Comment by wickedsight
1 year ago
> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content
I'm a bit more pessimistic I guess. Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform. Now, Netflix is starting to fill up with 'sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content' and they really seem to want to become ad-fuelled.
I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content.
I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform.
For a while I thought that blockchain/crypto might be a good way to fix this. But nobody seems to be building blockchain stuff to do the right thing, they only do it to rip people off.
> needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content.
Mind this is sort of how it used to work.
Outside of broadcast TV and radio, you either subscribed to everything (newspapers, magazines, newsletters) or you bought them ad hoc one by one at the newsstand.
A problem with modern subscriptions is that they auto renew, and thus can be hard to cancel, and they tend to be quite expensive (everyone wants a “mere” $10/month).
>...or you bought them ad hoc one by one at the newsstand...
100% This is what is missing. I don't want to subscribe to the New York Times for £90 per year because I only want to read about 5 to 10 NYT articles a year. Why can't I pay £1.50 for 15 articles? That would be about the same as buying a physical copy of a paper from a newsagent; if I buy a physical copy I probably read about that many articles from it before it gets recycled. Instead I either don't read the article I've found to or I try to find it on the internet archive which is really irritating. I would like to read articles in a range of papers; say 3-4 UK broadsheets, occasionally some international papers like the NYT, Le Monde and a couple of trade papers. If I subscribed to 4 UK broadsheet newspapers I would already be paying >£400/year in newspaper subscriptions. Who does this? I can't understand why newspapers can't see that no-one wants to be spending that sort of money and why they can't come up with a better solution. If the problem is card fees on micro transactions why don't they club together and create some kind of patreon type thing that agglomerates transactions together?
I used to buy magazines in the 90s that cost upwards of $6-8 a magazine each, that's $18 in today's dollars.
You want access to multiple large reporting agencies work but want to pay less than a fraction of the non-adjusted 1990s prices. Your better solution has zero way to work financially. Imagine saying 'why do I have to pay for a whole buffet, I only pick from 5-10 of the buffet dishes that I pick and choose as I walk down the line, I don't take something from all of them. I should pay like fifty cents.'
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I gather you are outside the US, so my solution likely doesn't apply. For those in the US, check your local library's digital offerings. Mine offers 3 day access to the NYTimes web site for free. There is a bit of a friction as I must first log into my library account and click a link. Then I have to log into my NYTimes account if I'm not already. Bam! Full access to everything for 72 hours. It can be endlessly renewed if that's your thing. I tend to use it about once a month.
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> I can't understand why newspapers can't see that no-one wants to be spending that sort of money
NYT adds 210,000 digital subscribers in Q1.
"The company said it had about 10.5 million subscribers overall for its print and digital products at the end of the first quarter, up roughly 8 percent from a year earlier. About 640,000 of those were print subscribers, down about 10 percent from the same period last year. "
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/business/media/new-york-t...
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I'd also like to subscribe to some rate-limited plan for newspapers, magazines, and newsletters. I can usually find some workaround but it's too much hassle to do that for all the sites I'd like to read (and where I would be willing to give some limited amount of money).
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Internet Archive is irritating. Just archive.is it and 9/10 times it's already archived. Especially with articles here on HN. And if it's not archived it will be archived on the spot.
Post News tried this and failed. Not sure why.
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> or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content
Cable still exists. People wanted the ability to sub to whatever they wanted (often leaving out sports for example). That's happened and now people want it all in one place. It turns out what people want is everything in one place for free, which is leading Netflix to have an ad-tier. Though, re-bundling is going to take some time as consolidation happens.
Actually for most part I don't want to subscribe.
And I don't want free ad sponsored.
I just want to pay a reasonable (I'll get back to this) price for the things I actually want.
Netflix was OK with me (and I think a number of others) despite being a subscription service not because it was a subscription.
It was OK because it was
- the only option
- reasonably priced
- and had "everything" one wanted
So what is reasonable?
