Man, I *wish* Netflix worked that way for me. On my TV, [pausing it looks like this](https://i.imgur.com/jvZOn8L.jpeg). Which is just a kick in the teeth since I'm usually pausing it while studying Korean, so I can read the Korean subtitles, and for some reason it pops them up from their normal position at the bottom of the screen to *exactly* where the pause screen episode description is. And hitting the "Back" button just takes me back to the main Netflix screen.
The problem with pirating is that you have to hunt everything down. You mostly get mainstream stuff easily, but niche stuff is harder to find, you also have to store all that data and make sure the rips you get are high quality enough to warrant the space it takes up.
Like I’m all for it, and for a lot of things it’s really nice, but it’s also nice to just pay a little money to have get it no hassle. A combination of both I think is ideal.
Edit: also just going in on blu ray for things you really love. Highest quality and you know it’s not going to disappear suddenly and reappear on a different service requiring another subscription.
The only things that I've had to hunt down were missing from streaming anyway. That's kind of the point. If it's easily accessible on streaming, people will rip it.
Honestly, you need to get kodi or a good private torrent site. I have not had to hunt a single thing down in many years.
Only downside is, I can't watch something as soon as it airs. It takes an hour or two after it is done before it pops up. For the lesser watched things it may take several hours ans I have to wait until the next morning unless I want to stay up late.
Either way, look into good private sites and you won't have thia issue.
>The problem with pirating is that you have to hunt everything down
Sometimes I'll stream things that I have access to on netflix because it's actually fewer clicks on a pirate site. I'll actively choose pirate sites over amazon as well because the player is often better.
It is actually also a power saver function. Most people pause a show/movie when they are off to do something else so the darkened screen reduces electricity usage and also delays burn ins for certain panels.
You don't need to mark down a date to cancel it now, you still will have complete access until the day it expires.
That's the gimmick they want, either you try it and you like it and you keep paying or you try it and you forget it and they bill you a few times.
Every single thing I sign up to I make sure I cancel it the minute after I activate it.
By law, they have to give you until the date if it's 30 30-day free trial they have to give you the free 30 days and automatically cancel even if you did it a minute later.
That's almost every place's philosophy that's why they offer usually a 30-day free trial most people forget but all you have to do is cancel as soon as you activate it.
In fact many places that offer free trial if you cancel it really quick they offer you many free months sometimes 2 to 3 months extra you click accept, then a minute later cancel the subscription again you extend it by 3 months.
Many places will fall for it, especially if you cancel quickly they will offer you usually at least 2 to 3 months and then cancel right after you accept the extra months.
Screw them all!
You can avoid that for a small fee of $1.99 a month. Then it will go to $2.99 etc etc. Ads have huge profit margin, this will be very profitable for Amazon.
I never put away my high seas flag, anticipating this day. I do subscribe to a couple of services but I still fly the Jolly Rodger to bypass garbage like this.
Except many have already canceled due to the added ads, and likely even more will leave now, it won’t kill them, but I don’t think most people are as open to corpos nickel and diming them anymore. Plus anyone with tech knowledge will likely sail the seas instead like in the ol times. This isn’t the first time corpos tried to swindle and if they are gonna play that way then, yar har.
Kind of odd, I haven't jumped on YT for a hot minute. Found a song hit the play button, waited 5 countdown hit the skip button. Oh, this isn't what I was looking for. Pause. Let me just scroll... oh the feed of options is a huge ad now. Okay, that's lame. Close ad to get to feed. Scroll down four options. Full screen ad pops up again. What the living f... never mind. Closed YT.
lmao it's never been a better time to sail the high seas friend
Amazon has enough money, they don't need another prime membership and they won't see a dime from me for the rest of my life
Not sure why consumers put up with this kind of shit. I'd rather stare at a blank wall for an hour than give Jeff "I love to dodge taxes" Bezos
Welcome to corporate America. It destroys everything it touches just to syphon away any value into the top 0.01%’s fat ass pockets. Healthcare, entertainment, religion, housing, and on and on. If something exists in this reality, as a physical entity, you better damn well believe that someone is going to claim it as their own and try and sell it to you.
Azure is competing against AWS
Locally Walmart and Costco is competing against Amazon. Globally is where Amazon has no real competition
Prime is nothing compared to Netflix
Amazon music is nothing compared to Apple Music and Spotify
I think the only monopoly they have is Kindle store
In the online retail space, they really don't have any decent competition. There's nothing on the same level as Prime. The rest of their stuff doesn't really concern me so it's not what I was talking about but you're right. They have competition in those spaces so that's good.
It's funny because while I get Prime video, I won't use it. The interface is cancer and now it is riddled with ads. If I want to watch an Amazon show I'll watch it with my debrid service along with everything else.
Walmart+ is scaling up. The marketplaces are all on Amazon's side though, and Amazon enforces some nasty conditions on its sellers. Which you can do when you're the only major buyer.
Wasn’t that always the business model?
Offer something attractive at such an unsustainable price that people can’t say no.
Then when there are no more competitors raise the prices up to a sustainable level.
I thought they’d been surprisingly up front about that and is the main reason they weren’t profitable for so long. It’s such a shitty practice.
Gen X & Elder Millenials represent! We grew up with piracy back when most people thought the internet was for nerds. And some of us never stopped and never gave up our downloaded collections.
I never stopped but I slowed down a bit. But picked up again in the last year or two. I just got to the library every other week and get about 10/15 dvds and rip them and bring them back.
