What subscription finally gave you "subscription fatigue"?

Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 366 points –

Learned the term recently and really enjoy it, subscription fatigue is the feeling we all have had now where we are just over how everything is subscription based.

Which one was the last straw or most annoying/frustrating to you?

251

When my paid Paramount+ subscription included unskippable ads.

I loathe the trend where I pay money and they still expect me to sit through ads. That's why we all left cable to start with.

What’ll really aggravate you is that way back when cable was first rolling out, it was billed as paid TV service without ads (as opposed to the ad-supported OTA local networks). Obviously that promise didn’t last long.

It’s a tale as old as time. Its happened before, it’s happening now, and it’ll happen again.

Why limit yourself to subscriptions if you can do both and earn even more money? 🤑

PS: Microsoft perfected this with Windows bloat ware, adverts and tracking. Why did they need to integrate that, if you already paid ca. 150€ (Home) or 250€ (Pro) for a licence? Those prices are integrated into the prices of hardware purchases too, in case anyone is wondering. Purchase a laptop without an OS and it’s generally about 100-150€ cheaper. Anyone interested in Microsoft 365 and Windows 365?

That's why people switched to cable to start with. Broadcast TV had ads and cable didn't.

People have depressingly short memories and a depressingly long patience for megacorporate thievery.

Ads on cable channels first happened in 1971. I doubt most people on here were born yet then.

by the time I had my own money I didn't even think of getting pay tv because it was already running more ads than free to air.

Never had subscription fatigue because paid services have never been better than the free option in my experience.

What's the point of paying for a subscription if you still get ads 🤷🏻

Marvelous strategy model.

Luckily I did the 6 month free trial and learned. 6 months is generous, ads are not.

I'm still refusing to pay for P+ in the UK. They nicked us about so much with Discovery, Picard and Lower Decks all being on Netflix and Amazon, then started pulling the rug from under us with Dis S3 and it appears maybe LD S4 this year. I'm not paying for a whole new service for one franchise no matter how much I love it. At least Disney got Marvel, Star Wars and all the Fox content before trying D+.

Yeah it’s such a shameless cash grab, I know corporations mug us off every day but it’s disrespectful when they’re so desperate about it.

Even worse when it's regarding Trek, a franchise that's always been critical of capitalism.

Imagine how we feel over here in NZ when we wanted to watch S2E1 of GH we actually got S1E3 of DOOL instead! Boy when the NPD were told about this I bet they ASAP'd their pants!

I hate acronyms.

I still haven't forgiven Paramount+ for making me watch that train wreck of a Halo show.

Adobe Reader needing a 5€ subscription for rotating pages. Fuck techno feudalism.

Oh my god I didn't even know about that one. Why?? Browsers read them fine

Reading a PDF is something, editing is a whole other thing. For a while I had an Adobe Reader subscription it was the only one I know of that can edit a pdf were I can delete entire columns from a table. (It was a PDF generated by shitty sales software I was using)

I mostly edit PDFs to fill out documents. I know browsers can do that but they don't save the progress until you download (or I'm to stupid). Recently found out that Google Drive has a "fill form" PDF editor that works pretty well. But to my blood pressures detriment that works only on Android and not in your browser where I have a proper keyboard. Google fucking enrages me with their complete arbitrary shit sometimes.

Adobe: “You need to pay us over and over to edit PDFs! Suckers!”
Inkscape: “Hold my beer.”

Found this open source, docker based, self hosted app for editing PDFs a few months ago. Works well enough for basic operations the last time I tried it (though not sure if it can delete columns from tables): https://github.com/Frooodle/Stirling-PDF

Figured I'd post the link here in case it helps you or anyone else.

Yeah, I went with stirling. It has a lot of great features, but it’s lacking in actual editing. Adobe allows you basically to edit a PDF like a word file.

I still have not found a competent (free) program on android that lets me mark up a pdf. They all claim to, but most (including fully-paid Adobe) won’t let you turn off finger marking. MFers, I have a stylus; I want my fingers to pan/zoom and my god damned stylus to make a line. Why is that so foreign?

The default Preview app on Macs can rotate PDFs by default...but if your PDF is a fillable form, it'll fuck it all up.

Yeah, Mac preview is surprisingly one of the best PDF viewing applications available on the market, it’s nearly as good as Acrobat. That’s really strange to me

This might be a cop-out, but I'm absolutely sick of paying rent, and the open source alternatives aren't great

can't you pirate it? (make it your own and become independent from your providers?) Even if sacrificing a couple of features.

tent not rent!

Too real where I live.

i dont know whether to upvote in solidarity, or downvote because it's wrong.

Alarm clock apps that require a subscription. Basically any app that doesn’t require backend server infrastructure to function should not be subscription based.

There are alarm clock apps requiring a subscription now? Good heavens.

