I think a common factor on why torrents are having a resurgence and illegal streaming services are getting more traction, is subscription fatigue. Subscription fatigue doesn’t only contain itself to streaming services, movies or music, nowadays you’re also expected to subscribe to every app you download. Whether it’s a meditation app, a budgeting app (looking at YNAB that went from a one-time purchase to a really expensive subscription model), the Adobe suite, the MS Office suite, your Peloton bike that you’ve already paid hundreds of dollars for (referencing the earlier article on them establishing a startup fee for buying used bikes), or a podcast app where the money doesn’t even go to the podcasters themselves.
Is there a peak for this? I feel like subscriptions are becoming more of a rule than an exception. Having the ability to directly purchase digital goods seems more like a thing of the past. It’s just so stupid. But apparently people don’t care? They just keep paying for this? Apparently it’s still worth it for companies to establish a subscription model, even if there are no benefits for the customer, just the company. What are your thoughts? What can we do to stop it?
I used to have a program called netlimiter (needed to throttle individual aop downloads on a shared WISP that was slow as balls). I bought a lifetime license like 10 years ago because I liked the software. A couple years ago they got rid of the old version and bumped me up to the new version. About a year ago I got an email saying something along the lines of “pay our new subscription fee or you lose your access” and basically put me on a trial account. I pirated their old version years ago to see if I liked the software enough after a couple months. I no longer use that software.
Another time I bought a lifetime access for a game on patreon. About 2 years later the dev switched to a subscription only fee to access all the new content and never released anything from updated versions to the older public release. So essentially I bumped down to a free tier of access to a game I paid for.
I will pirate until I die. Fuck these douchebags.
Omg same. I have been burnt so many times on “lifetime” scams, im done. I want to invest in your product, but part of that agreement is you doing what you say. I’ve had it!
That’s happened to me with a couple of phone apps too. Its infuriating.
I’m peak subscription overload. I’m looking for ways to turf a bunch of ours, I’m currently trying to prove to my wife that our IPTV sub has everything that she needs and the Netflix/Disney/Amazon/Paramount subs can all fuck off and die. Almost there.
Next up is the bike trainer, roadside assistance, fitness and music subs. I’ll keep Spotify because I like how it integrates with our car, but that’s the ONLY reason.
I am too radicalized now. I refuse to fund my oppressors, and fuck all they can do about it.
I will teach my kids how to do it and advise them to never pay for engagement slop.
FAFO hollycreeps and recording studios, whatcha gonna about it, bitches ?
I refuse to fund my oppressors
Bingo. I live by this philosophy.
Although more precisely: I refuse to
fundfeed my oppressors. The reason fors/fund/feed/swap is that our oppressors profit from our data too. So e.g. I won’t even email a gmail user because my data would then feed Google (an oppressor because of how they dictate e-mail terms among other oppressions).Did you ask all of your friends to get a Proton/Tuta account/ host their email server?
I give out my XMPP address and offer Snikket accounts. Some go along with it and some do not. I lost touch with some friends. Some people are in contact via phone but that’s not ideal some connections are lost as phone numbers change.
I used to push some people toward Hushmail until they dropped the gratis plans. Then for a while I pressured people onto Protonmail but then distanced myself from PM when the brought in Google reCAPTCHAs and killed off Hydroxide. Tuta is a non-starter because Tuta’s variety of e2ee is incompatible with open standards, thus forcing me to periodically login to a web UI (also due to them sabotaging their Android app by way of forced obsolescence pushed in the most incompetent way).
So it’s a shitty state of affairs. 2024 and simply sending a msg to someone has become a total shitshow.
Why don’t you use PGP with email?
And that’s really cool
That’s exactly what I did with hushmail. I would tell low-tech folks to get a hushmail account then I would use hushtools.com to do all the key management, putting my key on the keyring and grabbing their key. So the other person did not need to know anything or take any special steps. That was best option of my time. But last time I checked hushmail was still entirely non-gratis.
Protonmail emerged when HM became non-gratis and messed with hushtools. But PM requires every one of their own users to do key management which creates a barrier to entry. I would have to walk a PM user through adding my key to my record in their address book and walk them through sending me their key. That effort is a show stopper for many. I might as well walk them through setting up a PGP-capable MUA. But then if they keep their gmail or MS acct the metadata still feeds those corps.
I believe thunderbird has good PGP integration, and new users can just use Kleopatra instead of GPG on the command line.
The real question is, do your friends run Linux?
I wonder if it’s possible to set up my own email server with Proton acting as a proxy in front of it. When other people send emails to me, it goes through proton and lands in my email server and vice-versa. Not exactly forwarding but acting as an end-point of sorts. I know nothing about e-mail so I can’t quite get the right words for it.
If you’re worried about metadata like time-stamps, message size and IP addresses, it shouldn’t be too hard for someone of your technical calibre to spin up a VPS, install mutter, configure POP3, set up routines/automated actions with cron to send replies on a calculated but random schedule through a VPN/TOR/I2P. Yeah decrypting messages will have to be by hand but you’re doing that anyway.