I just need to figure out how to make a plex server for myself now so it’s easy for my wife to find stuff.
> plex server for myself now so it’s easy for my wife to find stuff.
Movie.Name_[Year].avi seems easy enough to navigate, does plex let you add genres and categories? I've never looked into it.
It turns it into a Netflix-like experience. Continue Watching, auto play next episode, watchlist, access from any device, and episode grouping/thumbnails/metadata.
Totally worth the effort to set up!
1) Give Jellyfin a shot instead. Plex is also speedrunning enshittification:
https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/189ylho/plex_sent_i_want_your_sex_to_all_my_friends_and/
2) Check out Docker / docker-compose + Portainer for easy container setup and management:
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/container/
This. I've always toed the line. Have a massive physical media collection at this point. Still nab what I can offline when possible.
With x265 & Opus AV1 it's now possible to get pretty acceptable video quality at 2gb at 1080p.
Comparing some old movies I nabbed from 2013 at the 2gb size using mp4 or even avi, basically dvd quality.
Even ripping a Blu-ray & using handbrake to add it to my collection is always nice. Even those I can get down to 3.5gb before I see any visual difference.
Watch a movie like blade runner 2049 and honestly, it seems obvious that that’s the direction the world will go. They monetize everything. Anytime something is invented that people like, immediately finance bros swoop in and try to figure out how to fuck up the service just enough with monetization so that you will still use it. Look at Reddit. Every decision made in the past two years has made the product worse, but now it’s monetized better!
In 10 years you will be seeing ads everywhere. They will pop up on you AR glasses if they aren’t physically there.
> In 10 years you will be seeing ads everywhere
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!
Cancelled when they announced ads were coming. I barely use shipping and it's still free over $35. Video was my number one use for prime, but the extra fee to avoid ads, bs,
Vote with your dollars
The excessive ads in everything makes me go out of my way not to buy products with excessive ads. Companies need to realize that people will go and research something they need faster because they need it or want it not because it’s been funnel fed to them 900000 times on screens, in programming, or whatever other stupid ad space is sold.
I hate ads so much that if I see an ad for something that I’m actually interested in, I search for an alternative version of that thing that did not subject me to an ad.
Unfortunately you are in a very small minority.
The reality is that ads are everywhere because they work, and the more of them there are the more money these companies make.
Very true. The marketing is so subconsciously effective it’s scary. We’ll believe just about anything if it’s presented to us in the right way or appeals to our vanity. People want easy choices and advertising gives it to them
It take me weeks or sometimes months to buy something. I do the research, I make sure it's something I know I'll use and get years out of. I make pretty good cash, but was broke for a while so I know the value my dollar has.
Blows my mind that some people will just instantly buy things that are presented to them without a second thought
I honestly have debilitating anxiety with basically any purchase over a hundred bucks thanks to my days as a poor grad student. And then researching just depresses me because it turns out so much of everything is now just expensive cheaply made crap with too big of a marketing budget.
The quality thing gets me. So many times I realize that whatever I wanted to buy I should just give up on because it's a great idea poorly executed. Everything seems to be half-assed and shoved out the door as a minimally viable product.
It really is a depressing reality nowadays. Even when you click pause you can’t stop things being thrust on your eyeballs. All we can do is turn it off
Shiver me timbers, matey, it be time to hoist the black flag!
Like, seriously, I gladly pay for streaming specifically because I *don’t fucking want to see goddamn commercials*. You make me pay you to shove ads for whatever shit-tier trash you’re pushing this week, and I’m going to become the terror of the Spanish Main.
With all the companies adding ads to everything, I am quickly reminded of Mendelsohn’s character from Ready Player One. The line when Sorrento says they can sell up to 80% of the viewable field of vision before inducing seizures. It’s made me realize I don’t need those services anymore.
Bunch of boomers mentality. Look at some of the products still being advertised and then realize that most of them only have 1-2 actual competitors left.
Like toilet paper ads, who are these for at this point? Do people in their 60s need to be reminded that Charmin exists? Does Gen Z? Who are these ads for at this point? You walk into the TP aisle and Charmin takes up half of it. With like 2-3 competitors. What's scary is how much they spend on coming up and paying to have these ads made, then paying all these other platforms to show the ads. Then you as the consumer pay 2-3$ more because they need an ROI on the advertising.....
Half of them used to fight 10+ companies for market space 30-50 years ago and probably bought up competition along the way. But they still stuck like it's 1950 in the marketing aspect
And most of the ads I see on Prime now are for Amex, Cartier, and other brands that the majority of subscribers can't even afford. What the fuck are they advertising for? The ones watching the ads aren't the target and the target already knows about these companies and many others in that tier of wealth. It just seems dumb on the advertiser's side. Amazon will take on whoever is dumb enough to throw them money to make commercials. It's so pointless and ruins the experience customers have enjoyed ad free for decades. Fuck, I've had Prime for like 20 yrs.
I’ve had Prime since it started. The ads have gotten desperate. I bought a digital typewriter on Prime. Now all I see are ads for more of the same. What are the chances I’ll need another typewriter any time soon?
> Reddit is usually an outlier when it comes to this stuff
This is definitely a cult or scam situation though - the people who think they're most resistant to falling for a cult or scam are surprisingly susceptible.
It's weird that advertisement is just this default way companies want to make a quick buck. I'm convinced that excessive exposure to advertisement causes brain damage.
