We are turning into subscription slaves (2023)

https://medium.com/festival-of-dangerous-ideas/we-are-turning-into-subscription-slaves-b9957df37d88

by robtherobber • 3 years ago

59 70 3 years ago

medium.com

NoZebra120vClip• 3 years ago

Ironic, because the first popup as I navigated to medium.com was an offer for me to subscribe.

mr90210• 3 years ago

I thought the same LOL.

lifestyleguru• 3 years ago

The revolutionaries and people opening your eyes are loo lazy to setup and host their own blog. Plus some ad income is good too, to sustain their revolutionary writing.

disqard• 3 years ago

Savage and incisive comment.

Even the "thought leaders" who might try to rouse you from your compromised state, are themselves compromised.

We're all stuck in this local extreme of ad/rent-supported "free Internet".

alde• 3 years ago

I stopped clicking on any Medium links a while ago. Why even sponsor this walled garden?

_hao• 3 years ago

I'm very close to returning to the high seas for content... A personal recent anecdote. I wanted to watch Interstellar again a few days ago. Beginning of the previous month I saw it on Prime/Netflix or both (can't remember). A month later when I wanted to actually watch it it was gone from both services... I got really pissed off, but I rented it from Prime, because I wanted to watch it with my family "now".

Your app that does random thing "X" does not need a subscription. Stop. Doing. This. This rent seeking behaviour doesn't pose well for any of us.

madeofpalk• 3 years ago

Your app that does random thing "X" does not need a subscription.

I don't think it's quite that straight forward. Software is undervalued - people are not prepared to pay a real sustainable price for it, while also expecting constant updates and maintance. Users who paid $5 for an app five years ago will expect an update for the new iOS to add widget support, for example.

Subscriptions better ensure incremental income for incremental updates.

wongarsu2• 3 years ago

However subscriptions often set the expectation that you must consume incremental updates, when really I would often be happier to stay at a particular version. Often made worse by the implicit assumption that since you are paying something has to change, leading to changes without clear purpose.

sjfjsjdjwvwvc3• 3 years ago

Good software doesn’t need constant updates or maintenance.

Personally I hate the culture of incremental updates, shipping halfbroken beta versions, bolting on security as last measure because who gives a fuck about dataleaks. Everyone trying to build an everything app and sucking up all the data they can get their hands on.

The sad thing is nowadays most software „engineers“ or product „managers“ can’t even imagine an alternative to this.

Write a program that does one thing well and you don’t need to constantly update it.

delusional• 3 years ago

It's a strange mix of simultaneous under- and overvaluation. Single applications are undervalued, but the entire industry is overvalued. Our innovative user exploitation tactics have enabled the profitable creation of tons of software with no underlying value.

The software us undervalued compared to what it costs to produce, but overvalued in terms of what it's worth to users.

jeroenhd2• 3 years ago

Stability updates to deal with API changes, perhaps. New features like widgets? I'm not so sure.

I've paid for an MP3 player app six years ago and the APK still works fine, although the UI looks a bit wonky on a phone screen four times the size of what I had back in the day. I don't expect anything more than an update in case MP3 playback somehow breaks.

Maybe this is different in recent years, with iOS putting the burden of backwards compatibility more with the developers and Google now following suit in their attempts to add decent privacy restrictions to a previously unrestricted API, but I think consumers don't expect all that much from one-time purchases.

You'll lose market share if you don't add new features, as well as new customers if your app is falling behind others, but that's a separate problem.

On the other hand, the moment you ask just a single euro per year as a subscription, people expect to be up to date all the time. After all, you're still charging them even, so why wouldn't the app ever improve?

Everyone knows a software business does better with recurring revenue instead of single purchases, but customer expectations are also higher if they're still paying you five years down the line.

yetihehe• 3 years ago

I've bought a game recently. It's pretty nice, but it has one problem - a big multiplayer universe which requires some servers to keep up, but the game is not subscription based. The result - quotas on the one small server cluster, so every evening there are constant "Blue Cobra" or "Taupe Python" or similar errors which are just "we don't have enough money for more servers, don't like it don't play, we have your money already".

ant6n• 3 years ago

The prices are usually set mich higher tho. That app that costs 5$, for which the user perhaps expects an update 5 years later won’t move to a subscription model for 1$ per year, but probably 1$ per month. Over 5 years that’ll be a tenfold increase.