I'd assume that with all the cost savings given the digitalization of the delivery at least it shouldn't be more expensive than renting a physical dvd, although I'd accept if they adjusted a little for inflation.
So use the Apple TV store (formerly iTunes Store). There you can buy nearly anything from any studio, and you pay per episode or per season. Whether the costs are reasonable or not is in the eye of the beholder but I don't feel ripped off by it.
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> I'd assume that with all the cost savings given the digitalization of the delivery at least it shouldn't be more expensive than renting a physical dvd
I'm confused. A typical streaming service has hundreds or thousands of what would typically be a physical DVD. So how much should they charge?
Also, the vast majority of the cost for most content is in the creation of the content.
The tl;dr is that we've demanded things with such enormous production costs that were basically almost entirely subsidized on a socialized model, where the big appeal of the big ones subsidized the costs of the less successful ones, in a way that would make them not reliably financially viable in isolation.
But the content that is so specific it only appeals to 1-10% of people is both the most memorable and also often the content that is basically guaranteed to not hit for 90% of people. So your math on who's going to pay to consume it changes drastically when the ceiling is so much lower, especially when the effective price required is so much higher that it's going to drive even more people away.
So it's a much larger risk pool to hope you'll make your money back with the error bars so much narrower, and businesses being businesses, they go for the bland thing with a lower risk pool 99% of the time, and then wonder why their returns keep shrinking.
> It turns out what people want is everything in one place for free
I'd say this is provably false based on the popularity of streaming services, specifically the rise of Netflix's streaming service. That is the opposite of free.
Netflix is not offering ad tiers due to a lack of subscribers; they are doing it because there were a handful of quarters where revenue stagnated. This does not mean it was a bad business model; it means they want perpetual growth to satisfy shareholders. Same old story.
The reasons cable was and is bad and was destined to be replaced:
- No ability to unbundle (as you said)
- Messy time-shifting (DVRs, PPV, all that nonsense)
- Complicated and limited setup (proprietary hardware; extra fees for multiple devices; no ability to view on a computer or mobile device)
- Tons of fun trying to cancel
Cable has two real advantages:
- Fast channel switching
- Garbage exclusivity contracts
Streaming doesn't solve exclusivity but it certainly doesn't make it worse. In fact, making it easier to subscribe and cancel makes it significantly better.
> I'd say this is provably false based on the popularity of streaming services, specifically the rise of Netflix's streaming service.
When Netflix came out it was effectively free at $10. People want billions worth of content for $10/month. We all do, but that's not sustainable.
Don't worry by the way, cable boxes, Netflix, and televisions will give away your privacy even if you pay
You don't get past the ads, but over-the-air TV still exists and is technologically impossible to track you individually.
Also, if you're connecting your TV to the internet, that's a "you" problem.
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It turns out what people want is everything in one place for free
No, it doesn't "turn out" that way at all. But if the pirates provide better service for free than the proprietors offer at any price, that can hardly be seen as my problem as a consumer.
For a few brief, shining years, it looked like the media and entertainment industries were starting to understand that. Turned out not to be the case, though.
Spotify! I used to pirate music because I couldn’t afford it otherwise, then suddenly Spotify made it so reasonable it’s genuinely worth not pirating
As for subscribing to Netflix Disney+ Hulu Prime Apple TV HBO peacock nebula discovery+ paramount+ crunchyroll YouTube premium/TV.... I may still download some stuff
Cable is laced with advertising and is linear, whereas much of the world has moved on to on demand. Further, what folks always wanted back in the days before streaming was the ability not to pay for genres they didn't want. Netflix had a reasonable low price for a while so it was worth it even if you only really watched one or two genres they had, and ignored the rest of the content. But with higher prices, it is ever more difficult to justify. Disney used to offer Disney, Hulu, and ESPN separately or as a bundle, so if you didn't watch sports, you could just get Disney and Hulu. Or if you just wanted Disney, you could get that. But they have raised prices and increasingly pushed bundling.
