Asklemmy

When my paid Paramount+ subscription included unskippable ads.

Adobe Reader needing a 5€ subscription for rotating pages. Fuck techno feudalism.

This might be a cop-out, but I'm absolutely sick of paying rent, and the open source alternatives aren't great

Alarm clock apps that require a subscription. Basically any app that doesn’t require backend server infrastructure to function should not be subscription based.

It started with the Netflix enshittification. I have had a Spotify and Netflix account essentially since these services were available, and that was great. Now only the Spotify sub is worth it, though I started to loathe that one as well because it at some point deleted all my local files or replaced them with what it thought matched them in their database.

Also every fucking app, no matter how mundane, wants to sell me a subscription. I have a web based game boy emulator on my phone, it works fine but everything beyond the absolute basic functions is paywalled behind a subscription. Not even a one time purchase.

Netflix, and when they said I'd have to pay for password sharing for my stepkids, because they use my account when they're at their dad's.

That was the last straw. I cracked the shits, bought a couple of ex-enterprise servers, and setup ... something different. I then cancelled all streaming services (I got wind of the second Disney hike coming).

The cool thing is they now email me with cheap rejoin offers, telling me about all the cool shows I need to be aware of. ;)

I think the one that did it for me was Xbox game pass. I've never been much of a fan of digital games, but Xbox game pass made me see what the future of games will be.

You will pay an ever increasing amount per month to play whatever Microsoft or whoever decides you can be allowed to play. You will own nothing you play and if you cancel your subscription, your console is worthless. Meanwhile the service will be crammed with ads, the games themselves crammed with ads, and your data harvested and sold for "personalized" ads.

I only buy physical games now.

Man, I already had subscription fatigue with the very first thing I subscribed to with my own money as a kid. Ultima Online. My friend recommended the game to me, not telling me it required a subscription. I bought a boxed copy at the store, not seeing the super tiny print where it mentioned the subscription. I was then upset when I was installing it and it asked for a CC#. I was 12. I didn't have a credit card. I had to ask my dad to set it up and give up my allowance for it.

As soon as I found out about emulated shards (shards being what servers were called) that were totally free, I started playing on those. And having way more fun because they kept the game the way I liked it, while EA kept trying to make it more like WoW.

Around the time when netflix started to suck, and new subacription services popped up everywhere.

Then a lot of other things that shouldnt rely on a aubscription started getting it. Random apps with a pro mode. The pro mode was now a subscription... its dreadful.

I refuse to get a subscription i would "need" to keep around fpr years.

Here we have 1 video streaming service for a month or two every once in a while. Never two at the same time.

i cancelled youtube premium when they removed dislike count from view, i felt that i was getting a inferior product once they removed that tool from me, it wasn't worth paying

I never made it past Netflix. Once the quality started sliding and prices went up, it was back to the high seas for me. I guess I still have to pay for a VPN service though 🤷

Old school runescape charging $120 a year. I get that they make new content but that's the cost of a AAA game each year.

I've observed how these streaming services engage in borderline elder abuse. They make it extremely easy to sign up, and then to cancel, they require clicking through five different settings pages with tiny buttons and dark patterns. They obscure what each charge is on billing statements, and they are constantly increasing price, merging with each other, which creates confusion. I've had to help elder family and friends get out of subscriptions so many times, and each time, I essentially have to audit what they're paying for. I think the Feds should mandate that every website has a giant red "Cancel subscription" button in the corner. The FTC is working on something like that, but it is unclear what it will look like in the final version.

When I couldn't just purchase a season of a tv show (Drag Race). You should just be able to buy a show or movie if you want to watch it.

The most recent season was exclusively on Paramount +. I guess they had exclusive right because it wasn't available anywhere else. It was 3.99/month with a discount so I figured I'd keep it as long as the season aired. I was fucking amazed that there could be twenty fucking commercials in an hour show. If I wanted to skip backward or forward I had to watch three more ads first. Two weeks before the season finale they raised the price to 5.99 so I cancelled it. I didn't need to watch it that badly. Their other content was shit, all nineties MTV and made for tv movies. When I signed up they advertised Yellowjackets so I was going to watch that. But no, that's another subscription to Showtime.

It was the cheapest subscription I've had but the most aggravating experience, because it's not about the money. It's about feeling like I'm getting fucked over with every goddamn thing I buy lately.

Not really a discovery, bug when Disney Plus made their base subscription have adds like Hulu and then made the add free version double the price. The "Disney bundle" was $12 a month when it released. Now it's $20 just to get Hulu and D+ without adds. I hold the star wars franchise pretty close, but I'm gonna have wait to see Ahsoka.

Either that or it's time to get the paper hat out 🏴‍☠️

I had it when Adobe started it with their suite. Let me just buy access to a major version and all patches and minor upgrades.

YouTube premium raised their prices. I had got it back when Google music was the thing. Then they raised the price. Then they raised the price again. Then they raised the price again. The last price raise gave me the motivation to check out Spotify and newpipe.

I haven't looked back.

Definitely Netflix with the password sharing lockdown garbage. Then I looked closely at my Spotify. I realized my yearly rewind was almost always the same artists at the top, so I pay over $100 a year to listen to the same music every year. I bought the album's I like and I feel so at peace now that Spotify can no longer tnrow shitty podcast recommendations in my face.

Weather apps.

I feel like I've avoided subscriptions for the most part, except for basics like rent, energy, telephony, a travel card. The software I use is mostly open-source (some of which I voluntary support on a monthly basis). I don't need paid streaming because public TV streaming is good enough for shows/movies and YouTube with ad-block is good enough for music. I don't game.

Pro-tip if you're sick of paying for streaming: Stremio (app--I run on NVIDIA Shield) + Torrentio. Totally free and will have everything you ever need. For a few dollars, Real-Debrid adds more/faster stream options, but it's purely optional/nice-to-have.

There was never a last straw for me, because I never subscribed to any bullshit. I read and understood the dangers of SaaS as a school kid long before the term was cool and long before privacy community and corporate industry popularised it. Unless something really requires realtime work collaboration, like Google Docs/Office 365, or if there are realtime social activities like multiplayer gaming or messaging/chat/videocall, just about everything else does not require an active internet connection, and should be doable locally on a system. This is why devices like iPhone, iPad, Chromebooks and so on are NOT real computers, but merely rented kiosks.

I'm subbed to YT premium, Spotify, and Amazon Prime. I primarily use Steam. I pirate via torrents for movies and series. No streaming services interest me. I've used a free trial for Netflix way back when and I was disappointed that some content was not available to download for offline viewing. With torrenting I can watch content in a better quality, I don't have to worry about buffering, I don't have to worry about discs and menus, etc. All I really want is just the mkv file and that's it.

💀

Netflix. Price hikes with lesser content that no one in my house wants to watch. Subcriptions for occasional use stuff been purged since that.

I was happily paying for Spotify and Disney+ with price hikes I said fuck it I am not paying anymore.

Sublime Text 4 going subscription based instead of major release based. I downgraded back to ST3 and am keeping my lifetime license on that one. The alternative is a 3 year usage license which is trash for the price you need to pay

Spotify. It is a mirror of my Youtube Premium and Youtube gives me better value. So I ditched Spotify.

America Online.

That was a 6 month fucking ordeal to cancel, and it ended up taking bank intervention and the changing credit cards for it to finally go away.

Evernote. I’m not sure why I even stayed with them for so long; probably the pain of moving after so many years. Switched to Joplin before they doubled their fees for zero new (useful) features.