It started with the Netflix enshittification. I have had a Spotify and Netflix account essentially since these services were available, and that was great. Now only the Spotify sub is worth it, though I started to loathe that one as well because it at some point deleted all my local files or replaced them with what it thought matched them in their database.

Also every fucking app, no matter how mundane, wants to sell me a subscription. I have a web based game boy emulator on my phone, it works fine but everything beyond the absolute basic functions is paywalled behind a subscription. Not even a one time purchase.

If it requires a subscription, it doesn't exist.

That attitude has served me well. So far, at least.

I don't do mail though, I know some do and are successful but mail is too important for me (and everyone subjected to my technical whims) to fuck it up.

I meant software and media. With mail, somebody's running a server and policing spammers, which costs time and money.

Enshittification didn't kill Netflix. What killed it was all the studios pulling their content licenses so they could start their own Netflix. Enshittification happened afterwards as Netflix desperately tried to make itself constantly profitable. They killed a lot of good shows and messed with the algorithm that showed people what they actually wanted to see.

I know what happened, I was there… Guess I should have used a different term for all the content being in one place for a good price shifting to being in a dozen places for exorbitant prices each than enshittification.

I'm torn between feeling bad for Netflix because they tried to do something cool and got the rug pulled out from under them as soon as it started to work, and mad at them for fucking up their algorithm and studio so badly

Netflix, and when they said I'd have to pay for password sharing for my stepkids, because they use my account when they're at their dad's.

That was the last straw. I cracked the shits, bought a couple of ex-enterprise servers, and setup ... something different. I then cancelled all streaming services (I got wind of the second Disney hike coming).

The cool thing is they now email me with cheap rejoin offers, telling me about all the cool shows I need to be aware of. ;)

How are your kids coping with, uh, something different? I imagine it's a tad less convenient, even with your server. Also, I haven't done something different since the rise of Netflix. Is the quality of something different generally higher with streaming services just putting their content on the internet themselves?

I admit, last time I tried something different years ago, it wasn't that good, but thought I'd give it another go. I'd bought a lifetime pass way back, so had nothing to lose by trying.

The kids are coping fine - the apps for something different are all pretty rock-solid now - macOS, iOS, Android, Chromecast GTV. Plus I'm on a decent fibre internet connection, so even full high quality things work just fine when they're not at home. Honestly, there's not a lot of difference, except my catalogue of things is better than any single service.

Plus I take requests. :D Actually, I allow automated processing of requests, within certain limits.

How do you process the automated requests? That’s my dream for my little slice of things.

Arrr! I be hearin' tales of the five hearties of the Dutchman, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, prowlarr, and the most feared scallywag of 'em all: overseer!

Why tf are you guys talking in code

Arrrrrrr.

🏴‍☠️

No one cares if you pirate...what are they gonna do, track your lemmy account?

I self host my stuff with Plex and it's really not any less convenient than Netflix or whatever else.

Yep, my son put together a machine to use as a PLEX server & I log in and watch things from across town. It works perfectly fine.

I started again since a year or so. And decided to set up a home server (from an old pc) with the whole *arr suite this summer. Automation these days really is marvelous. You just tell it once which show you want to watch. It fetches you all the shows that are already out and also fetches you each new episode every week. And it's all in good quality. And you can set automatic subtitles straight from the app's interface.

It doesn’t compress video more on mobile devices, that’s all I need to know. When I connect an iPad or iPhone to the home cinema setup, the compression is much worse then on an old laptop.

Mine are handling oit perfectly fine - and we have the added difficulty of having German as mother tongue, and wanting to keep the English language content in the kids library low. Finding german language torrents is rather tricky.

I'm a native English speaker so take this with a grain of salt.

Usernet? If memory holds there are a few German language indexers.

If you have kids, the PBS Kids video app is pretty alright. And free (in the US of course)

I think the one that did it for me was Xbox game pass. I've never been much of a fan of digital games, but Xbox game pass made me see what the future of games will be.

You will pay an ever increasing amount per month to play whatever Microsoft or whoever decides you can be allowed to play. You will own nothing you play and if you cancel your subscription, your console is worthless. Meanwhile the service will be crammed with ads, the games themselves crammed with ads, and your data harvested and sold for "personalized" ads.

I only buy physical games now.

Man, I already had subscription fatigue with the very first thing I subscribed to with my own money as a kid. Ultima Online. My friend recommended the game to me, not telling me it required a subscription. I bought a boxed copy at the store, not seeing the super tiny print where it mentioned the subscription. I was then upset when I was installing it and it asked for a CC#. I was 12. I didn't have a credit card. I had to ask my dad to set it up and give up my allowance for it.

As soon as I found out about emulated shards (shards being what servers were called) that were totally free, I started playing on those. And having way more fun because they kept the game the way I liked it, while EA kept trying to make it more like WoW.

Man I can't imagine getting a game that young and finding out after the fact that I'd had to give all my allowance to play it.

Around the time when netflix started to suck, and new subacription services popped up everywhere.

