We tried that in the 80s already. Here’s how it went down.
1980s comes along, and people had been seeing commercials on tv for years. So along comes this new concept. Now you can PAY to watch tv…without ads. GREAT!
So people started paying for this new “cable tv”. Then the cable operators were like “I know they’re paying to not see ads…but what if we STILL showed ads, and STILL took their money???”
So that happened.
Then after some decades Netflix came around, originally with liscensed tv shows from all over tv…except now you could PAY to watch them, without the ads. And then they drastically lost their liscensed content, and produced their own original content.
After a few decades, Netflix said “I know they’re paying not to see commercials…but what if we STARTED showing commercials, AND raised prices every few months.”
Man, I can’t wait for the next guy to charge me money to not see ads. Only to inevitably show me ads a few years later…
I do look forward to the next generation of ad free media consumption powered by a small VC startup fund that has a bunch of low cost fresh-out-of-university students paid mostly in stocks working in a garage to say “yeah fuck this I’ve seen ads all my life in gonna do make something that doesn’t make people hate life”
Each iteration of the technology eventually becomes hot garbage. But man, for like a decade there shit is pretty good while the rest of the entrenched industry is stuck trying to pay lobbyists to get law makers to write rules that neither side understands just to have them ultimately not get passed or not address the issue and those companies still disappear.
Can it ever just stop?
We tried that in the 80s already. Here’s how it went down.
1980s comes along, and people had been seeing commercials on tv for years. So along comes this new concept. Now you can PAY to watch tv…without ads. GREAT!
So people started paying for this new “cable tv”. Then the cable operators were like “I know they’re paying to not see ads…but what if we STILL showed ads, and STILL took their money???”
So that happened.
Then after some decades Netflix came around, originally with liscensed tv shows from all over tv…except now you could PAY to watch them, without the ads. And then they drastically lost their liscensed content, and produced their own original content.
After a few decades, Netflix said “I know they’re paying not to see commercials…but what if we STARTED showing commercials, AND raised prices every few months.”
Man, I can’t wait for the next guy to charge me money to not see ads. Only to inevitably show me ads a few years later…
What if I were to buy back all my own DVDs and watch them? Would I need to voluntarily show myself ads later?
I do look forward to the next generation of ad free media consumption powered by a small VC startup fund that has a bunch of low cost fresh-out-of-university students paid mostly in stocks working in a garage to say “yeah fuck this I’ve seen ads all my life in gonna do make something that doesn’t make people hate life”
Each iteration of the technology eventually becomes hot garbage. But man, for like a decade there shit is pretty good while the rest of the entrenched industry is stuck trying to pay lobbyists to get law makers to write rules that neither side understands just to have them ultimately not get passed or not address the issue and those companies still disappear.