Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

"Piracy is Difficult to Compete Against"

Have you tried

Not Enshittifying

?

Guess they should give up and shut down.

It really isn't because Netflix did it easily in the 2010s. But then, as always, capitalism got in the way and we are back to the cable era where even if you pay, you still have ads.

"We successfully competed against piracy and drove it to near-extinction, but now that we're enshittified we can't compete with piracy while continuing to make the obscene amounts of money that we want to make"

When overpriced streaming services keep becoming worse and worse, it's hard to avoid piracy

I’m kinda surprised that the article only mentioned convenience and completely skipped rising costs, ad injection, crackdowns on password sharing, and more fees.

The subscriptions cost a shitload more, even if you’re a paid subscriber you still get ads, you have to pay more fees to get rid of ads or watch a program that is either new or the service has decided to charge for, and you can’t share password with anyone outside your household.

It’s not a convenience problem, it’s a money problem.

I was rather happy with Netflix for nearly a decade. The price was reasonable and family members could also watch. When I moved out I upgraded to the 4K package (split 3 ways between family members) and it was fine at first.

But there were several caveats:

• 4K only works on TVs, on my 1440p monitor I could only watch 1080p. Sucked, but it's not too bad
• Price kept going up, in the end it was 18€ a month. That's okay split between 3 people, but otherwise far too much for what is offered
• Series that I liked kept getting cancelled, while trash was getting renewed or they messed up the later seasons (Looking at you, The Witcher..)
• They cracked down on password sharing, suddenly you need to be in the same WiFi to count as home or you need a travel code (limited to 2 a month and only for 2 weeks each), so if you regularly move between places it's a no-go for a service you pay for

I finally cancelled it, sick of their shit. Which also has the benefit of no longer having to take care of the account for the family. Unfortunately my dad accidentally took over the account (while trying to create a new one) and keeps paying the 4K price (I suggested at least going down to 1080p as the quality is shit either way). Simply idiotic :-/

Personally I tried out Real Debrid and it has been pretty alright so far. The quality is better too, which is ridiculous.

Aint nobody pirating Netflix shows.

Netflix: This problem we practically solved ten years ago but have been steadily and diligently working to bring back pledge to double down on those efforts and eventually make it the only viable option for a good consumer experience.

Oh no!

Anyways

Hey Netflix, you need to compete on price AND the service offering. Make piracy feel inconvenient compared to paying and subscribing and you'll retain the userbase that is willing to pay. You'll never get those who aren't willing to pay no matter what.