Then a lot of other things that shouldnt rely on a aubscription started getting it. Random apps with a pro mode. The pro mode was now a subscription... its dreadful.

I refuse to get a subscription i would "need" to keep around fpr years.

Here we have 1 video streaming service for a month or two every once in a while. Never two at the same time.

Here we have 1 video streaming service for a month or two every once in a while. Never two at the same time.

This is exactly what I do. Every once in a while I get a subscription to Netflix, watch a handful of shows, cancel the subscription, and a few months later start a subscription to another streaming service for a month each. The only service I ever stayed subscribed to for more than one month per year is crunchyroll, but even that's no more than 3 months in a year.

i cancelled youtube premium when they removed dislike count from view, i felt that i was getting a inferior product once they removed that tool from me, it wasn't worth paying

Netflix saturating their service with self produced garbage with zero entertainment value to the point I'm looking for a needle in a haystack

I never made it past Netflix. Once the quality started sliding and prices went up, it was back to the high seas for me. I guess I still have to pay for a VPN service though 🤷

This is basically my experience as well.

Tho I won’t be paying for a vpn service anymore now that PIA sold out, I’m going to set up the automated stuff and subscribe to Usenet indexers or whatever (I haven’t had a lot of time to look into it yet, but I have a bunch of info saved from a very kind person who helped me) instead because they will do what I want a lot better, automatically, and less risky apparently - no uploading and no seed ratio to maintain.

Beyond that, I do have a ps+ premium account because I will easily play $86 worth of games in a year (already have in the 2 months I’ve had it, with no effort of going to a place and hoping to find the games used. Im a collector, but I’m also not well off financially) but I otherwise go out of my way to avoid subscriptions and recurring payments.

If I need to pay for it more than once to have a better experience than FOSS, piracy, or just not having it, I’m not interested.

I paid $100 for a Plex lifetime subscription 10 years ago, not a penny since. I rave about the service to people, and get friends to sign up to use mine - and I always tell them if they like it, buy it outright. It’s stable and worth it, and if it dies tomorrow, I’d still be pleased with my purchase. If that hadn’t been an option I probably would have switched a long time ago when I learned there were FOSS options.

I feel like I have to beg my friends to use my Plex server. Like what the hell? I'm offering you ~1000 movies free, and all you have to do is register for a Plex account, but for some reason registering for Plex is way too hard and confusing (even though it's the same process as any other service).

Whatever, guess I'll enjoy my movies myself then. 🤷

That's crazy. A friend of a friend runs a Plex server, and I've seen how much is on there. If he offered me access I'd be all over it.

I'm with Windscribe and as far as I know they're pretty secure?

Yeah I'm doing a mix of torrents and Usenet at the moment, cos I only started learning about usenet a month ago. It's not as complicated as I thought it would be, but it does take a couple of hours to sit down and nut it out. It's definitely not cheaper than a VPN though.

I have been thinking about building a server too, if only for the fun of it. I like learning more about computers. I'd probably just go with Jellyfin though, it seems to have a good reputation plus I'm a big fan of FOSS software.

I have a PIA account... I didn't hear what happened. What changed?

I read something about they are under new ownership and keeping logs now, despite saying they don’t (they aren’t in a privacy-friendly sort of place). This was like 6mths ago. I can’t find anything about it now, so I’m not entirely sure what’s true, but it’s enough to spook me on it either way.

Additionally, for me at least, the service was being blocked a ton more than used to happen (couldn’t access a lot of the sites I was using it for) and it doesn’t seem the client has been updated in ages.

It’s probably fine, but it’s not worth it for me anymore.

Ah ok. I'll certainly keep my eyes and ears open and bounce too if needed. Thank you!

2 more...
2 more...

I've observed how these streaming services engage in borderline elder abuse. They make it extremely easy to sign up, and then to cancel, they require clicking through five different settings pages with tiny buttons and dark patterns. They obscure what each charge is on billing statements, and they are constantly increasing price, merging with each other, which creates confusion. I've had to help elder family and friends get out of subscriptions so many times, and each time, I essentially have to audit what they're paying for. I think the Feds should mandate that every website has a giant red "Cancel subscription" button in the corner. The FTC is working on something like that, but it is unclear what it will look like in the final version.

Old school runescape charging $120 a year. I get that they make new content but that's the cost of a AAA game each year.

It's only $80 USD if you buy the full year at once but yeah it's definitely on the expensive side. I get more fun out of some $20 games than I do out of RS.

I would be happy paying $60 a year for my main and then I could justify paying some extra for my ironman to be members.

When I couldn't just purchase a season of a tv show (Drag Race). You should just be able to buy a show or movie if you want to watch it.

