The company made gains in ad-based subscribers, but the $12 Basic subscription is being put out to pasture later in 2024 starting in Canada and the U.K.

Netflix Is Doing Great, So It’s Killing Off Its Cheapest Ad-Free Plan for Good::The company made gains in ad-based subscribers, but the $12 Basic subscription is being put out to pasture later in 2024 starting in Canada and the U.K.

  • @FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    114•10 months ago

    You either die a hero, or live long enough to become another shitty cable company.

    I ditched Netflix years ago when the content got worse by the week. Good shows were taken off by rights holders so they could put it on other platforms and what remained sucked. Not to mention Netflix’s proclivity for killing its own shows.

    It got to a point where all the new stuff were shitty movies and Scandinavian crime dramas. Hard pass.

    With the way other streaming services are going, it wouldn’t surprise me if people jumped back to piracy. I honestly don’t mind paying something reasonable, but all these subscriptions and price hikes do add up.

    • @filister@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23•10 months ago

      You know all this is fuelled by the desire for eternal growth, which at the end is unsustainable but human greed has no boundaries I guess. And all the SaaS and in general the subscription model so many companies are trying to promote has exactly the same goal.

      I do remember the early days of mobile phones and apps when you were actually able to buy a lifetime license for different apps and get meaningful updates. Now everything turned into a giant SaaS garbage and data collection pile of shit.

    • @DahGangalang@infosec.pubEnglish
      16•10 months ago

      This is more feel than empirical data, but Netflix feels like they’ve gotten markedly better over the last 2-3 months.

      I get the subscription as part of a membership on some other things, but would not have paid for the service the way it’s gone over the last ~2 years. That said after seeing the recent improvements, if my access to Netflix was cut off tomorrow, I’d probably shell out for the lowest non-ad tier of service.

      However, mad respect for the people out there keeping the P2P/torrenting communities alive.

      Edit: spelling errors

      • @Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11•10 months ago

        What’s worth watching on Netflix? I scan it every now and then and find nothing. I have no idea why I still pay for it. No one in my house watches it either. I should cancel until Stranger Things comes back.

        • @DahGangalang@infosec.pubEnglish
          7•10 months ago

          While not the newest content, it recently caused me to find and finally watch the classics Boyz in the Hood and Training Day, and this weekend I intend to watch Vice. It was also because of Netflix that I first found the new Puss in Boots movie, Blue-Eye Samurai, and Delicious in Dungeon (I generally loathe anime so those last two are fairly significant).

          I think Inside Job and Narcos are Netflix only content? I thoroghly enjoyed both of those (and totally understand why people hate them for canceling Inside Job). My wife enjoyed/enjoys (she’s doing a full rewatch ATM) of Orange is the New Black. The two of us also just finished binging Kim’s Convenience.

          They also just added some other big name content that were (I think?) Exclusive content on other platforms - specifically thinking Dune, Whiplash, and Joker.

          Between discovery and availability, Netflix adds value to my life in my opinion.

          100% respect for people who disagree and have contrary opinions and/or are outraged at their handling of exclusive content (ngl, I’m not happy with them canceling Inside Job). But it’s good enough for me to keep around - that, and my wife is super NOT technically inclined, and I’ve yet to find a solution outside of a standard streaming deal (read as: anything involving sailing the high seas) that meshes with her willingness to work with it.

          Edit: Spelling is hard.

      • @Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5•10 months ago

        It only got ‘worse’ if you’re American. They’ve been consistently adding cool foreign media. Sure not everything can be a hit but that’s literally true for regular cable too. Plenty of shitty channels and shows. I canceled my sub anyways because of the price a while back, arrrg.

    • EchEnglish
      4•10 months ago

      Are we gonna pretend Netflix was ever a “hero”? They were revolutionary for sure, but they were always profit driven. I don’t think it’s particularly wise to see any company as “the good one”. Not to say companies can’t be beneficial/useful, but it’s always good to remember their singular goal.

      • @linearchaos@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•10 months ago

        I don’t think heroes have to be non-profit.

        I’d say back when Netflix was fighting Blockbuster, They may have been wearing capes. Going to Blockbuster picking out two or three titles and getting out of there with a bag of popcorn was an expensive proposition. Mailing you DVDs as fast as you could mail them back to them was a pretty damn impressive feat.

        When they started streaming, The catalog was worse than useless, but they sorted out the technology and the partnerships and the delivery. They got funded and they ate the R&D costs. What did we have back then DLNA and tversity?

        I won’t say Plex and jellyfin wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for them but I think they inspired a hell of a lot of software we have now. They wet our appetite for unlimited on demand media consumption, which ended up paving the way for the thetvdb and co.

        Once they started becoming a production company… honestly once they all started becoming production companies things went to hell in a handbasket. They’re not even competing anymore they’re just trying to see how much they can raise prices and drop catalogs.