would have said something if it wasn't working...
A relative I share an account with got the prompt last month. I setup a VPN at my place so they could connect once a month and "check in" at home with their mobile app. After that they could disconnect and continue watching on their Roku.
My brother is on my account in a different state and neither he nor I have been booted. Hoping we just got missed and they’ll never notice.
They still sell celerons?
They still sell DOS???
I find it a tad arrogant to believe costumers can't make rational decision that differ from those of the vocal online minority of reddit et al. Whenever a website changes its product (arguably for the worse, most of the time) said minority prophesizes the end, and calls out some kind of revolt, whereas the vast majority of users or ~~costumers~~ customers just makes due with the slightly worsened conditions, simply because they still see the product as worthwhile. Netflix, for all its flaws, still is a decent product for a decent price, as long as you're into the kind of slop they produce. And there probably is a large portion of ~~costumers~~ customers who weren't even affected at all by the recent changes.
I feel this is relevant for both costumers and people who don't wear costumes when using reddit.
Posting for it is still easier than learning how to pirate and dodging lawsuits.
Dodging lawsuits? Bruh you sound like you’re scared.
No one is going to come after you with lawsuits because you’re pirating movies. Worst case scenario your ISP ends your service after sending you a dozen warnings over the time span of a year.
I kept paying for a little while, until I had ripped everything off their site I wanted to see, then I cancelled lol.
...ripped? From Netflix?
Yep, I got a program that had to be subscribed to for about $30usd a year that allowed me to rip up to entire seasons of shows in 1080p at a time through a logged in account. I accumulated about 3TB of shows and movies then cancelled My subscription to both Netflix and the program I was using.
My GF pays for Netflix and other than some annoying messages and text account sharing is still possible, not as cool as before though.
Anyway, as she does not have the premium version, or whatever is called (no 4K) good quality picture films we end up watching them on Stremio lol.
She doesn't care, but I do.
Well, why would they ditch for piracy? Netflix was smart about the whole thing: adding an authorized household (not user, entire household) is cheaper than creating a new subscription. The people subscribing to Netflix aren't fundamentally opposed to paying for streaming, they were opposed to an unfair change in the business model. Netflix countered with a seemingly fair change in the business model that now eliminates the hassles that come with password sharing and could make the marginal increase in cost per household fairly small. It was overall a pretty smart business decision.
There are many many problems with Netflix, including their growth-based business model, the lack of insight into their finances, and the way they're slowly enshittifying the film industry. They're a major reason for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. However, this change wasn't stupid and people weren't stupid for going along with it. I don't see how it would lead to an overall increase in piracy, that's being driven by the many new streaming services forcing costs on consumers. But consumers won't blame Netflix for that because, frankly, that's not Netflix's fault.