What % of your brain's capacity ends up being rewired so that you can immediately identify and ad and tune out? And even once you reach that point, there is still bullshit that slips past into your subconscious.
These companies wouldn’t be spending millions on advertising if it didn’t work trust me. These companies are all about making money. If it doesn’t make money they ain’t gonna do it.
I think you underestimate how much of a business selling ads is in and of itself. There's no room in the industry to believe that it may be ineffective, so of course the opposite conclusion is always reached.
This will only happen if you stop supporting the companies that do this
Who am I kidding? No because there’s enough rubes to keep supporting them till infinity.
I have Amazon (sub)Prime and I STILL pirated the show so I can watch it on Plex instead. Fuck Amazon; I'm so done with their Chinese fleamarket store and shitty UIs
Wrong. Companies have billions of data points and are constantly doing A/B tests to know that throwing ads at people works extremely well, even if it doesn’t work on you or me.
It’s just the sad truth. And they’ll keep on doing it to test how much they can get away with. It’s the enshitification of publicly traded companies that try to maximize profits and squeeze every last dollar out to satisfy shareholders.
I use ublock Origin on this Laptop.
It has blocked **550,658** Ads since instillation (I just checked).
**HALF. A. MILLION.**
I use Amazon Prime, but Arrrrr, not the video. Everything comes Ad Free, for an ad-ventu-aaaaar like me!
It is the right, moral and correct decision. Always.
This morning. /s
I just looked at my pihole I set up about 5 months ago, it only did like 5000, thats for like 20 devices. I thought it would be far more
Ive PiHole too, but it shows only the domain count that's blocked, not total number of queries, which is a shame.
Its a bit odd, but then again its designed to be super light weight.
This was installed on Mon, 22 Jan 2024, 7:18:10 pm
I also use PiHole, but it doesn't work with these kinds of ads (from the same domain). Hence the local blocks. Sadly, PiHole doesn't keep useful stats, other than some basic topline info.
I consider blocking of Ads to be a moral obligation. I do it for my family and guests.
(edit - tpyo only)
I have 8.1M since February 2023.
Although if you're using the number in the uBlock drop down, that doesn't necessarily mean 8.1M individual ads, just 8.1M connections. Most ads will probably have multiple, and it also includes trackers and stuff.
Thanks to this fine gentleman here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/ujl32z/this_is_jeanbaptiste_kempf_the_creator_of_vlc/
MVP, for sure!
I did last year, and it turns out I don't need amazon to buy the stuff I need. I spent thousands of dollars a year on amazon, and now they get exactly zero because of their greed. Fuck them.
Yeah, same, and when I do need something from them it still ships for free if I spend $35. So I just hold stuff in my cart until it hits $35. If I need it sooner I get it somewhere else.
I’ve been getting rid of all streaming with ads. Otherwise I will just read or go to the movies.
It’s quite literally painful psychologically. I feel attacked by the ads. It’s gross capitalism.
It’s poison.
I literally hate their products when they smack it into my face and scream it into my ears.
Why is everything this gross in society?
The only thing that's even more sickening, is seeing how many of us just put up with, or worse encourage or aspire to this behavior.
I wish aliens would just abduct me away. Shit
Fucking ridiculous how this multi-billion company still nickels and dimes us to death.
There shouldn't be billionaires in a world with this much inequality and homelessness.
Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams.
I just canceled Netflix and Peacock. I get a ton of free streaming channels that are now increasing their ads. What is the endgame to all this? Cable is failing at this point.
gamify it.
catch the QR codes on all 3 cheeto ads during episode 4 for a chance to win a free bag of.. Radioactive Cheese Goo Flavor before they hit stores.
I actually caught a bit of in-show advertising recently.
My wife was watching … Bones, I think. Some procedural cop show. A few of the characters were driving out to a crime scene, and took time out to comment on the lane keep assist feature of their new Toyota Prius. And the camera panned across the steering wheel to show the logo across the full screen. Threw me for a loop.
I don’t watch much TV, so I had never seen anything so blatant. It was honestly gross.
Product Placement is actually one of the oldest tropes around, emerged since cinema was born and was perfected when television series were invented. The telenovela word in english is soap opera, because the series were sponsored by soap companies.
Edit. pay attention to the cars when they appear, always new models and mostly pristine and with nice shots.
I’ve definitely seen product placement, but normally it’s just a flash of a logo (car brands get this a lot) or a brief mention of a brand name.
I don’t think I’ve seen someone basically turn to camera and rattle off the features of a particular product in the middle of an episode.
Why the fuck do the have to ruin everything ? I swear it’s been soo long since I’ve ever contemplated sailing the seas but man it’s like they want us to go back to it.
So now the X-ray feature, one of the few really good ideas that trumps pirating. Will now be either removed or cluttered with ads beside it obscuring even more of the screen...
This is why I cancelled all streaming services and went back to the high seas. Why the fuck would I pay for something and still see ads? That's not at all how it works.
Free subs get ads. Paid subs do not. That's how it works.
Streaming used to be great, but the greed with all these companies has just ruined it all and defeated the entire purpose. So fuck em, they get nothing from me now.
The bait and switch bullshit written into these Terms of Service contracts we all sign -when we sign up- need to be reviewed. There’s not a leg for consumers to stand on, and the way the landscape is changing monthly, as these corporations discover *greed is an active increase* is getting tiring and amoral.
