From this point on, every year "physical media & a Jellyfin install" is going to be more sensible.

Assuming you even care about legality, of course.

Yeah, it's harder. But you can get a lot of "harder" things done in the amount of time you otherwise spend watching ads, after all. Because to me one of the worst things about ads is they're stealing dollars from me to make cents, if not fractions of a cent. This makes them on the dumb end of the bandit classification by the Basic Laws of Human Stupidity metric: https://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidi... It's so dumb.

And as long as we keep letting them give us an option to buy out the ads, but then they get to stick ads on that option anyhow, we can never get our way out of ads on these things. I don't mind buying them out because they make so little money anyhow but by simple game theory "buy out ads + put ads on anyhow" is always > "buy out ads". You need to cancel if they do this to you. I can't, because I don't have a Disney+ subscription. But you really need to. You need to turn the option into either "let us buy out the ads" or "lose the subscription" for them.

This is not an option for everyone, but as someone who gave up TV several years ago (not entirely, just mostly), not feeling the draw of these platforms or having to put up with their costs and changes is really nice.

TV is sort of like caffeine (another thing I gave up - though that one wasn't by choice, but required by my doctors) in that you cannot imagine yourself living without it and wouldn't want to. And the first few months of abstinence are genuinely very difficult.

But eventually it gets easier, and then it gets completely easy, and then you actually feel as good or better than before. And once you finally become accustomed to it, you can't imagine going back to the old way.

I've always been frustrated by the intense focus the modern economy has on advertising. If I am interested in a product, I would much rather discover it by searching. Having advertisements forced upon me at every turn is a massive waste of resources (time and attention) given only a fraction of a percent of the products have any relevance to my life. I block every form of advertising I can reasonably block. If a company raises the friction sufficiently, I'll find a way around it. I'm mostly an amoral participant in the economy. I pay for YouTube, Disney, etc. but if they make giving them money an unpleasant experience, I have no qualms employing a usenet subscription and *arr stack to dodge the whole thing.

What I want is a streaming service that operates as a consumer cooperative.

Subscribers vote, elect a slate of directors who each get a fraction of the content-budget to spend as per their campaign promises. Licensing content, buying it in perpetuity, producing it themselves or funding some group of creators -- none of this "how can we milk customers more", and no more fruitless community campaigns to save a beloved series, you just need some critical mass of subscribers to vote for the guy whose platform is "I will keep making more seasons as fast as possible until the sun boils the ocean".

I'm trying to understand what this actually means. Here's Disney's page on the matter[0].

I understand that sports will tend to have ads displayed in the stadium and so on, and that some show may feature characters drinking Pepsi rather than Coke because of an agreement. And I guess movies may have trailers. Is that the extent of it? If I get what feels like an obvious "ad" then we'll probably be canceling, but I guess I'm okay with those things that I mentioned.

[0] https://help.disneyplus.com/article/disneyplus-ads

This is what happens when you don't have consumer rights protection.

E.g. Paid for ad-free OTT viewing but commercials ‘appeared after a month’, man wins Rs 9,500 ( https://indianexpress.com/article/legal-news/paid-ad-free-ot... ):

> Calling it a deficiency in service, the Hyderabad consumer commission ordered an OTT platform to refund Rs 1,499 and pay compensation to a subscriber after it introduced advertisements midway into his paid ad-free subscription.

The language in the EU or UK agreement must be a lot different than the US agreement. When this was announced last month, I never saw the new subscriber agreement and have not seen ads outside of live TV. Our subscriber agreement was updated yesterday, and says:

---

k. Service Tiers With or Without Ads. We offer different Service Tiers, some with advertisements and some predominantly without. Service Tiers described as "no ads" or "ad-free" are generally free of commercial interruptions, with certain exceptions that may change from time to time, including where: (i) streaming rights or other limitations require certain Content to play with ads; or (ii) ads are served in certain live or linear Content or special events (and replays thereof). Additionally, "no ads" or "ad-free" Service Tiers may contain limited promotional content, such as brief clips about the Bundles (including messages promoting an upgrade thereto) and other content available on any services associated with the Bundles, and branded content, product integrations, or sponsorship messaging.

Please note that if you subscribe to multiple (or a bundle of) Service Tiers, Content from any ad-supported Service Tier will play with ads, while Content from any "no ads" or "ad-free" Service Tier will not (except as described above).

---

So it's not quite as awful as what's reported here. This article is a month old and I haven't seen what it says was going to happen.

In the end, it all leads to advertising. This is just the basic business model in the US/World right now. Get enough eyeballs on your product, whether it's TV, social media, AI, the ditch on the side of the highway; then monetize it with ads. I don't understand why at this point anyone is surprised that a company like Disney would put ads every possible place, even their highest tier of streaming.

"But I specifically chose the highest option so I wouldn't see ads!" well, now you have the option to pay the highest tier to see less ads. For now. By paying for the highest tier, Disney knows you are a higher quality consumer with the most disposable income of all the users on that platform; that's exactly the users Disney can charge the most for advertising spend. From an exec's standpoint, why wouldn't you? sure, they'll lose some paying customers, but will probably make more in the short term at least, which is all that matters.

The real answer here is regulation around advertising, as well as regulation around appropriate size of media companies.

