Technology

Ahoy Matey!

I’ve been a Prime member from the very beginning, but I’m seriously reevaluating whether I should drop it. The value proposition is decreasing for me. At $99 I thought it was pretty good considering the perks like video and music. But then they crippled Prime Music a few months back so it’s a shadow of what it once was (pushing you to subscribe to Unlimited). Now Prime Video is getting ads. Those “extras” are becoming less compelling. So I’m paying $140 annually for just free shipping? Hmmm, these numbers don’t add up anymore.

This is a disturbing trend. Apparently a lot of these major streaming services are discovering that they can make more from ads than people paying for the service. At least when calculated with the subscriber counts they currently have. It seems they don't anticipate people leaving their services over this.

Personally there is no way I would ever pay for a service that has ads. I'm not going to pay for a service even if its paid service doesn't have ads if it has a free or cheaper service with ads as that would just be rewarding them for implementing ads.

For example with Amazon's plan here. If you pay this $3.00 to remove ads then you are paying Amazon $3.00 because they added ads. This only increases the amount of ads that will be added to things.

“Must… make… exponential… profit… Line must go up!”

Looks like I canceled Prime right on time. Literally just did it after having it for years because it no longer provides any meaningful benefit, and it's grossly overpriced for what it is.

When I used to get two-day shipping all the way here in bumfuck, South Dakota, then it was worth it, but it's faster now just to order from some other site.

Ad free is the only way for a service im paying anything for. If they introduce ads then i will no longer be paying.

Well that's getting fucking cancelled then. The constant FreeVee ad supported shit was annoying enough, but they can properly fuck off now. Prime is just a vehicle to sell you more shit.

I would pay for Amazon Prime if they offered purely a free 2-day shipping only version, but I refuse to pay for Prime if it supports the media companies, so I don't pay for Prime. I have zero interest in DRM-filled "you will own nothing and be happy" streaming bullshit, and I have negative interest in the same thing with ads. Enshittification at its finest.

Nope, fuck this. Been thinking about canceling Prime for a while now, they just keep raising the price while at the same time all their services get worse year after year.

I canceled mine a year or two ago. Tbh I have not missed it much.

I also did not miss the shipping part as much as I thought I would. If I need to make an order, I wait until I have enough needs to hit the $35 level for free shipping. Even though amazon claims otherwise, I usually end up getting stuff in 2 days just like I used to with Prime.

This has the added benefit of making it less likely for me to be lazy and order a bunch of smaller things. I thus end up getting those things locally.

Time to cancel Prime. Removing perks. Increasing prices. Saturating us with ads.

Too much money is never enough! We need to monetize monetization! Assholes.

Imagine if any of these rich assholes were actually good guys?

Amazon Prime shows begin to be pirated by Amazon Prime Subscribers, until the end of the billing ear when they are no longer Prime Subscribers.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum for me!

I get my prime half off.

The added cost is less than the difference so I'd still be paying less than a regular prime membership.

And even still, I'm canceling the second I get an ad.

Fuck your monetization.

Streaming was nice while it lasted but these companies have survived looking enough too become the villains they sought to replace. Sad but fuck them and hoist the sails I say.

This is exactly why I pay for a seedbox and a usenet provider. I get an .mkv with no ad.

Enshittification has just gotten started.

I've been on the fence with prime for a while, this will be the end