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You ill find many many people do not have a problem with businesses recovering costs when rates increases but that is just it, they should only be covering their costs but they don't, they put a bit extra on to get more profit than they already are and that is the problem many many people have when they see businesses raise their prices, it's all being done in the name of greed.

This is just an example of how people see it. A business currently charges $20 for an item. The business is already making a profit because they buy in the item for $6, then factor in business costs that push the cost to $19, they then add $1 to make a profit. Suddenly things go pair shaped in the world, energy companies increase their prices and everyone then compensates the energy price rise by raising their own prices. Now if the business raised their prices to cover the costs of the price rises to say something like $26, the business should still be making that $1 in profit but they don't because they use the external price rises to add on a little bit extra so instead of making the $1 profit, they increased it by $3. The original cost to the business being $6, the external price rise bringing it now to $9. The business put their own business costs on top of that which have slightly increase now making it $23 but instead of adding the $1 to keep the existing profit, they've now increased it to $3, making the total cost of the item $26.

This is how businesses are making their huge profits on increases in inflation, they are adding a little bit extra on top of the increase in costs to make more profit and people are falling for it.
 
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Long gone are the early ”Wild West” days of tech and the internet. Everything has been commoditized and priced accordingly. There are no more competitive advantages of having internet and consumer electronics. Everyone has technology and much has become commoditized necessity. Tech is no longer a our friend it is simply big business and as time goes on businesses will get wiser in figuring out ways to make maximum profits from consumers.

Amazon Prime, Streaming services, software subscriptions, artificially created paywalls all add up. We are probably worse off at this rate. We escaped cable tv, old wired phone companies, physical media, and many other traditional services. Heck TV and Radio were at least free in yesteryear when all of it was transmitted over antenna. In the end though we are and will be paying more than we have in the past. Yes we will be spending thousands of dollars per year per person on digital subscriptions and services going forward. Add those expenses to the cost of having to upgrade/replace hardware, the cost of internet connectivity itself and we have more of a curse than a blessing.

As much as I love technology sometimes I yearn for those simpler times before much of it existed. The early years were exciting and great. I am getting old…. I remember having dial up internet in high school while the vast amount of the population had no internet at all. I remember being one of the first among friends and acquaintances to get high speed cable/DSL internet. I remember my first iPod and iPhone, both of which were so Alien to 95%+ of the population. My first iPhone 3G was literally like a piece of the future that fell out of the sky. No Android back then the next best thing was a BlackBerry which is now so ancient in hindsight.

Oh well…. We can only move in one direction, forward we go for better or worse…. Oh yeah, Slack, Zoom, Google meets and a bunch of other things while cool at first have become sources of great angst.

All those subscriptions you list are still a choice. I have zero app/service subscriptions, and the only streaming service I have is Netflix because it's included with my phone plan.

Nothing is being forced, other than peer-pressure. The more that said companies charge, the more I disconnect. I'm financially well-to-do, but I'm extremely particular with where my money goes.
 
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Definitely not cheap and nearly everything listed is possible for free with browser plugins. I cannot imagine there’s a huge market for this type of service.

I get it....but on the other hand, if you subscribe you are helping out the content producers. Using ad blocking denies revenue to your favorite youtube independent entrepreneurs.
 
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That’s true.

I use my AppleTV for movies and TV shows. Never felt the need to watch mindless YT videos on the big screen. Partially because the app interface is so annoying, but even so I wouldn’t pay those ridiculous prices to remove ads.
Obviously time means nothing to you if you’re finding it worthwhile to watch a bunch of ads. I will pay anything for any streaming service as long as I don’t have to watch ads. It means when I sit down to watch something, I watch what I intended to watch instead of commercials or ads. It’s bad enough to waste time watching videos, let alone watching ads. Usually if it’s not educational or highly entertaining, I am out. If I have to watch any ads, I am out.

I suspect once you get past age 30, or gain wealth, you will start valuing your time more.
 
Just hurts the people who are already paying. Adblockers will still block ads or they’ll find a way. Feels like there’s more sponsored ads than YT ads these days for most creators anyway. Why pay for YT premium when the creators have longer sponsor segments you can’t skip???
Actually, you can skip those ads easily. There’s a button to rewind and fast forward the video by 5 or 10 seconds (I think you can set it up to even 15 or 30 seconds), and you can easily skip that 40 seconds advertisement with a few taps.

Also, as far as I know, there are some extensions that detect this sponsor breaks and avoid them. But I’ve never used them because I’m good just tapping on the FF button.
 
I suspect once you get past age 30, or gain wealth, you will start valuing your time more.

I'm 43 and have plenty of wealth. I don't mind ads because I can get a drink, go the the restroom or stand up and look out the windows for a few minutes. In addition, there is no way to watch live hockey or baseball and not see ads.

I watch very little streaming video/tv/movies though and would rather read or go outside and work in my garden or workshop.
 
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Glad I joined the defunct Google Play All Access (now YouTube Premium) for $7.99/mo way back in the day. Lucky to be grandfathered in, and hope Google doesn’t stop that.

Same here. I think it depends on just how many of us are still subscribed at that price. If the number is small enough, maybe they feel it isn't worth annoying some of their most longtime customers, especially since many would cancel as it would be a massive 75% price hike from $8 to $14.
 