The most recent season was exclusively on Paramount +. I guess they had exclusive right because it wasn't available anywhere else. It was 3.99/month with a discount so I figured I'd keep it as long as the season aired. I was fucking amazed that there could be twenty fucking commercials in an hour show. If I wanted to skip backward or forward I had to watch three more ads first. Two weeks before the season finale they raised the price to 5.99 so I cancelled it. I didn't need to watch it that badly. Their other content was shit, all nineties MTV and made for tv movies. When I signed up they advertised Yellowjackets so I was going to watch that. But no, that's another subscription to Showtime.

It was the cheapest subscription I've had but the most aggravating experience, because it's not about the money. It's about feeling like I'm getting fucked over with every goddamn thing I buy lately.

I really want to watch Mike judge's tales from the tour bus but it is only on cinemax. I would have no problem just buying the seasons but you can't, the only way is to ad cinemax to my already paid sub of Hulu. Fuck that

Not really a discovery, bug when Disney Plus made their base subscription have adds like Hulu and then made the add free version double the price. The "Disney bundle" was $12 a month when it released. Now it's $20 just to get Hulu and D+ without adds. I hold the star wars franchise pretty close, but I'm gonna have wait to see Ahsoka.

Either that or it's time to get the paper hat out 🏴‍☠️

I had it when Adobe started it with their suite. Let me just buy access to a major version and all patches and minor upgrades.

YouTube premium raised their prices. I had got it back when Google music was the thing. Then they raised the price. Then they raised the price again. Then they raised the price again. The last price raise gave me the motivation to check out Spotify and newpipe.

I haven't looked back.

I did exactly the same thing. I miss Google Music. I also miss Songza which they bought, integrated into Google Music and then killed it off anyway.

I'm still grandfathered in from the Google Play Music days, paying $7.99/mo for YT Music + YT Premium. I will never interrupt that subscription and lose that price, haha.

You likely lose that price in December. I got an email telling me so and I believe it applies to all of us grandfathered in. Here's the relevant part of the email:

As a long-standing and valued member, you are currently paying a lower rate for Premium than the rate available to new subscribers. To show our appreciation for your loyalty, we're giving you at least three extra months at your current price before the price increase will impact your plan. Your price will not increase before your December billing date. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to notify you again at least 30 days before the new price is effective.

Hmm, what was the subject of that email? I don't see one like that, but I want to be sure.

"YouTube Premium Price Update"

July 20

Yeah, interesting, I don't have that email. I guess I'll find out if my subscription rate increases in December!

Use InnerTune and you can drop the price to 0 ;-)

Pardon my ignorance, I don’t mean to insult, but how does a python library drop the price to zero? Do you have your own app built using this library?

I'm sorry, I could've been more clear. There is an app called InnerTune (F-Droid is an app store on Android that contains only free/open source software) which lets you stream and download all of yt music for free. You can also use the website beatbump.io to stream.

Youtube Premium is also unnecessary when you use the adblocker Ublock Origin on Firefox. On Android, NewPipe is also a great app to watch and download the videos ad-free.

That is possible because Google badly protects its content APIs.

I am also in that tier. They are raising the prices weather you like it or not.

*legacied

The term grandfathered in has a pretty fucked racist origin.

Had to investigate, and turns out you're right about the origin. The original grandfather clause was meant to exempt blacks from voting. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause

I'm not a fan of term banning, however. We still use the number 9 even though Hitler said it a lot.

Yeah but Hitler did not create the number 9. Slight difference. There is also no other term to express the number 9.

Legacied means the exact same thing and does not have the racist origin. There is certainly no ban on using 'grandfathered in' but there is no real reason to use it since it does not convey anything that the term legacied already does.

Definitely Netflix with the password sharing lockdown garbage. Then I looked closely at my Spotify. I realized my yearly rewind was almost always the same artists at the top, so I pay over $100 a year to listen to the same music every year. I bought the album's I like and I feel so at peace now that Spotify can no longer tnrow shitty podcast recommendations in my face.

Oh I'm the opposite. I listen to so much music I'd be spending so much money on it.

My dad is the same and he spent thousands on CDs and later on iTunes for his music collection. Spotify and other subscriptions definitely saved him money.

I’m the same. I think Spotify is a great service if you constantly seek new music and listen to a variety of artists and genres. However, I still find it shitty that they constantly remove tracks, especially from smaller relatively unknown artists. Half of my playlists I made 10 years ago have their tracks disabled.

iirc a lot of tracks and albums get removed if it's later found out that samples or royalties weren't cleared on the record. For instance Death Grips' "Exmilitary" mixtape was removed a few years ago because a lot of samples on the mixtape weren't cleared with their original creators.

Yeah it’s usually copyright disputes, because some of the tracks have stopped being available in my country for some reason or another. But what if I do enjoy that particular remix and it gets taken down? I have tons of tracks like that. Spotify makes a great case of what happens when you’re not the one in control of your music library, and it won’t completely replace music collection for me.

Yeah IP lawyers ruining my music collection is why I started keeping my music offline for the first time in over a decade.

