this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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They want the old cable tv days back, but worse
Nice thing is it can't come back. There are too many other sources of entertainment and information to make one feel like one is missing out by simply opting out.
Yeah, to this day all commercials are skippable on a DVR. It was stupid for anyone to think things with streaming would settle any differently.
Streaming was different for years and years. But then people got greedy.
For ages the four nations lived in harmony...
Greed isn't new, streaming companies aren't more or less greedy than cable companies. But internet companies innovated surveillance capitalism which cable companies couldn't do with their infrastructure. Streaming just waited to roll out unskippable ads so they could win customers early on with an artificially, temporarily better service.
This is the exact same thing cable did when it came out.
No. Cable brought improved picture over broadcast signals, brought programming to underserved areas, and had a greater number and diversity of channels. Those fundamental improvements over the prior technology never went away.
You can complain that cable TV got more expensive over time, but you can say the same thing about cars and houses and health care.
No, cable was commercial-free when it first came out just like streaming was. They repeated the ota signals for the broadcast stations which of course contained commercials, but extremely similarly to streaming they started out with a quality and ad-free pitch for their own networks and then wound up pivoting to screwing over the customer any way possible.
(As they continue to do today, btw.)
Some cable channels are still commercial free, all of them are since the DVR was invented 25 years ago. Watermarks suck, a DVR can't erase those. But nothing cable has done comes close to the fuckery we've gotten with surveillance and tracking, targeted ads, unskippable ads that is the present and future of streaming.
Cable providers have unskippable ads on their own "on demand" platforms. I'm sure they track everything you do on their apps and their (often required for no technical reason) cable boxes. The only reason they didn't participate more in surveillance capitalism is that they didn't have the technical chops. They tried -- and are still trying -- their best to strangle broadband with needless data caps and anticompetitive agreements with alternative ISPs.
Cable companies were also rabidly anti-dvr as anyone who had a tivo can attest to. I'm glad you like your cable provider or whatever, but cable companies suck in the US.
No, but companies are made of individual people who get more or less greedy with time, like most other attributes of people. Which is why I said 'people got greedy'.
It's quite something how they're trying to force the Internet to work as an artificial version of things we already have, instead of using it for the unique purposes which it can actually fulfill.
Youtube is also trying to be more like TV. Apparently, TV wasn’t bad enough.
They want the old cable TV days, but worse, and filling their pockets instead.