Enshittification

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Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

[…]
Microsoft has bet an awful lot on generative AI tech, and by making Copilot opt-out rather than opt-in, the company can show figures to shareholders that AI is going swimmingly and it hasn’t made a terrible, terrible mistake. The same applies to Apple, Google, and many others in the tech industry.
[…]

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Because if they made it opt-in, nobody would use it.

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Yeah, that definitely won’t inspire me to shop at CVS. I have to give them my personal info just to shop. Fuck that shit.

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Netflix just announced another price increase. The standard-with-ads plan is going up a dollar to 7.99 per month.

This triggered the memory that back in 2011 when Netflix officially split the DVD and streaming sides of the house, each plan separately cost 7.99. Prior to the split, the bundled monthly subscription was $10. (You may well recall the not-unreasonable outrage that this change caused at the time.)

I was curious, so I did some CPI calculations on the (still-working, for now) calculator at the BLS:

$10 in July 2011 is worth $14 today. Using Netflix’s logic, this was an equal split between DVDs and streaming, so I was effectively paying $7 (December 2024 equivalent) for streaming prior to the split.

Now that streaming plan will cost me $8. Thats a 15% real-dollars increase in price for a shittier plan – one that now has ads and also doesn’t include Netflix’s full streaming collection. Not to mention that Netflix’s streaming collection is a bunch of bland tat compared to what it had in 2011.

The standard (no ads) plan is now $18 a month. This is much closer to the legacy streaming plan in what it includes (though it does include HD where the legacy plan didn’t). That’s more than a 150% price increase compared to the 2011 streaming plan in real dollars. And the collection, though not artificially limited in the same way as the ads-supported plan, is still tat.

Thanks for nothin’, Netflix.

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Just got a ToS update e-mail from Disney+ / Hulu. One of the paragraphs:

We are clarifying that, as we continue to increase the breadth and depth of the content we make available to you, circumstances may require that certain titles and types of content include ads, even in our ‘no ads’ or ‘ad free’ subscription tiers.

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< head desk head desk >

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This is why I refuse to sign up for more streaming services. We only have Amazon prime for the free shipping but so far have watched Mrs. Maisel and maybe 1 or 2 other shows. OTOH we have tons of DVDs we haven’t watched in a decade or two we can rewatch.

Or maybe do something constructive.

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All too familiar shopping gripe

I have had to ask employees to open locked cabinets twice in my life, I think

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This is two of the three largest bar prep companies merging. Bar prep courses are already outrageously expensive, and sadly almost mandatory since law school doesn’t actually prepare you for the bar exam. Reduced competition, I’m sure, will lead to lower prices. Right? No? Damn.

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But but, they’re “deepening their commitment”!

< gagging again on profit-speak pablum >

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And to be clear, I like Barbri. I think their courses and their instructors are great. Hell, one of them, Prof. Richard Freer, is often called the GOAT by law school students all over the country, and has been for probably the last 20 years. If you’ve gone to law school in the last 20 years, odds are good you learned more Civ Pro from Richard Freer than you did from your actual Civ Pro class. Side note: he’s the new Dean of Emory University School of Law, and that’s good news for future Georgia lawyers.

But Barbri is very expensive, and this is likely to make it even more expensive. And that sucks.

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