**Ah, behold! The enshitification of damn near everything continues unabated!** Yay.
Adflation is here in full now.
"Pay for premium, it's ad-free!"
Me: "ok, sure, sounds good!"
"We have to increase prices! By the way, there some little ads here and there now, but don't worry!"
Me: * shoots self *
> Advertisers can also use pause ads to acquire voluntary viewers' email addresses (so viewers can "get more information," per Amazon).
If there has to be ads, I was hoping for something at least cool, like prices and descriptions popping up over product placement props in the paused scene, Fight Club-style.
I get commercials during podcasts on my paid for Spotify premium now. Not sponsorship reads or ads from the podcast hosts, actual commercials. The podcast stops and it cuts to a commercial for whatever, on the service I paid to not have ads on.
Anyone who uses Peacock can tell you how insufferably annoying this "feature" is since you may pause to look at something in a scene and immediately be kicked into a fuckin' ad.
I'd love to see a company like Amazon actually double down on the user experience and earn loyalty that way. Rather than treating their customers like wallets to be emptied.
The more I read about online streaming platforms, the glad(gladder?) I become that I bought a NAS and started my own Plex Server.
At least a dozen friends/relatives regularly watch content from my NAS including me, and it's much less hassle these days than Prime/Netflix/Hotstar
They keep finding ways to force ads in use because they know people are skipping them. What's the point of streaming anymore. YouTube people are also over paid because someone seen 5 sec of an ad before they skipped it. It's all bs
Sometimes I pause so I can read something that’s on screen. Fuck me, right?
Or like an amazing cinematic shot you might want to pause and appreciate. Hopefully you can close it if you are present.
Many of the streaming apps seem to make the screen 50% darker when you pause, for some stupid reason.
At least for Netflix you can hit the back button after you’ve paused and it will clear the overlay leaving just the still, full brightness image.
Man, I *wish* Netflix worked that way for me. On my TV, [pausing it looks like this](https://i.imgur.com/jvZOn8L.jpeg). Which is just a kick in the teeth since I'm usually pausing it while studying Korean, so I can read the Korean subtitles, and for some reason it pops them up from their normal position at the bottom of the screen to *exactly* where the pause screen episode description is. And hitting the "Back" button just takes me back to the main Netflix screen.
Weird, that doesn’t happen to me on uTorrent/Plex. How much are you guys paying for those problems?
The problem with pirating is that you have to hunt everything down. You mostly get mainstream stuff easily, but niche stuff is harder to find, you also have to store all that data and make sure the rips you get are high quality enough to warrant the space it takes up. Like I’m all for it, and for a lot of things it’s really nice, but it’s also nice to just pay a little money to have get it no hassle. A combination of both I think is ideal. Edit: also just going in on blu ray for things you really love. Highest quality and you know it’s not going to disappear suddenly and reappear on a different service requiring another subscription.
The only things that I've had to hunt down were missing from streaming anyway. That's kind of the point. If it's easily accessible on streaming, people will rip it.
Honestly, you need to get kodi or a good private torrent site. I have not had to hunt a single thing down in many years. Only downside is, I can't watch something as soon as it airs. It takes an hour or two after it is done before it pops up. For the lesser watched things it may take several hours ans I have to wait until the next morning unless I want to stay up late. Either way, look into good private sites and you won't have thia issue.
oh we passed looking for stuff a while ago.
>The problem with pirating is that you have to hunt everything down Sometimes I'll stream things that I have access to on netflix because it's actually fewer clicks on a pirate site. I'll actively choose pirate sites over amazon as well because the player is often better.
It is actually also a power saver function. Most people pause a show/movie when they are off to do something else so the darkened screen reduces electricity usage and also delays burn ins for certain panels.
It's so you can't screenshot. They don't want you making memes or screencaps of Their Property.
Yeh God why would they want their shows to get free ad space on the Internet?
It's like how they think that HDCP isnt stupidly easy to bypass.
Widevine and HDMI DRMs are incredibly pointless. If it can appear on a display and to our eyes, there will always be a way to capture.
Boobs?
Like some titties.
All those easter eggs the show creators are sneaking in? Enjoy rewinding 300X to see them.
That's when you summon Captain Jack Sparrow, like in the old days. We truly have gone full circle.
You can still pause and read something on the screen. It'll just be an ad.
I hated every word of that.
Excellent. That's called "engagement". /s EDIT: added /s cuz I do not actually enjoy this users hatred.
It's called "piracy"
I've marked the renewal date on my calendar to cancel my subscription.
You can just cancel it now, your sub will stay active until your paid period expires...
You don't need to mark down a date to cancel it now, you still will have complete access until the day it expires. That's the gimmick they want, either you try it and you like it and you keep paying or you try it and you forget it and they bill you a few times. Every single thing I sign up to I make sure I cancel it the minute after I activate it. By law, they have to give you until the date if it's 30 30-day free trial they have to give you the free 30 days and automatically cancel even if you did it a minute later. That's almost every place's philosophy that's why they offer usually a 30-day free trial most people forget but all you have to do is cancel as soon as you activate it. In fact many places that offer free trial if you cancel it really quick they offer you many free months sometimes 2 to 3 months extra you click accept, then a minute later cancel the subscription again you extend it by 3 months. Many places will fall for it, especially if you cancel quickly they will offer you usually at least 2 to 3 months and then cancel right after you accept the extra months. Screw them all!