I for one would be perfectly willing to have an option where I could get Westerns for 2 or 3 bucks a month, Action/super heros for 2 or 3 bucks, SciFi for 2 or 3 bucks, Romance/RomCom for a buck. Kids/cartoons for a buck or two etc. And then choose what I want to subscribe to each month. But if you are going to charge me 20 bucks a month, you had better have 20 bucks a month worth of content that I actually want to watch. (and no ads). Oh, and stop making good shows with cliff hanger endings and then canceling them!
> Cable is laced with advertising and is linear, whereas much of the world has moved on to on demand
As a counter, there is a trend of linear streaming channels increasing in popularity. Lots of people just want to put something on for a bit of time rather than doom scrolling on-demand to find something to put on. There have been times where I've spent the majority of the time I was willing to kill watching something searching for something to watch. Curated channels with content that your interested in is very compelling.
> I for one would be perfectly willing to have an option where
These are definitely out there. I worked on the backed in for something that did this very thing. There was a channel for nothing but old western TV shows. Another channel that was nothing but animal related content. Another that was basically a Hallmark channel with similar content. I never did see what their pricing was though
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> Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy, because it was becoming the portal to all great video content. Then everyone wanted a slice of the pie and started their own platform.
In other words, we got competition. If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk that clouds Google, Amazon, Apple and the other trillion dollar corporations.
If anything this is a good thing, competition happened before Netflix could dominate completely.
> In other words, we got competition. If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk that clouds Google, Amazon, Apple and the other trillion dollar corporations.
This "competition" increased prices, which is not the desired result from competition. The problem is that copyright holders have too much power over their content, especially older content. If copyright holders were required to license content to anyone who wished to publish or redistribute it after, say, 10 years of initial publishing, that would be a form of competition that would decrease prices.
> This "competition" increased prices
That would have happened anyway.
The only reason early Netflix was so cheap was because they negotiated streaming access to large swathes of content, because the rights holders thought licensing for streaming was worthless and leased them for a pittance.
That sweetheart deal was never going to last past Netflix's original gen contract expirations.
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Some competition, in the wrong place.
Exclusive licencing is the problem, giving a 'monopoly' of sorts on streaming particular content. If everything was available everywhere, they just paid pay per view royalties say, then we'd have proper competition on pricing models & the quality of service provided.
Steam has locked up the gaming market on PCs and so far it has been all upside. The decline of Netflix and the proliferation of generally worse alternatives has not been a boon for anyone but rent-seekers. This theory of competition is not holding up here.
I think Steam is an anomaly, not the rule for monopolies. Steam is privately owned with long term stable leadership. They are generating a crazy amount of money and are able to be content with that.
If steam went public and had the usual revolving door of MBA CEOs keen to "maximize efficiencies", you can bet that Steam would turn just as malign as the adtech industry.
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The barrier to entry to compete with steam is a newspaper ad, a CD-R writer (or usb stick) an envelope and a stamp. There are a million ways to deliver software. You can setup a website as a front to an S3 bucket and then just pay per download of the file. You have epic, origin gog, greenman gaming etc they all exist, but people choose to buy their games on steam, and publishers choose to sell their games there despite the 30% cut. I wouldn't call it "locking up", they just provide a Better Service to customers.
The last game I bought that wasn't on steam was probably Kerbal Space Program, in ~2014, and later converted my key to Steam when the option presented itself.
*Epic offers 0% cut for the first year to most indie games
> Steam has locked up the gaming market on PCs and so far it has been all upside.
GoG exists too, and just like what happened with streaming services, gaming companies have pushed out their own shitty platforms full of DRM and spying. Steam is still #1 though.
steam locked up nothing. you are free to publish your games on other platforms.
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> If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk....
Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, Tidal all manage to have almost comprehensive music catalogs for me to stream. It's rare that I find something on one platform that isn't on another (Some artist exceptions exist, and are rare).
Pick 10 random films off the AFI top 100 list and tell me how to stream them. How many services do I need to watch them "for free".
Consumers want a single point of access to content. If I want to listen to a song I go to my music platform, if I want to watch content I go to the web to find out who has it... That friction is what consumers dont want or need.
That's because music costs barely anything to create vs tv/movies and the digitally distributed track is basically just advertising for the music creators merch, sponsorship deals, live gigs where they make their real money.
You can tell that's the case because practically every piece of music created has been put on youtube while nobody puts tv/movies on youtube for free.
So your spotify equivalent for tv/movies is going to cost $100+ a month, perhaps more because tv/movies are that much more expensive to make and that's what you were paying for cable back in the day.
But people think everything could cost $20 at most, so that's why we're going to have 10 or so streaming services and frankly that's way better than the old cable days.
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Almost all criticisms of monopolies comes from the abuse they enable. On an abstract level, a monopoly is the best option, because it removes so much extra cost, and has the ultimate scaling factor. Like early Netflix with it's seemingly infinite catalog.
In practice, of course, monopolies under capitalism exist specifically to exploit it, making things far worse for customers in the long run.
Steam is, to me, the closest we have to a benevolent monopoly. A monopoly that exists purely because it offers the best product.
Yes well the definition of "monopoly" seems to vary a bit on HN, often it means "large company I don't like".
I've heard people on this site argue that Apple has a monopoly on smartphones because they don't like Android and so their only choice is iPhone and since Apple controls iPhone 100% it's therefore a monopoly.
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> In other words, we got competition.
No, we got fragmentation. If we had competition I could pay netflix to watch the same content that I could otherwise watch on hulu if I made the choice to pay hulu instead.
Since everyone has their own exclusive content paywalled off behind their own services, we're stuck with lot of tiny monopolies.
That's why prices are skyrocketing, and we have a bunch of examples of shitty/infuriating interfaces that get in the way of users and prevent them from what they want, instead of a battle between streaming services to offer the best/most features users want at the lowest prices.
"> we've passed the low point of ad-fuelled, sensational, information-light, polarised, vacuous content"
I am also a bit pessimistic about this, but rather think the danger comes from LLMs making even more convincing clickbait and "facts". Cheap, easy to consume, if there are enough clicks, there is enough ad money.
Something real was misrepresented, so there was a lot of outcry? Awesome, lots of clicks. Lots of money. We can later apoligize, that the LLM summarizing made a misstake there.
As long as ads dominate where the money comes from for newspapers, not much will change.
I think another alternative here, is the existence of broad spectrum “summary as a service” is that “content for content’s sake” and blog spam and SEO become less relevant.
Maybe not, but I hope so.
Oh there will be for sure lots of nergy wasted, on producing long text out of nothing - and on the other side using lots of energy to make LLM summarize that garbage again.
But yes, I also hope some good will come out of it and intent to stay in the good areas.
Brave is building something that sounds like it might be right up your alley, but adoption of their payment system has been rather low, and I doubt Mozilla has enough street cred to be more successful after the last ten years of their mismanagement and the market share hovering just above 0%.
If Mozilla's market share is an impediment to the adoption, then have I got some bad news for you about Brave....
(I say this as a happy user of Brave on Android)
> I also dislike that I have to choose between giving up all my privacy to a ton of ad providers or needing 100 different subscriptions to get some good content.
> I kinda hope that Mozilla (or someone else) finds a way to become the Spotify/Netflix of the web. A place where I can pay a single fee that then gets distributed between the platforms and sites I visit. But I kinda know that that will never happen, since it gives too much power to that one platform.
You mean you want... the cable TV bundle again? Literally the thing that the article rails against, because cable TV inherently produces "sensationalism, link baiting, and the path to shallow 10-o'clock-news reporting."
