It’s time to rethink our relationships with streaming services

This is the best summary I could come up with:

But with the most recent round of services like Disney Plus, Hulu, Peacock, and Paramount Plus raising their prices — during Hollywood’s ongoing double labor strike, no less — to meet the demand of shareholders for never-ending profits, the time has come for all of us to seriously rethink our relationships with the platforms that have become “the new cable.”

Over the weekend, the Financial Times published a bit of analysis about the current state of streaming that should only come as a surprise to those who haven’t been paying attention to how most of the major Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) platforms, and many smaller ones like Starz, Shudder, and BritBox, have hiked up their prices in the past year.

After years of burning through mountains of cash to fill their catalogs with original programming, the big SVOD services are now charging their subscribers more than ever because it’s increasingly difficult to draw in new customers — and because the mere perception of growth is no longer enough to keep their shareholders happy.

But much like the practice of memory-holing films and series just for tax write-offs, the push to goose subscription numbers by imposing new restrictions on old customers also highlights how this late stage of the streaming wars is being defined by the prioritization of profit margins over user experience.

Even though the streamers love being seen and celebrated as pop cultural tastemakers, Netflix — like its competition — is a company in the business of making money that owes much of its success to the way consumers have bought into the idea of it being absolutely necessary to keep up with every single new film or show that hits the internet.

To make things even trickier, the success of those streaming hits and others like them was undoubtedly influenced by the degree to which viewers were regularly flocking to social media platforms like Twitter to discuss them — a habit that feels like it’s on the decline in the era of Elon Musk’s X.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!