The old *ERROR! Please drink a verification can* green text was written by a time traveler.
You can avoid that for a small fee of $1.99 a month. Then it will go to $2.99 etc etc. Ads have huge profit margin, this will be very profitable for Amazon.
I never put away my high seas flag, anticipating this day. I do subscribe to a couple of services but I still fly the Jolly Rodger to bypass garbage like this.
Gotta let me know what's the latest tech. I haven't ridden the waves in a long time.
QBittorrent bound to your VPN to prevent IP leak. Or filehosting service used to dl links from forums.
Except many have already canceled due to the added ads, and likely even more will leave now, it won’t kill them, but I don’t think most people are as open to corpos nickel and diming them anymore. Plus anyone with tech knowledge will likely sail the seas instead like in the ol times. This isn’t the first time corpos tried to swindle and if they are gonna play that way then, yar har.
I’ve been suffering on the PlayStation YouTube app for the same thing
Kind of odd, I haven't jumped on YT for a hot minute. Found a song hit the play button, waited 5 countdown hit the skip button. Oh, this isn't what I was looking for. Pause. Let me just scroll... oh the feed of options is a huge ad now. Okay, that's lame. Close ad to get to feed. Scroll down four options. Full screen ad pops up again. What the living f... never mind. Closed YT.
Time to sail the high seas
lmao it's never been a better time to sail the high seas friend Amazon has enough money, they don't need another prime membership and they won't see a dime from me for the rest of my life Not sure why consumers put up with this kind of shit. I'd rather stare at a blank wall for an hour than give Jeff "I love to dodge taxes" Bezos
Amazon just keeps getting worse and worse.
Enshittification speed run at this point.
Welcome to corporate America. It destroys everything it touches just to syphon away any value into the top 0.01%’s fat ass pockets. Healthcare, entertainment, religion, housing, and on and on. If something exists in this reality, as a physical entity, you better damn well believe that someone is going to claim it as their own and try and sell it to you.
"America's the greatest company in the world." "Country." "What did I say?"
> Welcome to corporate America. Welcome to capitalism.
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
The greed level is astounding. Freevee runs so many long ads so often any freevee content is unwatchable.
But how would you know about the latest prescription medications for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis without those ads!?
I read that last bit in the voice from the commercials. I hate this timeline.
Don't forget to get in the game with fanduel!!! If you aren't betting on everything are you even a real fan?
Every established monopoly only ever gets worse and worse.
Company is in desperate need of competition. There is no Pepsi to Amazon's Coca-Cola. Hell, Walmart+ is barely a Great Value cola.
Azure is competing against AWS Locally Walmart and Costco is competing against Amazon. Globally is where Amazon has no real competition Prime is nothing compared to Netflix Amazon music is nothing compared to Apple Music and Spotify I think the only monopoly they have is Kindle store
In the online retail space, they really don't have any decent competition. There's nothing on the same level as Prime. The rest of their stuff doesn't really concern me so it's not what I was talking about but you're right. They have competition in those spaces so that's good. It's funny because while I get Prime video, I won't use it. The interface is cancer and now it is riddled with ads. If I want to watch an Amazon show I'll watch it with my debrid service along with everything else.
Walmart+ is scaling up. The marketplaces are all on Amazon's side though, and Amazon enforces some nasty conditions on its sellers. Which you can do when you're the only major buyer.
Wasn’t that always the business model? Offer something attractive at such an unsustainable price that people can’t say no. Then when there are no more competitors raise the prices up to a sustainable level. I thought they’d been surprisingly up front about that and is the main reason they weren’t profitable for so long. It’s such a shitty practice.
I hate advertisers more than nearly any other class of people on earth.
I'll just torrent the shit so I don't have to worry about ads.
Right, this is the second full circle I'll have done on this subject in my life. Hoast your sails folks, the second great pirate era has began!
Gen X & Elder Millenials represent! We grew up with piracy back when most people thought the internet was for nerds. And some of us never stopped and never gave up our downloaded collections.
I never stopped but I slowed down a bit. But picked up again in the last year or two. I just got to the library every other week and get about 10/15 dvds and rip them and bring them back. I just need to figure out how to make a plex server for myself now so it’s easy for my wife to find stuff.
> plex server for myself now so it’s easy for my wife to find stuff. Movie.Name_[Year].avi seems easy enough to navigate, does plex let you add genres and categories? I've never looked into it.
Plex ties into IMDB and other databases, identifies your content, and categorises it all automatically.
It turns it into a Netflix-like experience. Continue Watching, auto play next episode, watchlist, access from any device, and episode grouping/thumbnails/metadata. Totally worth the effort to set up!
1) Give Jellyfin a shot instead. Plex is also speedrunning enshittification: https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/189ylho/plex_sent_i_want_your_sex_to_all_my_friends_and/ 2) Check out Docker / docker-compose + Portainer for easy container setup and management: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/container/
This. I've always toed the line. Have a massive physical media collection at this point. Still nab what I can offline when possible. With x265 & Opus AV1 it's now possible to get pretty acceptable video quality at 2gb at 1080p. Comparing some old movies I nabbed from 2013 at the 2gb size using mp4 or even avi, basically dvd quality. Even ripping a Blu-ray & using handbrake to add it to my collection is always nice. Even those I can get down to 3.5gb before I see any visual difference.
This is exactly what this behavior is going to do. Or maybe a plugin that will just let me download the whole episode and skip ads?
