The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
I'm not going to deal with this, unsubscribing. I recommend everyone else to do the same, we can't let them get away with this. You can instead donate to an actually good news source, such as ProPublica. And nyt has a bunch of controversies, listed here. I can't support this with a clear conscience.
Max and Me
A similar thing happened to me recently with Max. I decided to treat myself and my family with the highest cost plan that had 4k quality, 4 (I think) simultaneous streams, and no ads.
A week into the subscription, we started getting random sports ads in the middle of our content. After an abnormally long discussion with their support folks because they didn't understand that I wasn't talking about the ads that show up BEFORE the content and that in fact I was talking about ads that interrupt the content in the middle of a show or movie, they asked that I send them video evidence, which I did.
Their response? Those aren't ads, those are previews for their other content.
So yeah, seems like a common theme here. These companies are scam artists and liars.