Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026

the word is actually “capitalism.” it’s baked into its dna.

Or sinisterization.

There was a lot of pioneering in the 70's. The first home computers, the first video games, the first mobile phones, all right there in the late 70's. Most people ended the 70's living like they did in the 60's but now there's cool shit like the Speak n' Spell. The average American home in 1979 had no microwave oven, a landline telephone and a TV that might have even been color. There were some nerds who had TRS-80s, some of them even had a modem so they could 300 baud each other. Normies saw none of this.

There was a lot of invention in the 80's. Home computer systems, video games etc. as we now commonly know them crystalized in the 80's. We emerged from the 80's with Nintendo as the dominant video game console platform, Motorola as basically the only name in cellular telephones and with x86 PCs running Microsoft operating systems as the dominant computing platform with Apple in a distant but solid second place. Video games were common, home computers weren't that out there, people still had land lines, and maybe cable TV or especially if you were out in the sticks you might have one of those giant satellite dishes. If you were a bit of an enthusiast you might have a modem to dial BBSes and that kind of stuff, but basically no one has an email address.

There was a lot of evolution in the 90's. With the possible exception of the world wide web which was switched on in August of '91, there weren't a lot of changes to how computing worked throughout the decade. Compare an IBM PS/2 from 1989 with a Compaq Presario from 1999. 3 1/4" floppy disk, CRT monitor attached via VGA, serial and parallel ports, keyboard and mouse attached via PS2 ports, Intel architecture with Microsoft operating system...it's the same machine 10 years later. The newer machine runs orders of magnitude faster, has orders of magnitude more RAM etc. but it still broadly speaking fills the same role in the user's life. An N64 is exactly what you'd expect the NES to look like after a decade. Cell phones have gotten sleeker and more available but it's still mostly a telephone that places telephone calls, it's the same machine Michael Douglas had in that one movie but now no longer a 2 pound brick. Bring a tech savvy teen from 1989 to 1999 and it won't take long to explain everything to him. The World Wide Web exists now, but a lot of retailers haven't embraced the online marketplace, the dotcom bubble bursts, it's not quite got the permanent grip on life yet.

There was a lot of revolution in the 2000's. Higher speed internet that allow for audio and video streaming, mp3 players and the upheaval those caused, the proliferation of digital cameras, the rise of social media. When I graduated high school in 2005, there were no iPhones, no Facebook, no Twitter, no Youtube. Google was a search engine that was gaining ground against Yahoo. The world was a vastly different place by the time I was through college. Take that savvy teen from 1989 and his counterpart from 1999 and explain to them how things work in 2009. It'll take a lot longer. In 2009 we had a lot of technology that had a lot of potential, and we were just starting to realize that potential. It was easy to see a bright future.

There was a lot of stagnation in the 2010's. We started the decade with smart phones and social media, and we ended the decade with smart phones and social media. Performance numbers for machines kept going up but you kinda don't notice; you buy a new phone and it's so much faster and more responsive, 4 years later it barely loads web pages and takes forever to launch an app because mobile apps are gaseous, they expand to take up their system. A lot of handset manufacturers have given up so now there are fewer options, and they've converged to basically one form factor. Distinguishing features are gone, things we used to be able to do aren't there anymore. The excitement wore off, this is how we do things now, and now everyone is here. Mobile app stores are full of phishing software, you're probably better advised to just use the mobile browser if you can, mainstream video gaming is now just skinner boxes, and by the end of the decade social media is all about propaganda silos and/or attention draining engagement slop.

Now we arrive in the 2020's where we find a lot of sinisterization. A lot of the tech world is becoming blatantly, nakedly evil. In truth this began in the 2010's, it's older than 4 years, but we're days away from the halfway point of the decade and it's becoming difficult to see the behavior of tech and media companies as driven only by greed, some of this can only come from a deep seated hatred of your fellow man. People have latched onto the term "enshittification" because it's got the word shit in it and that's hilarious, but...I see a spectrum with the stagnation of the teens represented with a green color and the sinisterization of the 20's represented with red, and the part in the middle where red and green make brown is enshittification.

I have a dwindling list of brands that are not yet dead to me.

All of them.

No one wants to pay money for the services they're using. Ads is the way to go.

How is showing me ads for things I will make a point not to buy because I implicitly hate the products of people showing me ads more profitable than the twenty fucking bucks a month I already give them?

Imagine if all that misallocated marketing budget got used to develop better products instead.

Wednesday was pretty good

Really enjoyed One Piece live action

Streaming was different for years and years. But then people got greedy.

The bad thing about those kind of shows, is that while most people see that as a warning, and something to avoid.

Some people immediately start charting a path to how to make it a reality, and sometimes those people are very very smart and can chart a path that might take decades.

I say this while on the toilet, writing on a device that has cameras both front and back, always on microphones and location sensors, and facial recognition and 3D scanning equipment.

When the personalized condom ads start popping up, I will only be slightly annoyed.

I will call that a grey area. You still count on the roles as a sub of the ad tier. And probably in all the data it assumes you saw the ads. So it helps perpetuate the problem. But if enough people do it, it will reduce whar advertisers pay, which might reduce the problem.

By what leap of logic do you come to that conclusion. We are talking about entertainment here. Not housing or food. Doing without is an option, and there is plenty of competition to use instead.
People rail against the rich for caring only about money. But when they make thier own decisions, they do the same. Money first. You pay for ADs with your time first. Then you pay again when ever you buy anything, because advertising whether you saw it or not is part of the price of everything. Paying for your time back alone, would be worth the price. But people put money first. And we all lose. Well except the wealthy.

Since when is Netflix free?

Huh?? If a streaming site (or any product for that matter) is free, the user is the product - be it their time, personal info, whatever. It is known and accepted that a "free" service will have a catch that allows the provider to make money.

If a user PAYS for a service it is expected that the payment is enough remuneration for there to be no strings attached. Of course companies will look for shitty ways to do shitty things to make more money, and those companies ought to be punished, generally by a reduction in customers, for their shitty behaviour.

No different than the decades of ad supported broadcast television.

I hear a whisper in the wind about file size being a distinct though not foolproof hint of quality.

You are aware that Netflix et.al. put compression on their streams (usually quite a bit in regards to bitrate) ? It is often the case that BluRay rips etc. are available better on the high seas...

*only if you use the Netflix app on "supported platforms"

I guess the answer to your question is to get on a private tracker for high-quality releases ;)

They pay for market research

I want to pay. I want creators to be fairly compensated for their work. I just want a structure that doesn’t require a predatory middleman that adds no value.

nah, i want the enshittified services to die so we can have someone else do it properly for a few years before enshittifying again, rinse repeat until capitalism ends.

Lemmy is the king of the disingenuous argument, as though somehow admitting that yes, Netflix is the gold standard for pay-to-stream, it somehow dilutes the argument against AI ads.

I think it'll be somewhere in the middle. Quite a few people have not had to deal with ads in streaming for many years now, if it's suddenly forced it'll piss off a lot

I don't think they're all going to suddenly pirate again, I think many will just switch to other streaming providers.

If they all start doing the shitty ads, we're fucked.

Hate to say it but deleting files when you mean to delete a program/docker container/whatever is definitely a skill issue...

But with Jellyfin you don't necessarily need to do that yourself. You can have a friend with a server or pay some shady dude 5$/mo to use his server.

Nostalgia.