1y ago

Netflix wants to retire basic ad-free plan in some countries, shareholder letter says

www.cbsnews.com

Netflix will implement the change in Canada and the U.K. in the second quarter of the year before "taking it from there," the letter said.

The company did not specify when (or whether) the change would impact U.S. subscribers.

42 comments

…And the enshittification era of streaming services continues unabated.
- that theory doesn't really work here, because you don't have what they have.
  if someone makes bread, you can also start making bread and people don't care, it is still a bread.
  if someone has and sells game of thrones, you can't just make your own game of thrones with blackjack and hookers. you can make something similar, but it is not going to be the same and some people will still want to see game of thrones, which is why the market is so fragmented.
Sail the high seas guys
- Yeah that’s an option but it’s not going to be a practical solution for everyone. Most people on Lemmy are more tech savvy than average so they’ll be fine but there are plenty of people who lack the knowledge and skill. And that sucks because people have shown repeatedly that they are more than willing to pay a reasonable rate for the content they want. But these greedy fucks decided they all needed their own service. So now content is fractured across a dozen different apps that are only getting more expensive and ad riddled.
  It just plain sucks that your options are either piracy or being constantly fucked over to benefit shareholders.
  
  At some point, when prices get too high, people will seek out someone who can help them pirate. Like I’ve already installed Kodi and Stremio with an Alldebrid account on a TV or Android box for many of my friends
  
  They'll figure out a way. Back in my youth, the kids at school who got a CD burner first were making bank. In the 80s it was sketchy guys at flea markets with boxes of tapes. Need drives innovation.
  
  Just download streamio and add the torrentio add-on and you're done.
  
  Our grandmothers may not know how but most people have enough knowledge to find the right piracy websites, download pirated content and install a vpn
- If you just wanna stream shit, can I also recommend https://fmoviesz.to/
  
  Thanks!!
  It might help others since I have a selfhosted *arr setup with Jellyfin.
- Yar-har-fiddle-dee-dee
And now Prime is doing the same, and Disney wants to tackle password sharing. If everyone had just cancelled Netflix when they started this shit we’d be paying $5 per month and we’d be sharing passwords on all of our streaming services.
- People are not that smart. Can't work collectively which is great for capitalism.
  Example: 9-5s collectively are way too important for economy , without them economy would not function but individually they are not important and easily replaceable. Hence they teach you not to discuss salary, create hierarchy, fancy job titles etc.
  
  We really need like a consumers union type organization. I know it would require work, but I guarantee if millions of people got the "Hey just don't have Netflix for a couple months and we'll get what we want" memo, then millions of people would have stuck together
- I canceled my Prime subscription when they announced they were going to put ads in prime video. I don't even use Prime Video. It's the principle.
- And Netflix would still be unprofitable
- Just cancel somebody else's subscription.
  
  Just sign up for tinder and go on Netflix and chill dates, when your date goes to the bathroom cancel their subscription and slip out the door.
Not surprised really. Netflix was part of my cellphone plan, when I switched plans, I just couldn't rationalize it anymore. I remember as a young working teenager loving how I could just mail those DVDs back and forth. I've never not had a Netflix since they first launched. Feels odd really, but ultimately I just can't abide their shenanigans.
The quality of Netflix content does not reflect cost of the subscription. I’m back to buying DVDs
- Yeah, I own a lot of my favorites on dvd/bluray, particularly movies that for one reason or another have never been available on streaming. Unfortunately there's an emerging trend of retailers removing DVD's and Blu Ray media from their stores. So while physical media isn't exactly hard to buy yet, unless something happens to reverse this trend it's going to gradually become more difficult to buy physical media.
  
  If new releases aren't going to be available in stores, I simply won't watch them when they come to home video anymore. The upside would be that I will be more motivated to see movies while they are still in theaters which I've sorely lacked going to see them ever since the pandemic
That's okay, I already canceled my Netflix like a year ago.
Setup a jellyfin server for me, friend and family and I haven't look back.
- Same, invested in a nice QNAP NAS and I haven’t thought about a single streaming service in years
Joke's on them, I already retired it in my house.
🏴‍☠️
Why is Canada anyways first in line to get assf***Ed?!
- Sadly it ends up being a fairly good test market for the US.
  Some good stuff starts in Canada as a result, too.
I wonder where they got that idea from
- 80 years of precedent?
I’m in the US and I only have Standard as an option in my account. Is that the same as Basic or did they get rid of it here already?
Let em, not like I'm paying for it anyway.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Netflix users in some countries will soon have to pay more to watch TV and movies without advertisements.
In a shareholder letter from Tuesday, the streaming service said it's looking to "retire" its cheapest ad-free plan in "some of our ads countries."
Netflix will implement the change in Canada and the U.K. in the second quarter of the year before "taking it from there," the letter said.
Last year, Netflix stopped allowing new and returning subscribers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada to select its basic plan.
American subscribers who were grandfathered into Netflix's basic plan saw a price hike last year after Netflix raised that plan's price from $9.99 to $11.99 a month.
The video streaming service also started a crackdown on password sharing last year.
The original article contains 302 words, the summary contains 125 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

42 comments