Yet another Hacker News

Disney+: New user agreement allows ads before movies in all subscriptions

31 points DeepLogin 3 hours ago 13 comments

ljf 18 minutes ago | parent

When we first got Disney + it was a winner in our house, then kids loved what they could watch, there was good family viewing too, and then was a few good shows that my wife and I were interested.

Lately, it has been right down our list. I think my daughter still watches it on occasion, but nothing of note that I want to watch. If we didn't get it for free with our bank account, I'd cancel it. And with adverts, I'd be cancelling in a heartbeat.

Juggling subscriptions has become really expensive lately - but the only one I value is Netflix, but even then I don't feel I get great value from it, we seem to watch far less TV or films this year.

cynicalsecurity 17 minutes ago | parent

Meanwhile pirates don't see any ads. Make this make sense.

lordleft 17 minutes ago | parent

Something I really dislike about modern consumer products is that companies simply don’t care if their decisions leave their customers embittered and feeling negatively about their decisions. It seems like that used to be a salient factor in how firms designed, sold and pitched their wares.

laughing_man 12 minutes ago | parent

They've done the calculation. They'll lose X income because of subscribers who leave, and they'll get Y extra income from the ones who remain. If X < Y then implement policy.

usrbinbash 10 minutes ago | parent

Companies increasingly no longer even care about income.

They care about what boosts investor confidence.

So even if implementing a policy lowers operative income, if the growth in stock value offsets this, aka. number-go-up == true, the policy is implemented.

kuerbel 5 minutes ago | parent

It depends on the product though. The problem with streaming is that structurally, you have competition (other streaming services) but content wise not so much. If you want to watch Foundation, you need Apple tv. Netflix might have another good SciFi series, but it's not foundation... same for any other movie or series... in a way, people are more open to accept these terms because they want to watch their favorite show. So there is no real competition. And they get away with it because customers accept it.

jamesnorden 14 minutes ago | parent

They're turning streaming into regular TV again, absolute nonsense.

DarkNova6 10 minutes ago | parent

It's like paying for cable back in the day but you also get ads. The sheer audacity they think they can get away with because they consider themselves having a monopoly.

semiquaver 7 minutes ago | parent

Did anyone actually read the linked wiki in full? It’s basically saying “if there are embedded ads in certain live (likely sports) content we carry you may see them even on an ad-free plan because we don’t have an alternative. Also we might try to promote different tiers of Disney+ itself within the app so to the extent you see that as an ad, that’s an exception to ‘ad-free’”

I’m all for consumer awareness but I’m begging everyone to stop freaking out over prosaic non-issues like this.

shakna 3 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]