this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Tech's broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.

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[–] stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Bullshit this is the fault of “Tech”. Every last greedy tech company, every last penny pinching pig that seeks to maximize profit without any concern for anything, literally anything else. Every last piece of shit corpo pig in govt too

Fuck Ajit Pai , I hope his stupid mug sucks ass

[–] mycatiskai@lemmy.one 21 points 1 year ago

I spent a week on vacation and finally saw ads again. It did give me a very small list of TV shows that I will download from the internet. It also made me realize that the US has way too many ads for drugs and lawyers willing to sue anyone and anything for you.

[–] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Airbnb is worse than hotels

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Cloud was never really cheap. People just didn't understand the total cost involved, and companies are finally beginning to realize that on prem wasn't actually a problem.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

It was the free hit to get you hooked and dump your cable subscriptions. Now they have you and they're going to increase costs every year from here on out and then start with advertisements because fuck you you're going to pay it anyways.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Paramount+ with Showtime costs $12 a month and the live TV part has commercials and a few other shows include "brief promotional interruptions," according to the company.

The Financial Times recently reported that a basket of the top US streaming services will cost $87 this fall, compared with $73 a year ago.

Some companies, such as Dropbox, have even repatriated most of their IT workloads from the public cloud, saving millions of dollars, the VC firm noted.

Last month, Google, the third-largest cloud provider, started a pilot program where thousands of its employees are limited to using work computers that are not connected to the internet, according to CNBC.

If staff have computers disconnected from the internet, hackers can't compromise these devices and gain access to sensitive user data and software code, CNBC reported.

Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.


The original article contains 877 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are paying money for streaming movies? Why?

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

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[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 15 points 1 year ago

I think we've started to discover what the ???? steps before profit were.

The model was:

  • Start streaming service
  • ????
  • Profit

It's now:

  • Start streaming service
  • Subsidise it heavily creating premium content whilst undercutting competition.
  • keep doing it until competitors go broke
  • Raise prices to an actually sustainable level
  • Profit (although we've lost a ton of capital)

This is a form of market manipulation which is outright illegal in some countries (e.g. Australia) and can be illegal in the US and EU if it meets certain criteria. It falls under anti-trust and monopoly prevention laws.

Basically our regulators aren't doing their job well enough, but what's new?

[–] simin@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

wondering if i should say this but at one point i pirated so much that i have to use will power to stop watching stuff.

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[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable.

Being a little bit melodramatic there. Streaming is nowhere near as expensive, confusing or hostile to consumers as cable was, unless you want access to every single service and show all at once. Anybody with a modicum of intelligence would only subscribe to one or two services at a time based on what they were watching in that period and still pay several times less than cable.

It has become more pricey but that's mainly because shows are fractured across many services now. Everybody and their fucking mother are now working to build their own streaming service after looking at Netflix's meteoric success with dollar signs in their eyes and while it's worse for the consumer, it's also led to a lot of failure. Disney have hemorrhaged their profits due in large part to how much they're diluting their brands with shitty DIsney+ spinoff series.

When Disney, HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Paramount and all the other major players start locking you into lengthy multi-year contracts, hiding every single 'cancel subscription' button, forcing ads upon everybody (not just those on the cheaper ad-supported tier) and training entire call centres of outsourced wage slaves to make it as difficult as possible for you to unsubscribe, then we can talk.

Ubers cost as much as taxis.

What many forget is that Uber (and other gig-economy apps) skirted past loads of employment and safety laws to undercut their competition by doing shady shit like classing their drivers as 'independent contractors' to avoid even paying them the minimum wage. Earning potential as an Uber driver was basically nonexistent before the law caught up.

AWS is set to start charging customers for an IPv4 address, a crucial internet protocol. Even before this decision, AWS costs had become a major issue in corporate boardrooms.

Perhaps this is because IPv4 addresses are in limited supply and we're very close to exhausting this supply, hence why IPv6 was introduced?

What about security? Last month, Google, the third-largest cloud provider, started a pilot program in which thousands of its employees were limited to using work computers that were not connected to the internet, CNBC reported.

The reason: Google is trying to reduce the risk of cyberattacks. If staff members have computers disconnected from the internet, hackers can't compromise these devices and gain access to sensitive user data and software code.

So, cloud services connected to the internet are great for everyone except Google? Not a great cloud sales pitch.

Google's strategy to restrict internet access for work devices is actually pretty clever, and honestly using this as a reason to doubt confidence in their cloud services is a stupid take.

The difference is that these machines would otherwise have elevated levels of access to Google's servers when compared to the end user. All it takes is a Google employee clicking a dodgy attachment or link.

[–] RanchOnPancakes@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Capitalism destroys everything.

[–] pearsche@lemdro.id 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wonder how much price increases stem from a lack of creativity in finding more nicer ways to be profitable, and overall inefficiency of their operations

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[–] Zstom6IP@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Capitalism being capitalism.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Let's be real: Uber/Lyft is actually better than calling a cab. Even for the same price, it's more convenient. When you actually share the cab, it's more efficient too, you get a price cut while it optimizes the route automatically to pick up and drop off people.

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