• 54 Posts
  • 30 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The issue isn’t data transmission and hosting, it’s paying someone a living wage to do this work professionally, along with their editors, graphic artists, analysts, and everyone else along the way that writes the news. It’s a bit absurd that people complain about ads and low quality reporting/analysis while simultaneously demanding all journalists work for free. Hell, if you get a library card you’ll probably be able to legitimately access the article right now for free in a way that still pays the journalist.








  • There is a legal, regulated, mostly safe method to buy cigarettes. It is inaccessible if you are under a certain age, but only the seller/provider is punished for violating regulations. It’s okay to have restrictions on what children can consume.

    While current laws on illegal drugs do not work, arguing against any regulation whatsoever is similarly silly, the laws obviously work. Smoking rates have dramatically declined since those laws and public education campaigns began.
























  • Well, why would they ditch for piracy? Netflix was smart about the whole thing: adding an authorized household (not user, entire household) is cheaper than creating a new subscription. The people subscribing to Netflix aren’t fundamentally opposed to paying for streaming, they were opposed to an unfair change in the business model. Netflix countered with a seemingly fair change in the business model that now eliminates the hassles that come with password sharing and could make the marginal increase in cost per household fairly small. It was overall a pretty smart business decision.

    There are many many problems with Netflix, including their growth-based business model, the lack of insight into their finances, and the way they’re slowly enshittifying the film industry. They’re a major reason for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. However, this change wasn’t stupid and people weren’t stupid for going along with it. I don’t see how it would lead to an overall increase in piracy, that’s being driven by the many new streaming services forcing costs on consumers. But consumers won’t blame Netflix for that because, frankly, that’s not Netflix’s fault.