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 know I’m in the minority but I am also a software developer, and I think subscriptions are a much healthier payment model for everyone. The issue IMO is not recurring payments but the total cost of ownership.
“Digitial goods” is very rarely just a thing that you produce once and then it’s done. The OS is regularly updated which causes incompatibilities, app stores introduce new demands, and there’s a constant stream of security vulnerabilities in your dependencies that need to be patched. Failing to adress any of these things breaks the social contract and causes rage among your users (“I PAID FOR THIS, WHY ISN’T IT WORKING/WHY AREN’T YOU FIXING BUGS/etc”). Even movies and music need to be maintained because new media formats are introduced, streaming services have to be kept responsive and up to date etc.
A subscription models the cost distribution over time much better, and it does benefit the users because it means the company can keep updating their shit even if new sales drop, instead of going bankrupt.
I don’t think this stops with just digital goods. Manufactured products (and the environment) would also benefit from a subscription model because it means there’s no incentive for planned obsolescence. It’s an incentive for keeping the stuff we already built working for a long time, instead of constantly producing new crap and throwing the old in a landfill.
But, the caveat is that this shift must not result in higher total cost of ownership for the end users over time. In fact, it should reduce the cost because repairing and updating is cheaper than building new stuff. The way many companies are pricing subscriptions today, they are being too greedy.
I see your point. But as someone else mentioned, there are many programs, apps and what not that shouldn’t require a subscription just by looking at how the software or hardware is set up.
What are your thoughts on ownership?
I feel a subscription model takes power away from me. Just like UBI would.
It just seems like a bad idea long term.
Would Universal Basic Income take power away from you?
Like you personally?
Or is UBI meaning something else too?
Yeah because it takes away leverage from unions.
It’s better to have national shares, so everyone owns the production, and that provides your income. But ya now I am probably a commie?
How does it take leverage from unions?
It would effectively be a permanent strike fund.
Wouldn’t that help unions?It’s also not so much “taking” power, as it’s not giving power you feel is your right.
Which, is the same kind of thinking that let’s copyright holders claim every count of piracy is theft of money they never actually had.I didn’t understand the second part, could you elaborate on that?
How do you imagine unions to function at all without workers? The work is what provides unions with leverage, which is why we see strikes even in countries that have really good laws.
If you receive UBI, what can you do that genuinely creates leverage? Maybe make blockades like XR does? I don’t think that’s as powerful.
If there aren’t workers, there is no need for unions.
But that doesn’t happen anyway.
UBI doesn’t replace work. People still work. Pilot programs and tests show, people might work less overtime, or call out when sick more, so they can go to a doctor, spend more time home with a new baby, and stay in school longer gaining higher degrees. But they don’t quit their jobs. So there will still be plenty of workers to join unions.Ya that makes sense. I guess it was kinda black and white to me and I was thinking of what’s called Basic in The Expanse.
I think it was a “UBIsoft” , a game publishing company.
OMG I’m an idiot. Thank you!
Depends what kind of ownership you’re thinking about. When it comes to electronics, “ownership” is just subscription with a longer period between payments. Your existing phone, tablet, TV, dishwasher or what have you will last a finite time and then you have to buy a new one.
If there’s something that will last a lifetime, that’s a different discussion. But those are rare. Almost every purchase you make is a commitment to a recurring cost.
That’s an interesting perspective, and it makes sense for certain objects.
I also disagree with something you’re implying. If you build a proper headphones it will last forever. It’s a symptom of a broken system to create headphones that break every 3 years. That applies to many objects that I can think of right now.
I agree that the current system is broken. So let’s say that instead of paying $300 for a pair of headphones that last three years, you pay $8.33 / month for renting the headphones. Now, if the headphones break after three years the manufacturer has to produce new ones for you. That’s an undesirable cost for them.