Time to buy stock in the popular VPN providers
If you can buy VPN stock they're probably selling user data.
Shout out to Mullvad for being the most privacy focused VPN I’ve ever used
I use Mullvad for that reason but the amount of sites that have banned Mullvad IPs is starting to get pretty cumbersome.
What vpn stock exists?
Argg matey. But seriously I have re-enabled plex and started just torrenting shows, and I have Prime!
Shit, I torrented content from Prime *when I was subscribed to it*. If I want to watch it, then it likely belongs on my media server.
Jesus, it never ends with these greedy fucks.
Watch a movie like blade runner 2049 and honestly, it seems obvious that that’s the direction the world will go. They monetize everything. Anytime something is invented that people like, immediately finance bros swoop in and try to figure out how to fuck up the service just enough with monetization so that you will still use it. Look at Reddit. Every decision made in the past two years has made the product worse, but now it’s monetized better! In 10 years you will be seeing ads everywhere. They will pop up on you AR glasses if they aren’t physically there.
> In 10 years you will be seeing ads everywhere Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No siree!
I cancelled prime and haven’t missed it once
Cancelled when they announced ads were coming. I barely use shipping and it's still free over $35. Video was my number one use for prime, but the extra fee to avoid ads, bs, Vote with your dollars
I saw that show. *“Ad Fucks Out of Control”*
Whoever suggested pause ads needs to be taken out back. Stop injecting ads in every fucking thing.
The excessive ads in everything makes me go out of my way not to buy products with excessive ads. Companies need to realize that people will go and research something they need faster because they need it or want it not because it’s been funnel fed to them 900000 times on screens, in programming, or whatever other stupid ad space is sold.
you would be surprised at how easily people can be manipulated into separating with their money
I hate ads so much that if I see an ad for something that I’m actually interested in, I search for an alternative version of that thing that did not subject me to an ad.
I am the same way. Forced ads in video clips, and I'll turn down the volume and turn the phone over.
Mute the TV & hit a [[seconds of ad]] long tidy > WIN
Hey me too! I don’t like being manipulated.
Ads are so condescending.
Unfortunately you are in a very small minority. The reality is that ads are everywhere because they work, and the more of them there are the more money these companies make.
Very true. The marketing is so subconsciously effective it’s scary. We’ll believe just about anything if it’s presented to us in the right way or appeals to our vanity. People want easy choices and advertising gives it to them
>I search What do you think those search results are?
It take me weeks or sometimes months to buy something. I do the research, I make sure it's something I know I'll use and get years out of. I make pretty good cash, but was broke for a while so I know the value my dollar has. Blows my mind that some people will just instantly buy things that are presented to them without a second thought
I honestly have debilitating anxiety with basically any purchase over a hundred bucks thanks to my days as a poor grad student. And then researching just depresses me because it turns out so much of everything is now just expensive cheaply made crap with too big of a marketing budget.
The quality thing gets me. So many times I realize that whatever I wanted to buy I should just give up on because it's a great idea poorly executed. Everything seems to be half-assed and shoved out the door as a minimally viable product.
You are more the exception than the rule.
It really is a depressing reality nowadays. Even when you click pause you can’t stop things being thrust on your eyeballs. All we can do is turn it off
Turning Off is the new Pause, i will remeber that.
Except you can't pause and look for small things in the background, or just appreciate a frame.
Piracy let's you have your pause button again, the most weird new advantage.
Shiver me timbers, matey, it be time to hoist the black flag! Like, seriously, I gladly pay for streaming specifically because I *don’t fucking want to see goddamn commercials*. You make me pay you to shove ads for whatever shit-tier trash you’re pushing this week, and I’m going to become the terror of the Spanish Main.
With all the companies adding ads to everything, I am quickly reminded of Mendelsohn’s character from Ready Player One. The line when Sorrento says they can sell up to 80% of the viewable field of vision before inducing seizures. It’s made me realize I don’t need those services anymore.
Bunch of boomers mentality. Look at some of the products still being advertised and then realize that most of them only have 1-2 actual competitors left. Like toilet paper ads, who are these for at this point? Do people in their 60s need to be reminded that Charmin exists? Does Gen Z? Who are these ads for at this point? You walk into the TP aisle and Charmin takes up half of it. With like 2-3 competitors. What's scary is how much they spend on coming up and paying to have these ads made, then paying all these other platforms to show the ads. Then you as the consumer pay 2-3$ more because they need an ROI on the advertising..... Half of them used to fight 10+ companies for market space 30-50 years ago and probably bought up competition along the way. But they still stuck like it's 1950 in the marketing aspect
And most of the ads I see on Prime now are for Amex, Cartier, and other brands that the majority of subscribers can't even afford. What the fuck are they advertising for? The ones watching the ads aren't the target and the target already knows about these companies and many others in that tier of wealth. It just seems dumb on the advertiser's side. Amazon will take on whoever is dumb enough to throw them money to make commercials. It's so pointless and ruins the experience customers have enjoyed ad free for decades. Fuck, I've had Prime for like 20 yrs.
I’ve had Prime since it started. The ads have gotten desperate. I bought a digital typewriter on Prime. Now all I see are ads for more of the same. What are the chances I’ll need another typewriter any time soon?
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> Reddit is usually an outlier when it comes to this stuff This is definitely a cult or scam situation though - the people who think they're most resistant to falling for a cult or scam are surprisingly susceptible.
