What is the point even anymore? If it's not ad free why pay? (I guess they will have ad free if you pay more??)
Well I waste too much time watching stuff anyways. I got rid of youTube for this and others will follow. Not paying OR watching unless I can avoid ads.
Ads are a huge and harmful force on my quality of life. I will go to great ends to avoid them. I also use blockers, naturally, but blockers aren't perfect. (YouTube still has "mid roll" ads even with the best.)
@futurebird The eventual goal of this is to kill ad-free viewing, at any price. Once the ad-supported plans "take off", they will remove the ad free ones from being "too expensive", "creating too many choices for consumers", and "not enough customers using it" (even though nobody could verify that, pro or post WGA agreement.)
I feel this is precisely why regulation is necessary: the nonsense that "businesses making the same anti-consumer changes over a period of time isn't collision" needs to stop when every free market decision results in large "-opoly" control in every case. (Like the mobile telecom industry: three choices are meaningless when all three essentially hold the same practices.)
@futurebird@skry Of all the streaming services we tried, the best watching experience by far is iTunes Movies: no ads, no other interruptions, no previews before the start, and no “NOW WATCH THIS!” as soon as the end credits start rolling. Just the exact movie you want to watch, and nothing else.
In comparison, each and every flat-fee based service is dramatically worse — including, sadly, AppleTV+.
@futurebird I just realized that Netflix should buy Redbox. Right now. They could probably get it for about seven dollars and twelve cents, and they would instantly have the pay-per-view/rental business they're missing (because they can't negotiate for shit) that would compete head to head with an ad-saturated Prime.
@futurebird Prime Video has always been garbage in my experience. UI way too slow and klunky and always deceiving you about whether a given movie is part of what you get "free" or something to buy. The only point of Prime is unlimited 2 day shipping; video was just to make folks balk less at the price on that.
They canceled the two high quality shows I used to watch on their platform (Mrs Maisel, The Peripheral) so they are lowering the cost/quality of their programming, they are charging more, and they will be displaying ads.
The obvious choice is not to pay and not to watch. I don't know what they're thinking.
@futurebird my weird combo of privacy browsing stuff successfully stops the YT ads completely on both mobile and desktop. Lemme know if you want the rundown of my extensions and stuff. I too have a deep, powerful disdain for ads.
@futurebird > (YouTube still has "mid roll" ads even with the best.)
Does it? With ublock origin the only thing it doesn't remove for me is sponsor ads that are actually part of the video. There's sponsorblock for that, but I haven't bothered since I just grab everything with ytdlp by default anyway (so I can easily skip it with barely any buffering when local).
@futurebird I don't hate adverts all that much, but I do resent being charged a premium price to see them. If they want to offer a free-with-ads tier, or even like a $1/mo-with-ads tier then fine, have at it. It's stuff like Sky, who will happily charge you £80 a month and still offer "ad-free" for an extra £5/mo on top. And this feels like it's in the "Sky shit" category to me.
@futurebird I'm still just doing what I've always done: pirate it. I paid while it felt like a good deal, but once Disney started pulling its content from Netflix I knew the writing was on the wall. So I dusted off my tricorn hat, checked the state of piracy these days, and have built an automated stack that works like a PVR. It's easier than ever.
@futurebird
I almost never see ads in YouTube. I use AdBlockPlus in Chrome. I have my settings extremely limited too. Lately once in a while, it tries to play an ad at the start, but it never works, & I just tap on it & it goes on through. Mostly I don't see ads, but maybe it depends on content viewed? The only ads I get are the youtuber's sponsored ads which they do themselves and I can forward over them. I may end up redeveloping my reading habits. Already listening to podcasts again more.
@futurebird As we update our customer service we are excited to bring you a brand new option: Prime-Prime (tm). For the low cost of just $29,99 per month*, you will be able to chose the level of additional consumer information with your movies.
@futurebird I will 100% be cancelling Prime altogether if this goes through. I've been trying to wean myself away from ordering shit from Amazon anyway.
@futurebird Amazon Prime Video is such a weird service! I have never been able to figure out how many people have ever even signed up for it on purpose. I only have it because I signed up for Prime for shipping reasons and I had it for years before I watched any of its "free" programming. So you give me a thing I didn't ask for, and then you announce you're adding ads to it? I'll probably just stop watching it!
@futurebird (On the other hand the version of the Amazon video service, which I'm not sure even has a name, where you rent movies to watch has always made much more sense, and IMO it was a high quality way to watch movies online years before Apple or YouTube got their equivalent services in usable shape. But I don't use that anymore really because "app store" changes means you have to use a separate PC or something to actually rent the video now…)
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