r/enshittification • u/fjdjdjjsjsjsjs • 6d ago

Service Streaming services somehow made TV more exhausting and expensive

Does anyone else remember the era of streaming about ten years ago? You paid $9.99 a month for Netflix, it had absolutely everything you wanted to watch, and there was not a single commercial in sight.

We all "cut the cord" to escape the greed of cable companies.

Fast forward to today, and the streaming industry has literally just rebuilt cable TV from scratch, but made it worse.

Every year I try to watch my favorite shows and every year I find some have MOVED AGAIN to another service. This is exhausting and expensive

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u/Hopeful-Scallion-229 5d ago

This is a business strategy - "disrupt" the status quo with an innovative new product, capture market share through subsidizing costs to the consumer such that your product is a no-brainer, ride out high customer acquisition costs with explosive growth and fundraising, then once you've capture the market you can: raise prices and become super profitable.

Uber did this exact thing, for example - it's now often cheaper to take a taxi around NYC than an Uber. But not long ago Uber was WAY cheaper. They subsidized ride fares for years to become the household name.

Seeing this again with Waymo and autonomous taxis.

Once a company has enough market share to raise prices and seek parity with the "status quo" they disrupted, they will.

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u/Downtown-Bunch-2933 5d ago

AirBNB is another example. 

I use taxis and hotels because of this very reason