With the simultaneous rollout of restrictions on account sharing and price increases/addition of advertising, I’m cutting back severely on streaming services.

I allowed my streaming subscriptions to grow without thinking about it. Without trying to remember the constant merging and bundling, I was subscribed to probably a dozen services at one point. They ranged from Netflix and HBO and Hulu to Shudder and Showtime. I had Paramount, Criterion, Disney, Peacock, and others. I’d do the typical thing where I’d search for a movie, find it is exclusive to a platform, and grab the free trial and forget to cancel. I excused it if I found a movie even every couple of months on it. There were still nights where it’d take an hour to find something I wanted to watch. I was probably closing in on $200/month all told, and I don’t have sports subscriptions.

I’m interested in learning what other people are doing regarding the price hikes and service compromises. Are you cancelling? Are you taking advantage of bundles with your internet services? Are you rotating on some interval? Or are you not changing at all?

  • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    Speaking as a Linux user who started pirating again last year for the first time since I was a teenager, yes it is very hard. Things have changed a lot. I had to relearn everything.

    The internet is not the same place it was 20, 10, or even five years ago.

      • Wugmeister@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I know that site exists, but heres what I had to do to find it

        1. I started with the method that worked for me in high school: searching Google for “Showname Ep. 1 online free download”. Nothing.
        2. Search reddit for clues to why all the piracy sites have disappeared. Fail to find anything because you haven’t even identified the problem.
        3. Give up, go to bed.
        4. Next week, remember DuckDuckGo exists. Search for the same thing on DuckDuckGo. Get a bunch of link aggregator sites linking me to piracy sites that require a subscription.
        5. Search for a while, give up, go to bed.
        6. A few weeks later, look up “The Daily Life of the Immortal King ep 1 free online download” on the Brave search engine. The second result is a 123Movies page.
        7. Bookmark the site and try to use it for everything.