Scale is not required anymore to launch streaming platforms - white label works fine - and for the most part these major services sell property rights back and forth anyway every few months to keep you subscribed.

It’s pure cartel / oligopoly behavior. Can’t imagine this gets better since Ellison owns HBO and Paramount services.

there is nothing stopping anyone from canceling. They make an offer, you are free to refuse it

Andor really was an outlier, wasn't it? It's up there with the Sopranos and the Wire as one of the best TV shows in my lifetime, and everything else they make is lukewarm garbage soup.

Disney is primed up for some regulatory action and customer punishment.

Enough cancellations will trigger price raises to protect their quarter reports until the whole revenue model collapses, and they price themselves out of the streaming subscription business.

I am not an MBA, but it made sense to me.

I’ll cancel the moment I see the first ad. I’m likely not alone, but under no illusion that there are a lot of people like me, either.

The only reason I have Disney is because I have a young child and there are a couple of shows that they enjoy. We recently got rid of Netflix because there is literally nothing of interest to anyone in the household and the only reason we currently have Hulu is because of Jeopardy.

They keep seeking the price to where consumers are finally pushed to the limit and I think they are almost there, finally

Given how good illegal alternatives like Stremio are this seems like a very dangerous game to play.

You can squeeze customers quite a bit but once they go back to pirating it's incredible hard to get them to subscribe again.

Netflix has done a good job demonstrating customers will complain but won't cancel, so not super surprised by this.

Thank you Disney!

This was exactly the push I needed to cancel my subscription. We already own all the Disney DVDs that we actually love, and there hasn't been anything good released by Disney in ages.

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of RAM.

The world is so dumb.

When I was young, I pirated because I was broke. I could afford a DVD or I could afford to eat that week. Food usually won. Sometimes alcohol.

I got a decent job, and could afford to spend on things, but I still pirated because it was more convenient than going to a store I wouldn't ordinarily go to.

Then netflix started streaming movies/TV to the home and I stopped pirating basically instantly. Netflix was more convenient than pirating. Steam started getting good, so I stopped pirating games as well.

Then streaming service got balkanized. It wasn't enough to pay for Netflix anymore. I am expected to pay for literally half a dozen services, and when I do want to watch something, I would have to flip around between half of them before I find the right service to stream it from. And now they expect me to watch ads?

Fuck that. I still buy games on Steam and GoG because it's convenient. I pirate TV/movies because it's such a fucking pain in the dick to consume that media legally. I just can't be bothered when piracy is so much more convenient.

There's a contradiction in the "higher priced tier is ad-free" model which is that there are two kinds of people: (1) people who can't afford the ad-free tier who can't afford anything else and (2) people who could afford the ad-free tier who are worth advertising to.

It's been the reality of media business models for a long time, like those big thick magazines like Glamour charged a high subscription price to qualify subscribers as people who can buy what's advertised. It's also one of the many reasons why I have distaste for The New York Times -- it is packed with low quality ads that discredit the quality of their editorial content. They're so greedy that an expensive subscription isn't enough, but the expensive subscription, in itself, improves the viability of the advertising model.

I find it extremely repugnant how _everything_ gets treated like advertising surface area now. Its disrespectful to everyone and I feel like we're far past the point of diminishing returns.

Maybe people will eventually catch on? All services will eventually be modified to make things worse for you. Always, 100% of the time.

They choose piracy, then. Ok!

Thats a weird way for Disney+ to go under.

I have YouTube premium and it now shoves a "products" panel in my face that I have to swipe down before a video starts if the video references a product.

The enshittification knows no bounds.

I'm okay with paying but I really hate ads with a passion and especially for kids this is not okay. I was a customer of Disney and I guess I'll never be one again.

What alternatives exists for kids? Youtube?

Story from September OP;

Lots of discussion then:

Disney+: New user agreement allows ads before movies in all subscriptions

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49784336

Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831774

I set up a server with the radarr/sonarr/requestrr/jellyfin suite and haven't looked back. basically only pay for YouTube premium at the moment.

(September 19, 2026)?

Fund the amazing things they respectfully do to your favourite franchises!

They were actually doing this already. When you bought the premium plan, they just lied and pretended their in-house ads weren't ads and served you those instead. You still didn't get to just watch the content you wanted.

mumble mumble usenet mumble mumble

The US executive branch should look into Disney for their part in bringing back piracy.

I just want a company to tell me truly what it is worth to them from me to not show me ads. Maybe the cost is truly so much higher than I expect that I wouldn't pay it, but for fuck's sake give me the option! Is it $15/month extra instead of $5? $30/month extra? Somewhere, that line exists where the company would financially benefit, I just wish they'd actually define it.

When I was getting married, I engaged a baker to make pies for our wedding. Two weeks before the wedding they cancelled, saying very apologetically they had not catered many weddings with only pies and couldn't do it at the price they quoted. I had to practically beg them to just give me a price that was profitable for them (20% higher, in the end), and then let me decide. This feels just like that.

can anyone else see the AI-writing in this article? It's so unpleasant...

back to the pirate bay

where are all the "just because they put it in their terms doesn't mean they'll do it everywhere" people from the original story

Corporatism is running rampant. It's almost a full-blown punishment model. Soon the entertainment platforms will be demanding a fee for NOT subscribing to their service.

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