It's not just copyright issues. When Spotify loses the license to carry the tracks, they're gone.

The important part is that people have options, and as long as these options exist, I can't complain. But if some day in the future, everything becomes a subscription, then I will riot.

And it sure seems like more and more services are going that route. I want to ditch Adobe for example and use Affinity instead, but if they ever move to a subsciption model too, I'll change careers and become a garbageman.

Probably pays better than any design agency anyway.

Weather apps.

They’re one of my exceptions. The API/data needed for weather apps to function is not free (at least in the US), with the possible exception of NOAA, though I’m not sure if they offer an API for apps to use.

That’s why the developers have to pass the cost on. If you’ve got a free weather app, you’re probably paying for it with ad views. I’m personally not interested in doing that, so I chose an app I liked that lets me choose which source I want to use and customise the display.

Another thing I have a subscription for is a flight tracker. Operating ADS-B receivers is also not free, nor is additional data some apps get about delays and the like.

I also have a WoW subscription because servers are an ongoing cost (not factoring in continual development and new features even within a single expansion) but won’t keep paying for single player games. My purchase should cover development costs and the cost of fixing bugs.

Other stuff? Nope. I’ll spend a few dollars for useful utilities, but everything seems to be free with in-app purchases now, so most of the stuff I’ve got is grandfathered in from when you paid a reasonable fee that covered development costs and you weren’t hounded.

Official NOAA app is $1.99 a year. Worth every penny. Only subscription I'm happy to pay.

Wunderground FTW! It also lets me tap into my local home weather station, as well as those of my nearby neighbors and the weather forecasting is far superior to whatever the hell came with my phone.

I feel like I've avoided subscriptions for the most part, except for basics like rent, energy, telephony, a travel card. The software I use is mostly open-source (some of which I voluntary support on a monthly basis). I don't need paid streaming because public TV streaming is good enough for shows/movies and YouTube with ad-block is good enough for music. I don't game.

Energy and telephony are at least actual services that someone is actually performing.

Pro-tip if you're sick of paying for streaming: Stremio (app--I run on NVIDIA Shield) + Torrentio. Totally free and will have everything you ever need. For a few dollars, Real-Debrid adds more/faster stream options, but it's purely optional/nice-to-have.

I would counter-argue for Jellyfin + Radarr-suite. I just like better Jellyfin's interface.

Both options are valid, I use Plex instead, but selfhosting people need to understand that there is beauty on the streaming route, pirate streaming route.

Honestly, the streaming way is less bothersome and with almost immediate results, so there's a lot of beauty in it.

I am a picky bastard so I want to make sure I'll be able to watch everything in 4K, without waits nor interruptions. Plus I watch a lot of old stuff that takes a while to get: American Gothic took me 6 months to get, I tried getting the DVD set first but realized the latter episodes weren't included.

I've seen it mentioned, but never tried it. I'll have to read up on it, thanks!

I'm subbed to YT premium, Spotify, and Amazon Prime. I primarily use Steam. I pirate via torrents for movies and series. No streaming services interest me. I've used a free trial for Netflix way back when and I was disappointed that some content was not available to download for offline viewing. With torrenting I can watch content in a better quality, I don't have to worry about buffering, I don't have to worry about discs and menus, etc. All I really want is just the mkv file and that's it.

Be sure to set up a Plex/Jellyfin server so you can stream your content to your devices

I've heard about Plex, but Jellyfin is new to me. I'll check both of those out, thanks.

I got to the point where I was downloading shows to put on Plex that I already had access to via a streaming service just to avoid using their app. I eventually decided to drop the service too.

Check out torrentio + realdebrid. $3/month, no need for a VPN or local storage for all the torrents you used to download.

Netflix. Price hikes with lesser content that no one in my house wants to watch. Subcriptions for occasional use stuff been purged since that.

Paramount +. I love Stat Trek, but I'm not paying for one service to watch 20 - 30 new eps a year of one franchise. Even more egregious is they were so slow rolling out in the UK, half their shows were spread across Netflix and Amazon already, if they pull them from there, I'm just torrenting.

Not to mention it's a paid subscription that still has commercials. Paramount+ has such little content it shouldn't cost money and it plays fucking commercials on everything. It's a travesty and is the perfect example of how we've reached endshitification in the streaming world. It's just cable with extra steps now. Hoist the Jolly Rodger.

Spotify. It is a mirror of my Youtube Premium and Youtube gives me better value. So I ditched Spotify.

Yeah I stopped using Spotify when I got YouTube premium. Though I never paid for Spotify but still. Like what's the point of listening to music with Spotify when I only have to pay less than $10 to get both YouTube benefits but also YouTube music.

I do miss Spotify wrapped, but YouTube's wrapped isn't so bad.

I kept Spotify for way too long to listen to podcasts, not realizing I can listen to them for free with other apps

Evernote. I’m not sure why I even stayed with them for so long; probably the pain of moving after so many years. Switched to Joplin before they doubled their fees for zero new (useful) features.

