I never had Netflix. Or any streaming subscription. I considered it once, several years ago, but I couldn't justify it at prices then, and I sure as shit won't waste my money now. I'll help them save their bandwidth.

This is not even a correct chart.

What happened in those years and why were they omitted? It's odd that they just leave it out with (as far as I could tell from the linked source) no explanation for that.

Or many service providers competing on price, quality of service and features, not competing on exclusivity like they do now.

Like grocery stores. Imagine if only one chain has the exclusive rights to sell potatoes and another one has rights to pasta. They can ask whatever price they want, because what you gonna do? Go to another store to get your 'taters cheaper? Hah, you'll cry and you'll pay what we ask! (BTW, growing your own potatos and sharing them with your neighbor infringes on our rights and is illegal. We'll sue you to oblivion if we catch you doing it.)

No, it doesnt have to be. Look at Spotify vs Apple Music, vs tidal etc. full catalogues at all of them. It’s the business model that needs to change.

TBH Steam feels like a ticking timebomb. At some point Valve is going to get a new shite CEO or something and everyone will go "oh..."

Little unfair to say they "missed" anything when they can't control what studios do with their licenses.

I still see people occasionally complain that Netflix "got rid" of stuff, like the Office. There's a lot of shitty things you can blame Netflix for, but that isn't one of them.

It's also not new. HBO, Showtime, Stars, etc all had rotating on-demand catalogs for years before Netflix, with content appearing briefly before being removed, and no one thought that was odd. I never once heard anyone suggest HBO was shit because Austin Powers or whatever was taken off it. It came with the understanding this content was not permanently available.

Part of it is that people had a bad understanding of what Netflix was, and assumed it would be a permanent replacement for a personal collection. That was always a foolish mindset.

The only difference is when you want to watch in another primary language, for children and so. Torrents are great for popular stuff in a popular language. Not so great otherwise.

Yep. I used to share my account with my family before Netflix's password sharing crackdown. When they did it, I deleted my account day 1.

My dad and my sister just resubscribed separately. Unfortunately, a net win for them. Efectively +1 user. Just one example, but I'm betting this worked for many more of their users.

Do you really think these years existed?

They didn't fit the agenda so they had to be removed.

And their recommendation engine sucks.

Netflix used to be famously good at suggesting films. Articles were written about it, and there was even a cash reward for anyone who could contribute to its performance. Then it just turned to shit.

And the funny thing is that it would have helped counteract the shrinking library. Sure, there would be fewer films on the platform, so you'd be less likely to find a specific title, but at least you could select a film Netflix recommended based on your past ratings and be fairly confident you'd enjoy it. Now? Absolutely not.

And they change the pictures around all the time to make you think it's something new, when in fact you've seen it before. And because it's bland as all fuck, you notice this like 45 minutes in.

Does Netflix still do the "free trial period" and "get free months if a friend sent you" thing?

Are there any numbers about how many unsubscribers to compare to the subscribers? That'd be a juicy number.

µTorrent would like a word

"Enshitification" does not mean "I don't like it". It is specifically about platforms that start out looking too good to be true and turn to shit when the user base is locked in. The term is generally used for cases where the decline in quality was pre-planned and not due to external factors. Using the same term each time is, in my opinion, an appropriate way to point out just how common this pattern is.

You're in the piracy sub. A large part of the conversation is going to be about the late-stage capitalism that is driving us to piracy.

"Enshitification" means a service getting worse in order to charge their customers extra for a service similar to their previously good one. If we're using the word too much, it's because it's happening too much.

https://youtu.be/rimtaSgGz_4

It's very enshitification