RhysU• 3 years ago

Software is undervalued

The best indicator of the value of a thing is the price at which free parties trade it.

M95D• 3 years ago

And yet, Total Commander is selling since 1993 (Windows Commander back then) and is still updated today.

FirmwareBurner• 3 years ago

I'm very close to returning to the high seas for content

I never left. I'm only paying for software and games. IP owned by big music and movie studios is free game since they're scummy with their licensing.

AwaAwa• 3 years ago

If you are talking about being scummy as the root reason, shouldn't the plethora of AAA games released in a beta state count? Add in the DLCs and possible subscriptions for "features".

whywhywhywhy• 3 years ago

I'm very close to returning to the high seas for content...

Made the jump back a few weeks ago. Incidentally the Intel N100 processor NUCs make a great <$250 Jellyfin server

bambax3• 3 years ago

I went the Asustor route and am very happy so far. It's a general filer, backup machine, and Jellyfin server.

There are two problems with subscription services that your own server solves:

1. Shows you like suddenly disappear for no reason (as in GP)

2. They contain a huge amount of things you don't care for, that you can never truly filter out no matter how hard you try.

Your own media server contains all (or most of) the shows you like, and only those.

sschueller• 3 years ago

If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing...

eth0up• 3 years ago

Nope. Just authorized/unauthorized access, from an arbitrary system POV.

No worries though; hell will be fully authorized for those who can't afford purgatory.

digitalengineer2• 3 years ago

The argument is often made you can get the ‘better’ product if you pay for a ‘product-as-a-service subscription. Even for simple hardware like say a washing machine. Sure you can get the cheap one, but I’ll break almost immediately after the warranty expires and it will use so much more water and energy… or you could get the efficient one that won’t break down, because the company selling those wont have to worry about their quarterly sales.

Tanoc• 3 years ago

The argument has been proven false many times however. SiriusXM provides an ever worsening product with more and more sponsored stations showing up to replace their diminishing licensed library, Adobe continues to introduce bugs to their software because there's no incentive to fix anything if people are so deep into the ecosystem and have no way of going back to a more stable version, and Nest provides no local storage options for video because it denies them access to the data and doesn't allow them to put a barrier between you and the video files. Increasingly subscriptions are there so a company can do something once and coast for months or years afterwards. It continues the tradition of trying to get as much money for as little effort as possible.

digitalengineer2• 3 years ago

I totally agree. Vulture capitalism.

LargeTomato5• 3 years ago

This post is a bit messy. The author starts talking about ads and algorithms manipulating us before quickly saying that subscriptions are similarly harmful, except that link is not really explained. It's randomly shoehorned in.

The author likens John Deere and Netflix but quickly brushes aside the fact that digital media and physical tractors are very different things to own.

Finally, the author suggests that paid subscriptions are bad because they can restrict our access to material and steal our data. I concede the first point but not the later. Reading my news subscriptions is significantly better than reading "Google News" and other ad-driven media suggestions.

Overall I am disappointed in the quality of the argument. This person does actually have a PhD which makes me want to talk to this person in a long form conversation where they won't feel constrained by this specific medium (pun intended).

Handprint4469• 3 years ago

Out of curiosity, did you use ChatGPT to help you write this comment? It uses the following format:

The author starts talking..... The author likens..... Finally, the author suggests...... Overall, I am disappointed in....

Which, while a perfectly valid way of structuring a comment, it's more usually found in ChatGPT-style answers than in random comments on the Internet.

LargeTomato5• 3 years ago

I promise you I did not! But I have recently started changing my "prose" to be more clear, layering information thoughtfully, and spending more words on filler (e.g. The Author Suggests). I definitely learned part of it from reading chat gpt. I like it better than some of the more math-y or academic writing which I will sometimes use but only if I need to be hyper specific.

sragh• 3 years ago

That style is also totally in line with correspondence into magazines like The Economist and Time. It’s not exclusive to ChatGPT

matthewfelgate• 3 years ago

I'm not sure talking about theoretical problems that don't exist is very useful. Better to talk and question about the present subscription culture.

ryanackley• 3 years ago

After reading the first few paragraphs, my first thought of the future was a dystopian police state rather than concern for "renting" vision.

The federal law enforcement apparatus in America has a long history of pushing for more power and pushing the boundaries of its power. Warrantless data collection is at an all-time high. Most of us brush it off as no concern since we are law-abiding citizens.

