this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023

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Fuck Subscriptions

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Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.

Expect use of strong language.

Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.

No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.

Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.

New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.

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Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:

Right to Repair/Ownership

Hedges Development

DeGoogle Yourself

Stallman Was Right

Some other useful links:

FreeMediaHeckYeah

Louis Rossman's YouTube channel

Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:

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Remember what "subscription" used to mean? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The article about the "subscription" HP ink made me realise something.

Subscriptions aren't a new idea at all. You could subscribe to paper magazines. And you got to keep them.

I'm just clearing up my old house and it's filled with tons of old tech magazines. Lots of useful knowledge here. Wanna know how Windows and Mac compared in 1993? It's in here. All the forgotten technologies? Old games, old phones, whatever? You'll find it.

Now, granted. You'd only get one magazine a month. Not a whole library of movies or games or comic books.

But still, the very definition of subscription has shifted. Now, the common meaning is "you only get to use these things as long as you're paying". Nobody even thinks it could mean anything else.

Besides, it doesn't only apply to services that offer entire libraries. Online magazines still exist in a similar form as the paper ones. But you only get to access them while your "subscription" is active. Even the stuff you had while you were paying.

BTW I'm not throwing my old magazines away. I won't have the space, but a friend is taking it all. If they wouldn't, I'd give them to a library or let someone take them. The online and streaming stuff of today and tomorrow? In 30 years it'll be gone, forgotten and inaccessible.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is an advantage to the "new" model - when you subscribe, you retroactively get access to all past content as well.

Obviously for a newspaper or similar time-sensitive content this is not a very useful feature, but for other media/services it can be worth the trade-off of losing access after your subscription ends.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's not really true anymore either. Now e.g. the streaming video services keep removing stuff all the time, and shift focus to producing new stuff. Their intent is to keep you subbed for the new content.

But even so, the limitations before was natural. You can't ship a truck of magazines to everyone every month. You could still access old issues in a library tho. Cable TV couldn't have everything all the time, but reruns and niche channels kept trying to fill the blanks.

Now the limitations are purely artificial. "You can only access what we say you can. Shut up and consume."