The metadata in the headers can be avoided using Memoryhole and similar protocols which embed the headers inside the encrypted payload. The problem is again barrier to entry. Low-tech users generally can’t even handle app installs on desktops.
When you say “worry”, that’s not the right word for it. My boycott against Google is not fear-driven. I will not feed Google anything it can profit from as an ethical stance. Even if an expert linux tor user were on Google, I’m not sure we could exchange email in a way that ensures Google gets no profitable data. If we use PGP coupled with Memoryhole to strip out the headers, I’m not sure Google would accept a msg with a missing or bogus From: header. But if so, Google still possibly learns the user’s timezone. Though that may be useless if Google learns nothing else about that user. But we’re talking obscure corner cases at this point. Such an expert user would have no Google dependency anyway.
MS/google-dependent friends are generally extremely low-tech. They don’t know the difference between Firefox and the Internet. They don’t know the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet. Linux – what’s linux? They would say. At best, they just think of it as a mysterious nerd tool to be avoided. So what can I do wholly on my end to reach them via gmail without Google getting a shred of profitable data? Nothing really. So I just don’t connect directly with a large segment of friends and family. Some of them are probably no longer reachable. Some are in touch with people who connect to me via XMPP, so sometimes info/msgs get proxied through the few XMPP users. It’s still a shitshow because Google still gets fed through that proxied inner circle of friends and family. In the past when someone needed to reach me directly, they would create a Hushmail or Protonmail mail account for that temporary purpose (like coordinating a trip somewhere). But that option is mostly dead.
I just had to reach out to plumbers for quotes. All of them are gmail-served. All I could do is refuse to share my email address and push them to use analog mechanisms. They are not hungry enough for business to alter their online workflow or create protonmail accounts.
When it’s only one or two a month it’s manageable, but now everything worth accessing is split over a dozen services. I gave the legal option a go and it became excessively expensive, so back to piracy. Both cheaper and more convenient.
Word!
A pal of mine his parents subscribe to basically every streaming service under the sun, but when he and I wanted to watch a movie and he already painfully searched it using the arrow keys on the remote of his smart TV, we’d figure torrenting it for a few minutes was easier. (and yes I shared back to a ratio over ×1.00)
most torrent clients can set a ratio automatically.
mine is set to at least 2.00, not only return the favor but one more for good measure.
I set ×2.00 on my seedbox, yeah! It must groooww haha!
I think some amount of it is apathy, or modern-life time-poor induced apathy where people just want something to work and work quickly without much effort or time and so they just pony up. And with so many people not keeping a budget, $10 a month here and there or $30 once a month doesn’t seem like much if you’re not adding up all those subs combined over a month or a year or 5 years. Really, some subs could fall into the category of a dark pattern because $10 a month doesn’t seem like much compared to say $100 up front even though over the course of a year (or 2, 3, 5+ years) that sub costs you more than just buying software up front. (Think also Sam Vines Boot Theory).
I see some people are getting fed up (I’m one of them) but sadly plenty more who mindlessly keep paying more and more.
Absolutely. I constantly revisit the services I subscribe to, but to be honest, I still keep some streaming services on a constant subscription even though my viewing patterns differ from month to month. In that case I’m just too lazy, and it’s not a huge hit to my disposable income. I pay for it to be available when I want to use them. I think this might be the case for many others, and coupled with not having a budget and/or financial sense, this can definitely add up for many. I also think many people just forget what services they are subscribed too, and barely even watch their bank account/credit card slip and what’s being withdrawn.
I might sound a little in the minority of this.
Everyone should sit down and ask themselves - ‘Do I Really Need This?’
I can only speak on my behalf. I have over, roughly estimating, 1,500 games both purchased and pirated. Do I really need a subscription such as GamePass right now when I have so much already? No, I really don’t.
I’ve pirated thousands of songs over the years, do I really need Spotify’s subscription? No, I do not and I’m glad that I don’t.
So on and so forth. I decide what I need or want based on the current lifestyle and quality of life in my current state. I do not need over 40 subscriptions sapping me every month and it’s only gotten easier because I combat FOMO, I evaluate what else is out there that serves as an alternative that isn’t subscription based.
These days when I look at people paying a subscription model for Microsoft Office, I shake my head and have that kind of chuckle that makes you feel sorry over someone doing that. Because really, I still use older versions of Microsoft Office and LibreOffice to handle whatever modern features that there is to handle. Not a lot has really changed to warrant subscribing to such a model.
A lot of subscription models can be pressy to people who aren’t knowledgeable unless they take advantage of what’s out there.
For sure. And Libreoffice doesn’t constantly try to make you save your documents in OneDrive…
My buddy pays $100 for a cell phone service, and gets a new $1000 phone every two years. When I told him he pays $4400 every two years, his jaw dropped.
He first talked about how important it was for him to have wireless while hiking. He hiked ONCE in the past year. And if it’s super important, he can rent a device during that trip.
It’s ridiculous. I buy used $300 phones and pay $10-20 a month.
Same. My mother just bought the s24 because she really needed her facebook to… run faster?
I just recently got a used Fairphone 5, which should last me some time for about 250.