Yeah, I dropped EN years ago, when they doubled (at the time) the fees after acquiring Skitch. I floated around trying to make other things work, then found Joplin in the past year or so. Haven't looked back.

Sublime Text 4 going subscription based instead of major release based. I downgraded back to ST3 and am keeping my lifetime license on that one. The alternative is a 3 year usage license which is trash for the price you need to pay

It does say you get to keep access to everything in the three year window.

this is correct, you get access to every update in that window, instead of everything in that major release. It is better than it could be but, it's rediculous to purchase a software that doesn't even give you the full release of it. It also doesn't alert you before upgrading/updating to a release outside your license window and relies on you figuring out how to downgrade after if you let it auto update.

2 more...

America Online.

That was a 6 month fucking ordeal to cancel, and it ended up taking bank intervention and the changing credit cards for it to finally go away.

My aunt is still paying those leeches $20/month. Her excuse was that she didn't want to lose her email, but I've told her so many times that the email is free. I eventually just gave up trying to save her money that she'd rather burn.

AOL has always made its living not on providing a service worthy of the money, but by exploiting the technologically illiterate.

That said, I have a weird nostalgia about AOL since the early era of the internet was defined by my use of AOL, and AOL chatrooms, and "You've got mail" and all the various associated accoutrements, even if I'd love to stab Steve Case in the eye with a brick.

1 more...
1 more...

My first subscription was World of Warcraft, back in vanilla and when I was a dipshit high schooler only starting to get a feel for things like managing money.

And even then, right out the gate it felt like bullshit. Did it anyway cuz peer pressure, but back then and ever since, subscriptions almost all feel like blatant ripoffs.

I subscribe to that - servers and datacenters aren’t free to run. Stand-alone games, though, have to be a one-time fee for me to pick up.

They aren't free, but you can definitely do the model as a buy to play service with a cosmetic cash shop.

netflix in 2016/17 when they upped the rates AND made vpn=ing much harder.

Just an fyi, your comment posted 3 times.

thanks i'll try to delete some .

it's like trying to cancel a subscription

Haha I feel that. It’s gotten to a point that we don’t even know what subs we have and don’t have. Just decided to get a new card and let them run out. The seas have been nice to return to.

listening to music in new orleans, i'd usually chuck money in the bucket.

that'd be a better model - for artistic stuff at least - stick it on torrent and include a giant internet tip jar link.

not for things that are critical public services, but are treated as private things.

None, because I never subscribed in the first place.

Most of my media consumption is video games, and I often revisit decades-old games, so only temporarily having access to a game is not acceptable. Neither am I interested in paying more than once to retain access to content I already paid for; that's a scam. Perpetual license or GTFO.

I don't generally watch movies, but if that ever changes, I'll be buying them on disc, keeping them, and ripping them so I can play them on my Linux PC. If I can't rip a disc because available tools can't break the DRM, then the disc is defective as far as I'm concerned, so I'll most likely return it for a refund without watching the movie.

I'd like to credit early-2000s Slashdot for teaching me to think this way. If everyone did, a lot of today's problems wouldn't exist, including the subscription scam we're discussing in this thread. Shame what happened to that website and its community, but it was good while it lasted.

The phone game. Egg inc. It just updated offering a subscription for in game bonuses.

Completely agree, and I’ve paid this game for the upgraded storage and many piggy bank cracks over the last couple of years because I play often and appreciate them keeping the game running and updating stuff. I am not, however, paying a monthly fee to use it

Not subscription, but the first service I thought "wtf is this money-making model?" was Plants vs Zombies 2. The game wasn't that good. And, oh, my most recent guilty pleasure is Monopoly Go; it's entertainingly boring?

Apart from that, I've tried to keep subscriptions that I really like or use constantly:

  • UberPass Uber One (mainly for when depression hits)
  • Deezer (just because I get 20% discount)
  • Kagi (first month atm, but it has a minimum % of trash results)

never heard of uberpass, is it like free food delivery?

Correction: The service I referred to was renamed to Ober One.

Kinda. Basically you pay for occasional coupons and credits on UberEats, and a (5%) discount for every Uber ride.

For 70 MNX (~3.5 USD) a month there is no delivery fee on anything you order. It's obvious their business model is to charge an obscene fee to then roll out a "better" option. But hey, it's been convenient nonetheless.

I end up ordering from the same few places when I'm on my lowest, so their system usually gives me 100-200 MXN (~5-10 USD) discounts on those specific restaurants. The subtotal almost never exceeds 600 MXN (~30 USD).

Succinctly, it's not free free. It's a 5% discount on Uber rides, and a variable 15-30% discount for two orders a month.

Netgear. Being told to "subscribe" for basic customer service made me get a whole new modem cause I'm not putting up with that bullshit

The first subscription I turned off is my gym membership 10 years ago. That was the first time I realized I was paying for air. With a few hundred dollars spread over years, I've amassed a pretty stellar home gym with machines and weights. Granted, the trade off is space.

