The really stupid thing is that everyone knows Netflix succeeded by offering - for the first time - a better product than piracy. A decade ago, Netflix offered a huge library of high quality, ad free content, which was easy to navigate and relatively free of bugs and viruses. People signed up because it was better than piracy where content could be difficult to find, time consuming to download or slow to buffer, with risks of malware or questionable websites.

People are willing to pay for a better experience that supports the people making art and entertainment.

Netflix already knows how to do this, built a company around it and launched an industry based on the knowledge that people will pay for a product that is better than free options. Now, it's gone all the way back around. Streaming services are fragmented and expensive, content is hard to find and disappears without warning, streaming apps don't always work on the devices they're supposed to, quality gets unexpectedly throttled, and the ads are inescapable and unskippable.

[–] TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Tbf, a lot of the problem is from content producers making their own platforms

[–] nintendiator@feddit.cl 10 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I'm not sure I buy it. Just because content producers wall+jerk themselves off doesn't mean you have to enshittify your own product, not when you are winning. Besides, Netflix already became a content producer themself partly as an answer to that.

[–] axum@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

doesn’t mean you have to enshittify your own product, not when you are winning

Since Netflix is a publicly traded company now, they pretty much have to.

Gotta pursue that infinite stock growth....

[–] unreasonabro@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

This is it. The stock market is pretty much the reason everything goes to shit. It's run in rampantly criminal fashion in the first place, just a meat grinder for money, and if our legal system weren't run in such a fast and loose, revolving-door echo chamber fashion, someone would have clamped down on it years ago. Why this isn't more obvious to people is stunning to me.

It's like religion. It corrupts you, makes you angry, sanctimonious and blind, and hence stupid. Avoid it like the plague it is.

[–] TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

Maybe it's not even the stock market, but the laws surrounding it. To the best of my knowledge, a company's primary legal obligation is to maximize shareholder value. Ethics and maintenance seem to be secondary as a result. There needs to be legal ways or more incentives for companies to be satisfied with their progress and seek stability/maintenance, and keep their stock price stable.

[–] nintendiator@feddit.cl 0 points 9 months ago

Fair point, capitalism ruins everything by definition.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Also true. Netflix decided on their own to limit resolution to 720p for browsers even for account that pay for 4k content

[–] TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People wouldn't care nearly as much about password sharing crackdowns and random limitations if Netflix had a complete content library. Netflix with their originals aren't going to match Disney's decades-long catalog of content regardless of how much money they pour into it. Tack on Paramount, NBC, and Warner Bros, and that task becomes impossible. Piracy came back because people couldn't get the content they wanted on Netflix or Hulu, and they couldn't get that content because producers got super greedy.

[–] nintendiator@feddit.cl 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

TBH they could just have kept streaming their archived copies of that content (they did make backups, right? They work on IT, they would have known how important it is to have backups). If Disney or someone complains, let each side just pick their lawyer staff and toss them together at a mud cage match with wet T-shirts, for a couple of years, maybe a decade. They have way over good amounts of money to waste on that, and people would have kept enjoying a good alternative to piracy in the meantime.

[–] TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Netflix would lose that lawsuit almost immediately.

EDIT: To explain further, it literally doesn't matter if Netflix has copies of that media. If Netflix loses the rights to distribute that media, they can't distribute that media. If Netflix continued to distribute said media, they would not have a case in US courts. When people in the US buy physical media, they only receive a license (intangible) and a copy of the media. With some exceptions, people have to adhere to the terms of that license. Even if ripping for personal use is allowed, you can't buy a DVD, rip it, and then pass the DVD to a friend to keep because you transfer your license to use that media onto a friend.

[–] unreasonabro@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

oh they've definitely fucked themselves in the ear with a corn schucker, but watching your most profitable content flee your platform would make anybody panic.

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago

Content producers raised their prices to drive traffic away from Netflix.