In Europe? I don’t think they’re available in the US
“Am I getting my value out of this subscription?”
If you want to pay for GamePass, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Peacock, Hulu, etc. then by all means do so.
But each renewal, you need to ask yourself, “Am I getting the value out of this subscription to warrant the price?”
Amazon Prime was a no starting two years ago.
Spotify premium was never valuable to me.
I do have a YNAB subscription but this is slowly moving towards a no as well.
I have Google One for drive/Gmail space but that’s about it.
There’s nothing wrong either with pumping the brakes of a subscription, which I’m seeing and hearing people do now including myself. I just need a good reason to subscribe to say like, Netflix, to get me to watch what I want to watch or catch up on then decide to unsubscribe.
I sincerely hope they don’t penalize people in the future for doing this, but I expect at somepoint that they will so mind as well enjoy that while we’re able.
I was thinking about this the other day when I heard Chick-fil-a wants to start their own streaming service. I feel like…it’s starting to feel like every big business is squeezing us like lemons. Not only do they artifically increase prices for their goods, but now they want us to pay for subscription services too.
It’s starting to feel extremely invasive. Surely, you would think there is a tipping point. But I also said that about the inflation of groceries and the general cost of living. But we haven’t seem to hit that point either, lol.
Chick-fil-a starting a streaming service sounds like the worst idea ever.
They have to compete with the kfc console somehow.
Everything is a streaming service now. I like to think of even Peloton first as a content driven business and second as a hardware seller.
Apparently the family that owns Chick fil a also bought a movie studio in 2022 in Atlanta and they filmed some marvel stuff there. So it might make a little bit of sense?
My prediction is that now that tech has run out of its endless growth runway the- industry will begin to consolidate and they will have massive ecosystems that you can join for like 200 bucks a month
You mean cable packages, which have been on the comeback
I think if you run Linux, you don’t notice it so much. Don’t need office suite or Adobe suitsäe or mediation apps or whatever… There are many decent free ones.
I don’t pay for any software at all actually, and my job pays for chat gpt…
My peak was one. For like 5-6 years Netflix had enough content to keep me entertained by itself. When the other media companies started pulling their stuff off Netflix to make their own services I started pirating again. Why would I bother keeping track of multiple services when I can get one VPN subscription and have it all plus stuff that isn’t on any of them?
I see this same sentiment online all the time. So when it comes to media streaming, monopolies are a good thing?
No. There’s no reason the content has to be on only one platform other than anti-competitive bullshit. They could all have all the content and differentiate themselves in other ways with quality of life features. Then people would have options without missing out on content.
Exactly. Music streaming works like this and it’s doing fine. There’s no reason why video streaming didn’t go a similar route other than greed.
I would pay if à la carte was remotely economical. For example a digital DRM movie rental should cost $1 in whatever resolution, on any device capable of playing it. A TV show should cost like $5 for a season or $0.5 per episode. To rent, not to own of course. I don’t care about ownership. With that model I would probably end up spending like $10-15/month on media, but I would feel better about it knowing the studio could pay more to those specific individuals who worked on the programs I am enjoying.
A subscription is a blank check to the studio to make whatever they think draws in subscribers, and to pay everyone involved as little as possible with no bonuses for blockbusters.
It’s telling that my piracy of music all but disappeared when Apple Music came along. (Almost) Everything I want to hear is right there on my phone. I don’t have to switch between different services to find artists.
Now, whether such enormous consolidation of the record companies, allowing that kind of setup, is a good thing is another discussion…
I agree, Apple music is so massive that sometimes I can’t find something on YT Music + Amazon + Tidal + Qobuz, and voila, it’s on Apple music
I think a lot of the blame lies on the shoulders of platform makers:
Apple constantly churning their already-working OS so software makers have to keep working just to keep already-working software running
Google constantly fucking with web browser standards/frameworks so it’s an endless stream of work to keep a web app up to date.
The basic productivity software that computers run hasn’t changed in functionality for literally my entire lifetime, yet there is an endless supply of software engineers working hard on these same basic tools for no apparent gains.
Yeah, I’ve thought about this too.
Apple update their OSs annually now because the shareholders demand constant evolution, meaning the devs have to constantly be on top of changes to the OS. And it’s fucking exhausting how badly it affects us all.
Don’t forget the subscription to be able to start your car from your phone, or if you have really poor taste in vehicles the subscription to heat your seats or unlock other already-built-in features.
Is there a peak for this? I feel like subscriptions are becoming more of a rule than an exception. Having the ability to directly purchase digital goods seems more like a thing of the past.
You may have heard the saying: “you’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy”. Maybe there’s some real agenda supporting this way of life for us peasants, and this is the manifestation of it.
And wasn’t that what we were promised by capitalism? That we could own our land, our homes and our lives. But even that, they’re turning back on, except for the privileged few. Back to feudalism it is.
What can we do to stop it?
But apparently people don’t care? They just keep paying for this?
Is your goal to attempt to stop other people from falling for subscriptions? You would be setting yourself up for disappointment.
Or do you mean “what can we do to stop it [from harassing us personally]”?