It is now in their best interest to make headphones that will last a long time and that they can repair if something breaks. But also, since you can easily cancel the subscription at any time, it is in their interest to offer you something that is competitive. They might even upgrade to better technology over time or add new features to the bundled app to keep you as a customer. Or alternatively, lower the subscription cost over time to reflect the relative value of the headphones.
For you, there’s also the benefit that there’s no high upfront cost that you can’t reverse. You’re paying for what you can afford in your current situation. If you lose your job you can stop paying for the headphones at a moment’s notice. I imagine that this would leave fewer people in credit card debt.
Or we could fix the system and I have the right information as customer to be able to purchase a headphones that lasts long and can be repaired.
I’d argue we need a market that provides more useful information to the customer.
For example I’d like to know what environmental impact my products have. How long I’ll be able to get replacement parts. Longer guarantees perhaps. The ability to upgrade. I’m not an expert on the details.
At the moment I’d prefer to own rather than to rent. Quite frankly what you’re imagining sounds dystopian to me because you lose power.
I completely agree with you in principle for people who want their software updated, but there is some software that is standalone and doesn’t depend upon changing codecs/APIs etc. Something like myfitnesspal or a thermomix shouldn’t be a subscription, there is no major updates to how someone tracks their exercise uses a hot blender that justifies it beyond users being locked in.
In the example of thermomix, you’ve already paid top dollar for the hardware, getting locked out of functionality you’ve paid for stings.
Something like myfitnesspal or a thermomix shouldn’t be a subscription, there is no major updates to how someone tracks their exercise uses a hot blender that justifies it beyond users being locked in.
I won’t dispute that both of these likely abuse the subscription model for their benefit. But they definitely have a social responsibility (and in many cases a legal responsibility) to keep updating the software in these products and the network infrastructure that go with them. The internet of things is one of the most vulnerable attack vectors we have. It has been exploited many times not just to attack individuals, but to create massive bot nets that can target corporations or even countries. The onus is on the manufacturer to continuously keep that at bay. You know what they say - the “S” in “IOT” stands for security.
I agree that IOT things need to be secure. Is it really too much to ask that apps/devices are made secure from the ground up?
To stay on the thermomix, all the subcription is is a connection to their servers to give access to their live step by step recipes. Surely that’s just a secure end-to-end encrypted connection? I’m not a developer but it doesn’t sound like buyers should be expected to pay the manufacturer to maintain beyond buying a thermomix/upgrading to new versions of the hardware when they want to access any new features.
Is it really too much to ask that apps/devices are made secure from the ground up?
In a way, yes. They can and should definitely be made with security in mind from the ground up. But they will never be totally secure, and a necessary part of what constitutes a “secure product” is to continuously and quickly patch security issues as they become known.
Surely that’s just a secure end-to-end encrypted connection?
I would bet it’s still a bit more than that. But even if it’s just a secure end-to-end encrypted connection, here is the list of vulnerabilities fixed in OpenSSL (which is probably what they use for secure encrypted connections). It’s five so far in 2024. Then there’s some OS kernel below that which can have security issues as well. The Thermomix probably also has user authorization components and payment methods, plus various personal information that has to be protected under GDPR.
Hmmm… okay it sounds like the subscription model does actually make some sense for devices that need to maintain an internet connection/IoT applications. Thanks for taking the time to enlighten me.
I won’t dispute that both of these likely abuse the subscription model for their benefit. But they definitely have a social responsibility (and in many cases a legal responsibility) to keep updating the software in these products and the network infrastructure that go with them.
I mean, it would be zero cost if it was a fucking normal device. Someone had the idea that a juice squeezer or a toaster should be online… for… what, exactly? Remove the online (or even better, remove the software), you completely remove the cost that you want impugn on the user with “subscriptions”.
No argument there. But apparently there’s a market for it.
In the olden days software used to be sold by individual major versions. You paid for version 9, you paid for version 10. Or you skipped versions you didn’t need. You could use versions side by side. The newest installed would import its data from the older ones. etc.