I don’t really use YouTube at all but my cheap rich friends always send me YouTube links of music because they are too cheap to pay for music streaming let alone YouTube premium. I don’t get it if they can own luxury cars and have mansions and vacation homes and they enjoy YouTube why not splurge for the ad free. This is mostly for classical music for which the sound quality on at least free youtube isn’t great..
 
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If I could simply subscribe to a "no-ads" plan I would. As long as they do not offer this option, I will continue to live in "Turkey" on an annual plan for 15 EUR a year. I personally do not care about YouTube music, never even downloaded the app. I just want no ads!
I lived in “Argentina” for a while; I’m now in “Turkey”, it’s a cheaper country in YouTubeland 😂
 
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My elderly mother is incapable of even working an iPad , but I can set up a playlist on YouTube with hundreds of videos and all she has to remember is to push the power button on the Apple TV remote to turn it all on and again to turn it all off

Literally couldn’t be simpler , certainly saved what’s left of my sanity 😂
 
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I'm done with subscriptions. They have become an insidious "$nake" in our finances. Every industry is trying to invoke some type of $ub$cription plan. Public libraries are still free. Experiencing the natural world in real-time rather than through an internet connection is infinitely better. So are face-to-face meetings with other humans. Join a club/team/pub/volunteer, and go back to the office. The internet is a tool, not a life.
 
I "live" in India 😏😏 and pay 2.5 dollar a month .. More then that, im out ..

And in Turket Netflix HD is just 3 dollars a month.
 
It concerns me how many people willingly subscribe to this service, AND defend it and say it's a good value.

Just get Brave (or another ad-blocker browser) and you will never see another YouTube ad again. Then you can use the money you're saving to directly support creators, with donations or by subscribing to creator-owned services.
 
YouTube TV was great, then it got too expensive for me.

YouTube, I rarely use, but it has helped me fix my car, washer, faucet, stucco, and I liked Alton Brown’s channel. its handy as needed-but I wouldn’t pay for it as ads are okay in this case for me.

Peacock is also going up in price.
 
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As much as I love technology sometimes I yearn for those simpler times before much of it existed.

It can be done to an extent. Short of going to live in the woods and living off the land - impossible for most of us, me included - it’s not that hard to reduce your dependancy on tech. Most of use phones far, far more than is necessary, as I did until a few years ago.

I wanted back to a time pre smartphone, post internet, when I did browse the net, but when I chose to sit down in front of a computer/iPad for a while in the evening or something i.e. not every waking moment.

For a while I seriously considered going back to a dumbphone. Never done Twitter, Instagram, FaceBook blah blah, closest I get to social media is one WhatsApp group chat with close family. Problem was, I still needed/wanted music & audiobooks, maps, a camera (though I could live without), and (grudgingly) WhatsApp (UK here, everyone uses WhatsApp whether I like it or not). I was faced with multiple devices (dumbphone + iPod Touch or equivalent, maybe a camera too), no WhatsApp and no realistic maps solution (iPod Touch would be poor at that, tethered). As such, the “simplification” I wanted was anything but!

Anyway, got a 13 Mini, I think of it has a massively souped up iPod Touch. It’s permanently in low power mode, I use it strictly as tool, and an audio entertainment device only. The camera and Apple Pay are a bonus. Never dips below 40%, in fact usually I've about 60%+ left if I'm not working where it's sometimes a necessity.

It’s great, I’ve completely shook off that “use phone in every quiet moment” and for the last couple of years I’ve been a lot less annoyed at all the madness and infuriating issues that are completely and utterly beyond my control, and feel a lot more serene. I chuckle a little in sympathy when I see almost everyone I know get so agitated at…everything, I want to say to them “there is a solution!” but personally I feel like you have to come to this realisation yourself without being preached to - I'm not proselytising, merely saying what worked for me.

Bonus, my attention span has returned somewhat to pre smartphone days and I read a lot more books, the general criteria for which is "books that have stood the test of time" be they fiction or non-fiction.

In the WWDC keynote, Apple stressing the importance of mental health, then proceeding to pimp the Vision Pro made me shake my head tbh. More screens is the LAST thing people need outside of necessary work usage.
 
With so many talented people with their own channels, youtube surpassed the value of "network television" long ago. Whether free or premium, it's a fantastic value.

I can easily see traditional network television becoming extinct within 20 years.
It's quite amazing how high quality a lot of content is these days. The really talented people have studios set-up worth 100s of 1000's (even millions) with the money they've made from their videos. Some even have a large production team behind them. It allows them to keep creating better and better content.
 
I've already begun dropping streaming services. Dropped Netflix in 2017, only come back for a month whenever Chappelle has a new special. HBO is covered by my siblings, since they use my Hulu and Disney+.

Netflix's new password sharing crackdown hasn't affected us because I made an SD-WAN all based out of my house that makes it look like we're all in one place. It also allows me to manage all my families networks, security, etc and I can even have my mom print something from her house to my sister's printer 400 miles away. It's really cool.

Plus, with VPNs and DVDFab products, I can DMCA copy all of our digital media and store it in an NAS here and everyone has a network drive I manage.

But for $15.99, I'll gladly pay to skip commercials entirely. You do not understand how much I hate advertising. I would pay $100.00 a month to have not a single ad anywhere on the Internet. EVER AGAIN. That is how much I am ok with this despite the fact that I have the expertise to bootleg 100% of any content I want. I would rather pay people for it.

Convenience is expensive.
 
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