I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don’t need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don’t need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it’s easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you’re sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don’t give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).
And Prime? Don’t think people won’t start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don’t need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.
People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure…but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.
Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. “It’s 2 days from when the order is processed.” I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it’s processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you’re telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?
This depends heavily where you are. In urban areas the one day and overnight options have expanded quite a bit, but seemingly at the expense of rural two day options.
I think it’s important to keep expectations realistic though…
in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it’s still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don’t know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.
Yeah no denying YouTube is particularly hard to replace, hence why there’s been nary a competitor even after all this time. I think paying for server upkeep could be a model that ekes out a victory…it would be drastically cheaper to users, and would come without ads or any of that other annoying junk. Ultimately someone needs to pay the bills, so it’s not like I even blame YouTube for making you choose between ads or subscriptions. It’s just when they push it further than that, always further, forever further and further…
I’ve been using Nebula, and I dig it. It’s owned by the creators and there’s no algorithm. Only sucks you can’t really share since it’s all paywalled. They have a guest pass but the person has to sign up so I doubt people would bother.
I had recently heard about that service for the first time and I do think it’s a good step forward. But like you said, being properly walled off is a big miss w.r.t the ideal vision of Internet culture. I think that’s why I like the idea of server bill crowdfunding (same model that Lemmy instances use basically). Some people need to step up and pay for it, and once a threshold is reached, the content is publicly available for all. But it’s not like the people who pay are martyrs, since of course if nobody pays then the thing is lost entirely.
For a video hosting service, I feel like paywalling features is a good compromise, too. Once the bills are covered, everyone gets to enjoy ad-free, unsponsored videos… something along those lines would be preferable, at least to me since I feel like the openness of the internet is a great component to what makes it such a special place. Not that I mind private internet spaces either. I think both are important. So I think Nebula has a place in my personal utopian internet landscape too lol
Amazon is doing the exact same thing. Just got an email today that they’re shutting down the family Prime sharing thing. Had that for ten years now.
I really think corporations are starting to overplay their hands here. People don’t need Prime as much as Amazon thinks they do, people don’t need YouTube as much as Google thinks they do, and so on. Especially in the case of YT, yeah, turns out it’s easy to compete when your service is free. But once it gets freemium enough, things like Peertube start to take a place on the optimal frontier. Right now Peertube only competes with YouTube if you’re sensitive to the dimension of a service being centralized or not, most people don’t give a shit about that. But the dimension of cost and ads? Enshittify YouTube too much and suddenly Peertube has its place for anyone who cares about money or time (i.e everyone).
And Prime? Don’t think people won’t start just going to stores again, or buying directly from producers. At least if I go to an actual website to buy my stuff I don’t need to worry about getting ripped off by some drop-ship fake brand garbage.
People love their little conveniences and will try to hang on to them, sure…but I think this could really start to backfire if they push it much further.
Shipping is still free if orders are over $35. Add to cart, order when you have enough. Their 2 day shipping has become bs these days anyhow. “It’s 2 days from when the order is processed.” I bought the shit, money came out of my account, it’s processed. I have made a legal exchange with the expectation that your mutli billion company can place an order and box shit near immediately from 50+ warehouses. I order in the morning, and you’re telling me it took you 2 days to get that order with a preprinted label onto a truck?
This depends heavily where you are. In urban areas the one day and overnight options have expanded quite a bit, but seemingly at the expense of rural two day options.
I think it’s important to keep expectations realistic though…
in the case of Youtube there are very few groups/companies/whatever that could keep up with that kind of bandwidth. Federation helps here but it’s still a pretty niche thing for 99% of people who don’t know/care and just want their social media/forum/video site to work.
Yeah no denying YouTube is particularly hard to replace, hence why there’s been nary a competitor even after all this time. I think paying for server upkeep could be a model that ekes out a victory…it would be drastically cheaper to users, and would come without ads or any of that other annoying junk. Ultimately someone needs to pay the bills, so it’s not like I even blame YouTube for making you choose between ads or subscriptions. It’s just when they push it further than that, always further, forever further and further…
I’ve been using Nebula, and I dig it. It’s owned by the creators and there’s no algorithm. Only sucks you can’t really share since it’s all paywalled. They have a guest pass but the person has to sign up so I doubt people would bother.
I had recently heard about that service for the first time and I do think it’s a good step forward. But like you said, being properly walled off is a big miss w.r.t the ideal vision of Internet culture. I think that’s why I like the idea of server bill crowdfunding (same model that Lemmy instances use basically). Some people need to step up and pay for it, and once a threshold is reached, the content is publicly available for all. But it’s not like the people who pay are martyrs, since of course if nobody pays then the thing is lost entirely.
For a video hosting service, I feel like paywalling features is a good compromise, too. Once the bills are covered, everyone gets to enjoy ad-free, unsponsored videos… something along those lines would be preferable, at least to me since I feel like the openness of the internet is a great component to what makes it such a special place. Not that I mind private internet spaces either. I think both are important. So I think Nebula has a place in my personal utopian internet landscape too lol
No they are keeping the family plan but shutting down the non household sharing. Now it is “one additional adult and four kids.”
What?!
Yeah, sucks. Give this a read.