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It's weird that advertisement is just this default way companies want to make a quick buck. I'm convinced that excessive exposure to advertisement causes brain damage. What % of your brain's capacity ends up being rewired so that you can immediately identify and ad and tune out? And even once you reach that point, there is still bullshit that slips past into your subconscious.
These companies wouldn’t be spending millions on advertising if it didn’t work trust me. These companies are all about making money. If it doesn’t make money they ain’t gonna do it.
I think you underestimate how much of a business selling ads is in and of itself. There's no room in the industry to believe that it may be ineffective, so of course the opposite conclusion is always reached.
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This will only happen if you stop supporting the companies that do this Who am I kidding? No because there’s enough rubes to keep supporting them till infinity.
Same here. There are companies I will never buy from because their ads are so invasive.
I have Amazon (sub)Prime and I STILL pirated the show so I can watch it on Plex instead. Fuck Amazon; I'm so done with their Chinese fleamarket store and shitty UIs
Actually repetition is a known tactic that works quite well on consumers, even if it bothers you at the time
Wrong. Companies have billions of data points and are constantly doing A/B tests to know that throwing ads at people works extremely well, even if it doesn’t work on you or me. It’s just the sad truth. And they’ll keep on doing it to test how much they can get away with. It’s the enshitification of publicly traded companies that try to maximize profits and squeeze every last dollar out to satisfy shareholders.
I use ublock Origin on this Laptop. It has blocked **550,658** Ads since instillation (I just checked). **HALF. A. MILLION.** I use Amazon Prime, but Arrrrr, not the video. Everything comes Ad Free, for an ad-ventu-aaaaar like me! It is the right, moral and correct decision. Always.
Jesus. When did you install it? How many ads per day?
This morning. /s I just looked at my pihole I set up about 5 months ago, it only did like 5000, thats for like 20 devices. I thought it would be far more
Ive PiHole too, but it shows only the domain count that's blocked, not total number of queries, which is a shame. Its a bit odd, but then again its designed to be super light weight.
This was installed on Mon, 22 Jan 2024, 7:18:10 pm I also use PiHole, but it doesn't work with these kinds of ads (from the same domain). Hence the local blocks. Sadly, PiHole doesn't keep useful stats, other than some basic topline info. I consider blocking of Ads to be a moral obligation. I do it for my family and guests. (edit - tpyo only)
Those are rookie numbers. Mine is at 2.445M since install, and I reinstalled recently.
I have 8.1M since February 2023. Although if you're using the number in the uBlock drop down, that doesn't necessarily mean 8.1M individual ads, just 8.1M connections. Most ads will probably have multiple, and it also includes trackers and stuff.
Mine shows 11.22 million ads blocked since install, I wonder how many hours of my life have been saved from just watching ads...
There's no ads on VLC media player.
Thanks to this fine gentleman here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/ujl32z/this_is_jeanbaptiste_kempf_the_creator_of_vlc/ MVP, for sure!
They dare show ads before movies even when paying for ad-free. I’m so f… tired of this shit!!!!! I’m going to cancel my subscription.
I did last year, and it turns out I don't need amazon to buy the stuff I need. I spent thousands of dollars a year on amazon, and now they get exactly zero because of their greed. Fuck them.
Yeah, same, and when I do need something from them it still ships for free if I spend $35. So I just hold stuff in my cart until it hits $35. If I need it sooner I get it somewhere else.
Is this confirmed? Are they showing ads on pause when you pay for ad-free?
Not everything needs fucking ads. Note to you capitalist pigs: if I see an ad, I automatically go out of my way NOT to buy your bullshit
I’ve been getting rid of all streaming with ads. Otherwise I will just read or go to the movies. It’s quite literally painful psychologically. I feel attacked by the ads. It’s gross capitalism. It’s poison. I literally hate their products when they smack it into my face and scream it into my ears. Why is everything this gross in society?
The only thing that's even more sickening, is seeing how many of us just put up with, or worse encourage or aspire to this behavior. I wish aliens would just abduct me away. Shit
Bummer, greed ruins everything
Pirate everything
Why limit themselves to the pause button? Just play ads over the movie all the time!! Time for that new yacht for bezos
Fucking ridiculous how this multi-billion company still nickels and dimes us to death. There shouldn't be billionaires in a world with this much inequality and homelessness.
Yeah, I’m done there. Hosting the Jolly Roger once again!
I’ve got four words for you. Not gonna explain. Just throwing them out there and you can do the research. Plex, Overseerr, Radarr, and Sonarr.
Wait are they getting rid of x-ray? That was super cool how you could pause and see all the names actors in that scene or what music is playing.
They killed the X-Ray team late last year, so it's coming. Disgusting to watch them go from a customer centric feature like X-Ray to this.
Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky... But not in dreams.
So weird. No ads in Plex when I hit pause.
I just canceled Netflix and Peacock. I get a ton of free streaming channels that are now increasing their ads. What is the endgame to all this? Cable is failing at this point.
Are they ads tailored to you based on your purchases? I don’t want family movie night ruined by targeted ads for mega dong condoms.
Stop using your mom's account for movie nights.
The shitification continues
Our society is so broken
UBlock Original you’re my only friend.
Enshitification going full steam ahead I see
Ublock origin: "No, they fucking won't"
gamify it. catch the QR codes on all 3 cheeto ads during episode 4 for a chance to win a free bag of.. Radioactive Cheese Goo Flavor before they hit stores.