In the digital age, really nothing. The wife has Netflix but nothing on that service does shit for me. I get a screen of Max from a close friend and in return she has access to my Plex, and I let her make requests when I go sailing the seas. Max has some ok stuff.

Anyhow, I do everything not to have a subscription to anything, minus my VPN. I also still buy blurays. Conversely, I haven't bought a physical video game in at least 5 years - so I've succumbed to convenience in that regard.

I pay for gym just to force myself to go. Uni had a free gym and I used it a lot the first month, then nothing. I just don't have the discipline...

I used to pay for software subscriptions. I had a subscription to Substance 3D software and then they sold their company to Adobe 🤮 so now I 🏴‍☠️

also stopped paying for Spotify after the Rogan deal. I still use the free version for the "discover weekly" playlists, and I can't tolerate ads so I use an app called Mutify which mutes the ads as soon as they start playing which is a godsend

never paid for any streaming subscriptions and never will, VPN+piracy+Plex is an objectively better experience. no ads, no content removal, no paying $$$ to rich psychopathic ghouls

This Google 1 shit. I love my Pixel phone, but they give shit for memory options so that you are forced to pay for the experience of Gmail and saving media. Pisses me off that I can't just save it to my phone.

I guess I’m in the minority because I don’t mind subscriptions much. If I think it’s unreasonable I just won’t pay for it. Nobody is forcing me to.

Yeah. I have no problem paying for products that I happily use. Especially when they are supporting independent developers.

At one point I had
Spotify, Wow, Runescape, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney+, Amazon, and Doordash. I didnt even realize it but one day I was just like, why the fuck am I paying for all this. Cut it allllllll away. Now I just have Spotify and HBO. Not as bad and if I want to watch something on the other platforms I cancel HBO. One streaming service at a time.

Doordash has a subscription?

When I had it, I was ordering from doordash every week. So paying for the monthly fee covers one orders delivery fee basically. Very worth if you use it a lot but I started cooking more after I canceled it.

I just deleted doordash entirely. Shit is too expensive and I am too obese.

There’s a Doordash+ option that takes away some delivery fees. I don’t normally pay for it but you get a year free with your Amazon Prime account.

When Sony Plus became required for online play on the PS4. Xbox already had similar going on at that point. The last console I have ever bought was a PS3 as a direct result of this.

Same, they removed one of the big reason I played on PS3, I've had a 360 too but never paid gold for the online, now I'm PC all the way, it wasn't too hard because I always preferred PC.

I signed up for Netflix years ago. When they decided to make it cost more to let my parents share the sub I pulled the plug.

Everything kind of. Netflix, Dinsey, YouTube, Prime, HBO, Spotify, Apple Music and so much more. I rather sail the seas.

Just watching all these new subscription services for everything gave me the fatigue and started my self-hosting and actually-owning-things journey, even just paying for Netflix (when I still did) was too much for me, it didn't have everything I wanted, if it did it would remove it after a year or so, and every couple years the price would hike.

My mobile plan. The standard is signing for 24 months. I can't really choose a plan that suits me, they stick virtually unlimited calls (which I barely use), and add mobile data that I can't use up either. Settling for less barely reduces my bill if at all for whatever reason. On top of this, despite me signing for a set fixed amount to pay, they decide to "index" an extra 10-15% every year due to "unforseen circumstances" like inflation. And every time I sign a new contract I get an extra 10% on top of my bill for the same features I don't use. Oh and they add a "happy call" where the call signal sounds like a piercing annoying very low quality melody, despite me denying the service. Switching to another telecom doesn't really remedy the problem, the other two on the market here seem worse than mine in every respect.

Looking at the prepaid features, we're looking at a 40-50% reduction in monthly fees, just paying for what I use, whenever I want to use it. It's needlessly annoying switching from a subscription to a prepaid plan. You'd have to switch telecoms for a month and switch back to the one you like the most if you want to keep your number.

So yeah, as soon as my contract expires, I'm done with renewing. I'm sick of this.

Sync for Lemmy. I was looking forward for the app, but the subscription to remove ads made me stick with Connect instead.

Then do the one time payment option that was added literally a couple hours after the launch of the public beta?

I just can't fathom paying for an app that still has that super annoying comment bug that shows up in every large comments section, especially with all of the fully functional FOSS alternatives.

To me, Jerboa is superior. At the end of the day, it is designed by Lemmy developers and the UX/UI is simple enough.

It's the only app I've seen that show the number of upvotes AND downvotes, not just the sum.

Oh, I've noticed that. Does the dev know about it?

They do if they're at all active in their community. Lots of people complain about it. Despite being a premium app, they do seem to get things done more slowly than the FOSS stuff.