I'm beginning to see it as a real threat after the last election. It made me feel less secure in the stability of our political system. It's conceivable that someone could come to power and abuse law enforcement for political purposes on a large scale. I recognize that some people believe it's already happening but I'm not one of them.

prirun• 3 years ago

The Dept of Homeland Security, established after 9/11, has been involved in copyright violations of all things. When I read an article about that I was kinda shocked.

https://www.dhs.gov/intellectual-property-rights

nunez• 3 years ago

Interestingly, hearing aids are often rented due to their high out-of-the-box cost and have been for way longer than SaaS's existence. Fortunately, none of what the author predicted here has happened because governments would probably not tolerate this.

sjfjsjdjwvwvc3• 3 years ago

Tangentially related but copyright is broken and needs urgent reform. It does not serve its intended purpose anymore and this is just one symptom of it.

dang2• 3 years ago

We've banned this account for posting these comments excessively and ignoring our request to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38849739).

The issue isn't your views on copyright (I'm not tracking what they are, but I'm sure they're fine and no doubt plenty of people agree with you). Rather the issue is that you've been posting about this repetitively and excessively. That's not allowed on HN. It adds noise rather than signal, and we want signal here.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll stop doing this in the future.

sjfjsjdjwvwvc3• 3 years ago

Hey dang, Apologies I missed your earlier warning… I see that this was the wrong approach and noisy. I’ll work a bit on steel manning my arguments for reform and write a blogpost instead and share it with HN after to focus the discussion, been spending a bit too much time to write these comments anywhere. Please unban me dang I won’t do it again ^^

huppeldepup2• 3 years ago

It's also becoming normal that these subscription services make you jump hoops to terminate the contract (tried to close your vpn subscription recently?). A few years ago I could just let my paypal run dry and that would stop the payment and end the contract. Nowadays I can no longer make paypal payments without linking my bank account, which means you have to jump the hoops to end the payments.

p0w3n3d• 3 years ago

'subscribe with your credit card' is yet another trap, therefore we need legal terms to be able to cancel in the middle of the period, and a proportional amount of money should be returned.

But still this is psychological barrier to cancel, as FOMO kicks in

harshreality• 3 years ago

You can manage/terminate individual autopay/linked merchants at paypal. It's at the bottom of the settings>payments page, follow the automatic payments link.

huppeldepup2• 3 years ago

Thank you very much for this tip.

hasty_pudding2• 3 years ago

We're already heading that way with housing. Normal houses in places where jobs/opportunities are available are trending into the million dollar range.

bonton89• 3 years ago

One of the solutions floated to the nursing shortage around here was to build housing owned by the hospital. Sounds great, strike and risk losing your job AND house when there is no housing availability.

hasty_pudding2• 3 years ago

Lol, going back to those old mining towns where they pay you in company money and you live on company housing

xigoi• 3 years ago

The irony of posting this on a site known for nagging for subscriptions…

naikrovek• 3 years ago

I don't think "slaves" is the correct word here, but there is something going on that I can't put into words. Capitalism++ where instead of businesses providing services in exchange for a fair amount of currency, everyone is just fighting to pull as much currency from others as they can, while everyone else tries to pull as much currency as possible out of them.

it has stopped being a symbiotic relationship and has started to become adversarial. extremely adversarial in some ways. it's exhausting and I don't see how it can continue.

in capitalism there is somehow this idea that future growth is uncapped, and that the line on the graph must always trend upwards and that is just not realistic. ..everything is finite. the lines simply can't continue to trend upwards forever. but everyone is acting like there's just infinite money, and all you have to do is ask people for it.

The number of times per day that I must say "no" to ads and subscriptions and offers and all of those things surely must be in the thousands.

Per day.

It's wearing my soul down. There is no chance that I'm alone, here.

CatWChainsaw2• 3 years ago

Don't worry, you're far from alone, and the number of people who think this way is going to grow the longer this goes on, the more they're squeezed, for less and less value. Unfortunately the economy can remain batshit longer than any one person can remain solvent. Detach as much as possible.

CatWChainsaw2• 3 years ago

It will just get worse from here. If someone can find a way to monetize something, it will be monetized, and the money will be leaving your wallet for some quadrillionaire who simply needs a yacht and wants it built in a dry dock that will require destroying historic architecture to launch.

We are turning into subscription slaves (2023)

Related Stories