Amazing.
> the cable TV bundle again?
No, that's why I didn't write that. Spotify allows nearly everyone to put their music on the platform. Just this week I listened to some music with <1000 plays that I found in a random video somewhere. I choose what I want to listen to and a part of the fee I pay gets transferred to the creator. I don't need to buy 100 different subscriptions to labels and musicians, it's centralized.
(Yes, I know Spotify isn't perfect and that there are valid criticisms of the platform. I'm not using it as an example of a perfect end goal, I'm using it as an example of the only thing right now that gets somewhat in the neighborhood. And in the industry there are multiple platforms who distribute mostly the same content with only some 'exclusive' releases. Which is what I'd like to see for the web.)
Is that really how Spotify works? What if you listened only to that one creator, would all of the artists' portion of your subscription go to that creator? I was under the impression that with Spotify everybody's subscription goes into a big pool of money which is then distributed between all of the artists based on total plays. So actually as a listener of niche music, I am mostly paying for exactly the mainstream artists whose music I am not listening to and who don't need my support anyway. This is why I prefer to use Bandcamp, where I know there is a direct relationship between what I buy and who gets the money for that.
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I would LOVE a streaming bundle that included all the content for a discount if and only if it remained ad free.
The big draw for me for streaming is not price, it is removal of ads.
It was totally predictable that many of the same people who hated on the cable bundle also hate on a fragmented streaming landscape even though they probably pay significantly less than they did for cable TV unless they also pay for live TV anyway. (And they'd also hate on an all-inclusive integrated streaming service for the hundreds of dollars a month it would cost.)
> though they probably pay significantly less than they did for cable TV
Might be a bit of a cultural difference though. I'm in the Netherlands. TV was never as expensive over here as in the US. We also got spoiled, I guess, because the hits from the US were also on TV over here but the smaller shows weren't, so we'd get the biggest shows from Fox, CBS and Comedy Central on the same channel in some cases. And from what I remember this was <$20 a month.
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I think we're past a low point of ad-fueled low-value content. Better alternatives will arise, grow, and become ubiquitous - but then they too will grow more expensive, become corrupted, and be circumvented in turn.
Media, art, and info distribution are never static targets, and even if a stable equilibrium exists and can be reached that does not mean that society will not oscillate around it.
> because it was becoming the portal to all great video content.
Only if your preference of content happens to match what NetFlix offers, which is not the case for many/most people.
> Netflix at one point felt like the end of piracy
I think you have it the wrong way round. Piracy is the solution to Netflix (the bloated, enshittified 'content provider') just like piracy has been the solution to all the centralised media platform monopolies that came before it, that Netflix first disrupted and then joined.
As an individual it's meritorious to pay creators and pay creative collectives (e.g. studios). But it's never meritorious to pay media platforms that act as middle men. They are in the business of ripping off both the creators and their audience ('consumers' in modern parlance). You're only a sucker if you buy into their self-serving moralising narratives. The right and moral thing is to parasite them to death, by piracy. (Or boycott them; also a valid choice.)
Nope. They had it exactly right. Notice the past tense. You're just adding more context to what they said. I was able to skip out on usenet for quite a while during the Netflix golden years because Netflix made consuming content much easier than pirating at the time. But it's back to where things were before and we've got better tools for "alternate sources" of such content.
Our economic model encourages this kind of race to the bottom enshitification of everything. Unfortunately there are no high-tech solutions to this problem. The technology we need to improve is our political/economic system.
Perhaps with wealthy country populations projected to fall dramatically we will finally be forced to find a way other than "growth" to value human endeavour. That would be the most likely path to a solution, I fear it will be rather painful.
Our economic model (is supposed to) boil down to producing our goods and services using the least amount of resources. Sure, that yields planned obsolescence and enshittification, but also cheap multi-GHz laptops and widespread Internet availability.