nicetriangle

Bingo. This move right at the same time they killed premium light really muddies the messaging on this one

Yeah I reference that article a lot. It's happening everywhere. Feels like it's accelerated rapidly in the last few years too.

Yeah it's fucking absurd

This has way less to do with upkeep costs and way more to do with "big number must go up at all costs." This publicly traded company capitalism bullshit won't be satiated until it eats eats itself alive and before that happens it'll chew consumers up first.

I've heard anecdotally that they've done small user trials of fully blocking people for X amount of time for using adblock.

They even had a semi reasonable premium tier that was just "no ads, that's all" for something like $7. Now they're kicking everyone off that plan and removing it and your next option is to pay 50+% more and you get a bunch of additional crap that I didn't ask for. I just wanted no ads.

These people seem to adamantly not want me as a customer.

So annoyed at how all these services keep degrading for users. I was happy to pay for premium light. I don't need download/music/etc I just wanted no ads. Simple as that. The price was fairly reasonable and I would have kept paying it. Now they got rid of the premium light and I have to pay at least 50% more for additional things I don't and will not use.

Alright then, well you lost a customer and I'll just use AdBlock. And if you somehow figure out how to disable that, I'm just going to find content somewhere else. I'm fucking sick of ads. I'll pay a reasonable amount to remove them. But I will not be continually wrung out for more and more money. Just leave me alone.

VPNs are a pretty solid way to dodge blackouts

They did a pretty damn good job stamping out MLB streaming since last year. There's still sources out there but nowhere near as numerous or consistent as they were in like 2019 - early 2022

Part of this has to do with people creating spammy mass like/unlike follow/unfollow bots to grow accounts disingenuously. They just rapid fire like and follow stuff on IG so those people will return the favor in kind and then the bot later goes back and undoes those actions. Rinse and repeat. So it’s kinda understandable why they throttle this behavior.