Netflix is going to take away its cheapest ad-free plan

Stern@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 164 points –
Netflix is going to take away its cheapest ad-free plan
theverge.com
32

Make absolutely sure you're not paying Netflix when you cancel your account!

Those fucking assholes still pulled from my PayPal account after I cancelled my account on the site... I couldn't even log in as "there's no account with this email" (yes I used the correct one) and yet I had been paying them for a year and a half after that without realizing...

Sounds like you got hacked and someone reactivated your subscription

Yo ho ho, what the fuck did you expect? Off to sail the high seas.

the more they remove, the more i'll be using my plex server (or Jellyfin if Plex also enshitifies itself)

Plex has already been enshitifying itself for years. Their own streaming channels, ad supported streaming, their creepy activity log sharing, banning servers run on entire hosting services, cracking down ever more on piracy. Hell I've seen reports where they banned people hosting on their own residential connections and sharing with friends and family, then emailing those friends & family and falsely informing them their host was running a commercial piracy service. And next month they become a store for movie and TV rentals.

Really it's time to just bite the bullet and swap to Jellyfin.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/18/24043706/plex-store-movies-tv-shows

They'd have to do a hell of an enshittification to completely ruin Plex, if only because there are old versions floating around that will let you run a server without ever logging in to Plex itself. Though at that point it'd probably be easier to switch to Jellyfin.

This company represents the worst aspects of capitalism now. They’ve got anCEO whose only objective is to get shareholders to vote for his insane annual bonuses, and he does that by trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of his customers. It won’t be long before they start cutting costs on providing content so everyone’s going to be paying more for less.

I cancelled Netflix a while ago but it’s a shame because I quite liked being a legal customer for everything. Now I’m a conscientious objector.

Of course they are. A few years from now, there'll be no ad-free plans at all. Across any streaming service.

I imagine there probably will be at least an expensive one, because there are probably some people out there willing to pay more for an ad-free service than the ads and normal fee would add up to, but not willing to use the service with ads. Might not be many people, but I doubt having one more plan costs the company enough that it wouldn't make them slightly more money to have one

It's hard to buy ad-free cable TV...

Cable TV ads are sent out to everyone the same aren't they? I imagine creating special tiers of ads for that would be more difficult than it is for streaming

my cheap ass VPN service wins again.

Which one’s that? Genuine question, been looking into different VPNs and it’s impossible to choose one that’s worth the price.

I'm a huge fan of mullvad. $5 a month and very well regarded by the privacy community

I wish I could browse Netflix without an account. That’s one thing that I haven’t found as good about Stremio, discoverablity.

It‘s strange is it not that to figure out the library before subscribing you often have to trust third party reporting. At least as far as I know

Plex does well at this too anymore. You can go to Plex.tv and search for shows/movies without an account and see the options.

not sure if it works for you, but the TV app in iPhone lets you search across all streaming services to find where something is

Except Netflix. For some reason they don’t want to opt in.

interesting. i did a test before posting and Heartstopper was showing, so I assumed all Netflix shows were there. But Avatar: The Last Airbender only says Paramount+, despite being available in Netflix too

Netflix originals (or Netflix only) shows get special treatment on Apple TV. Can find them via voice remote. Frustrating!

Wait, I thought they already did this. They switched me to the Premium tier a few months ago and I couldn't switch back, so I canceled. I assumed it was that way with everybody.

Pirates life for me

I don't even care enough to pirate shows any more. I'm just content with missing out

"Our profit growth percentage is not increasing fast enough, Surely there must be more we can squeeze out of the plebs." - Netflix Executives, probably.

In other news, all Netflix tiers will now stream at 480p, unless you pay an additional premium of $18.99 a month. Because fuck you.