gohixo9650

a bit off topic but when you say personal instance where is it hosted? And if it is strictly personal, doesn't google create the same profile for you which will be assigned in your IP if it is hosted in your house, or in your VPS's IP if hosted elsewhere?

I'm also curious why people pretend it doesn't exist when they say "there is no other video uploading platform like youtube"

I’m not quite sure who in particular you’re referring to in your last statement and surely I’ve misinterpreted what you mean with it, but to be clear, I personally don’t think it would be fair towards employees to slash their income and expect them to work without making ends meet so that the rest of us to enjoy a recreational service.

what are you even talking about? I never said employees' income should be slashed or expect them to work without making ends meet. I just said, that in such big corps, even though that in the papers they may saw declined numbers or even be below zero, there are still a few people (see executive board) who still make tremendous amounts of money. A CEO will always walk out with millions in their pockets because, well, that was their salary and the company's debts are not their own debts, so, well, capitalism. Ok, the company failed, there is no money to pay off debts and employees, but the money they made from the company is now theirs and cannot be asked back to pay off company debt. Because that's the legal system, the company was different entity. There is nobody liable for it in terms of personal liability.

It is always the lower level employees who take the hit.

I think it’s a very nuanced stance to suggest that price changes aren’t solely driven by corporate greed

do you seriously believe that the CEO of netflix was struggling to survive, was living on a month-by-month paycheck, and was having any cut in their "wage" ?

Some people tend to forget that behind a corporation that presents numbers that are falling behind, there are humans who make profits regardless.

I get your point. For me (and I suppose for some other people) works a bit different. When I'm not actively participating in a conversation, up/down vote is a quick way to show agreement/disagreement. I cannot upvote something that I complete disagree. However, in cases that I'm actively engaging, I don't use it as a punishment tool so I just abstain. Like here, I weren't downvoting you because it was an active ongoing conversation and I expressed myself by comments. You were actively engaging in good faith (I suppose) so it was fine. But at the same time I could not upvote either the comments in which I was finding myself disagreeing (I think I upvoted 1-2 at the end). However people are "passing-by" and up/downvote to show their view. Don't take it as your punishment. But also you cannot "demand" that since you wrote something that you believe contributes to a discussion everyone should also believe that your points were so well made that should be upvoted even though they disagree. By this logic we should upvote everything that is longer that 5 words.

you're overthinking it. There is not even a "global" karma like reddit. Your up/down-votes are not counting towards your "internet points". They are in a per-comment basis and they're a quick way to interact with opinions. Would you prefer everyone commenting "agree"/"disagree" ?

downvotes is just a way to show that you disagree with something. It is not there to punish you. People choose some topics to engage actively by participating in the comments while in some other topics they prefer to express their opinion just by agree/disagree (upvote/downvote). Now you call a whole community toxic just because not everyone agrees with you..

enlighten me then

and never go into any kind of depth about underlying causes and contributing factors.

sure, if you don't agree with what is being replied to you, then these are shallow comments. Your replies here were the deep analysis. Good job

I’m not completely following your train of thought with a “fake price,” though.

you said that they now needed to correct to the "real price" in terms that it is a price that will allow them not to operate at a loss. So the previous one was a "faked" (artificial) price, that they knew was below cost, however they chose to go with it in order to lure customers.

I'm not implying that they tried to scam anyone with "fake prices" if this is what you understood.

I don’t think we should underestimate the savvy programmers out there

you can't imagine how many programmers out there are living their life without adblocks. Even before this last month's shitshow

There are certainly consumers out there with this kind of mentality, but it’s a common sales strategy to lure new customers with a reduced subscription fee for the first months only. It evidently works, because businesses have been doing this long before SVOD services, or even the internet for that matter, existed.

Your claim that this is a tactic happening since for ever doesn't take into account the differences between subscription model and traditional businesses. In traditional businesses, yes, a business may decrease the prices in order to lure customers, but this was never their business model. This was limited time "get to know us". I don't think there was for example any supermarket operating at loss for 5 years before they decide to "ok, lets put the real prices on the shelves now".

I don’t think it’s fair to call this a fake audience, because these are real users of which a certain percentage will be retained.

of course it is a fake audience. The fact that some users will be retained doesn't make the 100% of the audience real. And also by fake audience it doesn't necessarily mean that the whole 100% of the audience is fake. However, when they present their numbers, and they claim that "because of piracy we lost 5 million subscribers" this is based on the 5 million subscribers who potentially would never be subscribers if they had their "real" price upfront, instead of a price in which they operate at loss.

However, when people are charged for piracy, they are charged based on imaginative loses who are based on a potential profit which would had been achieved if their 100% of customer base had been continuing paying a subscription which they would had never agreed paying if the price was not faked in order to attract them.

The free market effect will gradually resolve this as services that are all currently operating at a loss will correct their price models, which is what I believe is currently happening.

the free market will turn to the government to cover their losses and they will push for stricter anti piracy law enforcement. The free market evangelists just want a free to control market. I don't think they will be "ok, customers are leaving after our latest increase in price, then let's just decrease the price to get them back on board"