Literally when there was only netflix and then Disney+ came out

Same but "when there was only netflix, and Hulu got caught being cool so they had to go legit and became a subscription service instead of a pirate streaming site."

Held out on streaming until kissanime/kisscartoon started bugging me for my adblocker, then switched to downloads.

As a kid I had to choose between FFXI and Star Wars Galaxies - and then Planetside came out!

I had a lot of good times in those games but switching between them month to month because I could only afford one at a time gave me a pretty healthy aversion to subscriptions before I got out of middle school. The only subscription service I've ever had was YouTube Red when it first came out because I was interested in a couple of the shows, but they all sucked so now I'm back down to just one subscription (FF14) unless you count car payments and my cell phone plan.

edit: oh wait I've also subbed to Disco+ for battlebots, but that was only because whoever was uploading them to 1337x stopped doing it which was a shame.

The BattleBotsRaw reddit community is still active, but you'll only get the edited fights-only versions. Those are good enough for me.

I bought a new PC in 2021 (because building was hard due to supply shortages) and it came with GamePass Ultimate. When I combined my existing Xbox Gold subscription, it gave me something like 1.5 years worth of GamePass Ultimate, which was really great! Once that subscription expired, I had saved up for a year worth of another subscription up front, but noticed they only offered month-to-month at that point. I realized I wasn't playing GamePass games enough to warrant the subscription (might have been different if I could install on my Steam Deck, not through a Windows install or streaming).

Once that GamePass subscription came up, and then Netflix started cracking down on password sharing that I was sharing with my sister in the next city over, it made me question a lot of recurring subscription. For streaming TV shows/movies, I think going forward we'll have one service subscribed to but bouncing around to catch up on shows that my wife and I may want to watch. For GamePass, I'll probably resubscribe once Starfield comes out.

Your idea for resubcribing to gamepass is an idea everyone should use for every subscription. Only pay for a subscription if there's something on it that you want and stop paying for it when there's nothing on it that you want.

I was questioning myself when I started paying close to $25 for Netflix. Cancelled once I heard about pw-sharing no longer being a thing. Couldn't justify the cost of 4 screens if my family couldn't use it.

Now for most things, It's either self-hosted/FOSS/ or proprietary one-time fee. else I do without.

HBO Max and Spotify were the only streaming services I paid for. I had HBO Max since the first few months of it's launch but when they raised the already high fee I cancelled it. Shortly after they changed it to Max, definitely don't regret it. HBO Max used to feel special but that specialness died.

To be honest, sporify is the only one I actually use. But I get a fuck ton of use out of it. I used to be able to use Netflix without paying for it. Bit it just didn't really work for me

Ignoring anything I subscribe online for and can’t cancel example (Just cancelled my cable internet was more painful than ID like)?

Any service that tries to auto deliver me another product in a monthly and won't let me order one without the auto replenish. (Example: Meal services and the like you tubers like to promote, but I’ve been seeing many things attempt this lately)

So glad I got Nexus Mods Life Time Subsciption before they ditched it

I bought a lifetime subscription for the Android app Cerberus. The dev suddenly decided to cancel all lifetime subscriptions and force people to get real subscriptions instead.

The Bluey android game.

Care to elaborate? It's the first I've heard of it.

Man I've been having subscription fatigue since the first time I bought an RuneScape membership in 2004.

For me, this beat saber knockoff game called "supernatural" which was advertised as free on the oculus app store. Not a one time purchase. Literal lunacy.

Apple App store. Nearly every app has in-app-purchases. Just charge me upfront ffs

Hulu. I agreed to Netflix for the convenience for the price. Hulu started to get big, stuff started getting taken off Netflix, and I just went back to doing what I did before Netflix.

I had a free Google Workspace account used for my family email since the inception of the program. Over a few years it went from free to USD$12 per user, with increasing restrictions put upon it.

From that point onwards, I never trusted any product from Google, and will never consider any in future. It's a company with no internal consistency, and has the motto of "we will do anything that's evil if it helps make us look better than Apple".

Yes I'm still salty about it.

Most recently tho, Netflix.

The one that wants me to pay monthly so they can tell me what subs riptions I should get rid of.

If that wasn't the brainchild of a form room stoner circle...

When I was still a LIB I used to browse lots of news sites that now have massive pretentious and ironic "DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS" style paywalls.

Tbh the best newsites are paid. It sucks. I use archive to get around it, mostly. Free sites usually just rehash the paid site’s actual scoops, with less information, days later, and are cluttered with ads, or feel like lame a blog.

And when I had a free account, those NYT graphic based interactive publications and data visualizations were S tier. Whoever makes those is making the best technical web content around.

And their real time election coverage when the polls are closing - with the needle - is always the best way to see what’s really going on in terms of where the votes are outstanding, and what that means in terms of what the final number will be.

Eg

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/15/us/mar-a-lago-trump-documents.html

https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/graphics

Also, newspaper journalism in general has always been monetized though a subscription.