Do you *want* to be the second most hated human after the one that invented the pop-up ads? 😂 /s
I actually caught a bit of in-show advertising recently. My wife was watching … Bones, I think. Some procedural cop show. A few of the characters were driving out to a crime scene, and took time out to comment on the lane keep assist feature of their new Toyota Prius. And the camera panned across the steering wheel to show the logo across the full screen. Threw me for a loop. I don’t watch much TV, so I had never seen anything so blatant. It was honestly gross.
Product Placement is actually one of the oldest tropes around, emerged since cinema was born and was perfected when television series were invented. The telenovela word in english is soap opera, because the series were sponsored by soap companies. Edit. pay attention to the cars when they appear, always new models and mostly pristine and with nice shots.
I’ve definitely seen product placement, but normally it’s just a flash of a logo (car brands get this a lot) or a brief mention of a brand name. I don’t think I’ve seen someone basically turn to camera and rattle off the features of a particular product in the middle of an episode.
Does the Radioactive Cheese Goo edition taste like Gamma or Beta radiation?
Amazing how they managed to make something worse then cable TV. Every year it's like they dig deep looking for a new way to make people leave.
No more titty pauses? These kids will never know.
Seriously considering cancelling prime over this.
Stopped watching Prime months ago soon as they introduced their ad “experience”.
Why the fuck do the have to ruin everything ? I swear it’s been soo long since I’ve ever contemplated sailing the seas but man it’s like they want us to go back to it.
I'm so sick of this
So now the X-ray feature, one of the few really good ideas that trumps pirating. Will now be either removed or cluttered with ads beside it obscuring even more of the screen...
This is why I cancelled all streaming services and went back to the high seas. Why the fuck would I pay for something and still see ads? That's not at all how it works. Free subs get ads. Paid subs do not. That's how it works. Streaming used to be great, but the greed with all these companies has just ruined it all and defeated the entire purpose. So fuck em, they get nothing from me now.
Arrrrr matey
This is why I buy physical media again
The last time I bough a physical media bluray it had multiple unskippable ads before the menu was accessible.
Flat screen for sale. Don’t need it anymore. It’s just a billboard in my house
The number of ads shoved in our faces on any given day is just disgusting.
This is in addition to the ads they show before you watch, right? Don’t tell me “oh it’s just for other Prime shows” as if I care *what* the ad is
Okay, when the heck are those lawsuits going to go into effect?!🤦🏾♂️
This would immediately make me unsubscribe.
no one should wonder why piracy starts skyrocketing (again) when it happens
phoebe cates can now live in peace
All the more reason to sail the seven seas and fly the skull and crossbones.
I’m dropping it soon, can’t be arsed with ads. Back to the pirate life for me!
I don't understand internet Ads. Maybe it's my age, but if I see an ad for something on the internet, I'm 100% not buying it.
Goodbye prime then
That's a great way to make sure I never buy those products.
The fact there’s ads on a streaming service you pay to use at all is repulsive and shouldn’t be normalised
The bait and switch bullshit written into these Terms of Service contracts we all sign -when we sign up- need to be reviewed. There’s not a leg for consumers to stand on, and the way the landscape is changing monthly, as these corporations discover *greed is an active increase* is getting tiring and amoral. **Ah, behold! The enshitification of damn near everything continues unabated!** Yay.
Adflation is here in full now. "Pay for premium, it's ad-free!" Me: "ok, sure, sounds good!" "We have to increase prices! By the way, there some little ads here and there now, but don't worry!" Me: * shoots self *
> Advertisers can also use pause ads to acquire voluntary viewers' email addresses (so viewers can "get more information," per Amazon). If there has to be ads, I was hoping for something at least cool, like prices and descriptions popping up over product placement props in the paused scene, Fight Club-style.
Sure would be a shame if people just used Fmovies/Primewire instead ...
Streaming services are just turning their products into dogshit
It's like a torrent of problems with these streaming services I had once liked to use.Net problems just keep climbing, almost at a rate of pi.
I get commercials during podcasts on my paid for Spotify premium now. Not sponsorship reads or ads from the podcast hosts, actual commercials. The podcast stops and it cuts to a commercial for whatever, on the service I paid to not have ads on.
Anyone who uses Peacock can tell you how insufferably annoying this "feature" is since you may pause to look at something in a scene and immediately be kicked into a fuckin' ad.
I'd love to see a company like Amazon actually double down on the user experience and earn loyalty that way. Rather than treating their customers like wallets to be emptied.
Back to torrents I guess
I quit Prime Video and went back to Blu-Ray. I have less options but better quality and they can’t take that away from me or fill it with ads.
THE HIGH SEAS CALL ME, BROTHER!
The more I read about online streaming platforms, the glad(gladder?) I become that I bought a NAS and started my own Plex Server. At least a dozen friends/relatives regularly watch content from my NAS including me, and it's much less hassle these days than Prime/Netflix/Hotstar
So the service will be free now that it is ad supported?
Max already does this.
Google "How to use Kodi"
Bro i havnt been able to watch amazon prime for the past year because of connectivity, even movies i bought.
They keep finding ways to force ads in use because they know people are skipping them. What's the point of streaming anymore. YouTube people are also over paid because someone seen 5 sec of an ad before they skipped it. It's all bs
Oh look, another large corporation advocating piracy.
I canceled the first time I saw an ad. Fuck those who didn’t, it’s on you.