App stores have made this very awkward or almost impossible. There’s no concept of separating major versions. You’d have to buy and install completely different apps to be able to pay for them separately and to use them side by side, but if they’re separate apps they can’t import your data from each other. Not to mention that people seem to hate having “too many apps” for some reason.
Software subscriptions switch the “support per major version” to “support per time of use”. It’s obviously shittier but it’s more realistic than a one-time price and expecting to use the app in all future versions in perpetuity. The one time price would have to be very large to be realistic.
This is an interesting point as well. Before, if you weren’t happy with an update or whatnot, you could just keep running the older version. But nowadays that’s impossible in many cases.
TBF in most cases forced app obsolescence is on the developers. Some of them are super aggressive and will force you to update without really needing it. Like, come on, package tracking app, I really don’t believe you’re unable to show me the package pick-up barcode without updating. 🙄
But yeah, on iOS it’s completely impossible to get older versions, once you’ve updated something that’s it. And even on Android I’ve noticed that it’s become impossible to downgrade some apps even if I have the old apk, the Google installer simply fails to install it if I’ve ever had a newer version installed.
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…
What I find annoying is for what you occasionally use.
For instance I started to listen more frequently to a songs service (which I was bypassing ads) and so I thought to officially subscribe. When I looked at prices I didn’t because it was too costly and knowing me I could stop anyday to use it. Price for one was above 10 when for two it was something like 14 so 7 per person and which I would have been ok to pay. Good for me because I stopped to listen some weeks after and it has beek years I didn’t really use it.
I think, especially for video and audio media consumption, you should pay a global amount and it should be split between services you used. Split should be based on usage.
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]”?
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
Can you recommend lifetime access courses in offline too instead of subscription?
I’m tired of this model, where you just wanna have access to one single course with offline mode and they offer 1-month subscription for all of them. Who has time to check them all?
Jellyfin + library
That’s the beauty of late stage capitalism.
Never. Red like must always ascend lest the gnashing of teeth from the shareholder comes to past.
When we get closer to the end I just assume we get subscriptions of subscriptions.
Perhaps a paid app to track and manage your subscriptions…
Have you heard about Rocket money? If you’re so bad with money that you don’t know where it all goes, rocket money will help you with that (in exchange for money)! It must be good, a bunch of YouTubers and podcasters are paid to recommend it!
please don’t take this as a sincere recommendation, I hate that it exists
Most of them are cheap though. Like Spotify at ~$10 is nothing, you can barely get a beer for that in the city these days. That’s far cheaper than you used to pay for CDs!
Netflix really took the piss though - with the charging for no ads, HD and multiple screens. Then it gets to like $30 a month which just isn’t worth it with the diminishing library, so I cancelled that and use Amazon Prime Video for now as it’s still cheap in my country (and has no ads for now).
$10/month would be cheap if it would cover every movie and show you’d want to watch. It used to be that but nowadays you need about ten different subscriptions in order to get what you want, plus many more if you use SaaS. So you end up paying ~$200/month for everything.
IMO, Spotify still “works” and music piracy probably is not as common as movie piracy, because Spotify has close to everything one would want to listen to.Don’t most music streaming services have all the major bases covered? Unlike for films or TV shows, there are hardly any music streaming exclusive versions of albums. Sure, Tidal tried to make it happen but still, at this day, most streaming services have most of the stuff one wants.
Imo, the mindset of “X is cheap!” what leads people to end up overspending.
Having worked with marketers, they use the whole “price of a cup of coffee” to convince people to buy services that they don’t need all the time.
I don’t have or need Spotify. Same with a lot of steaming services. I own Netflix stock but I don’t even own a Netflix account. I could afford it but why?
If the replacement for X is Y, sure! Buy the alternative. But honestly I think people should reevaluate what they really need.
A sales person was trying to sell me a timeshare with the ol “only the cost of a cup of coffee per day” tactic. The conversation got real awkward when I told them I couldn’t afford a cup of coffee everyday
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.
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.
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?
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.
They have to compete with the kfc console somehow.
