The discussion on Hacker News reveals a strong sentiment of dissatisfaction among users regarding the current state of streaming services. The key themes expressed include: the return to cable-like fragmentation and anti-consumer practices, the perceived decline in content quality and availability, and the resulting resurgence of piracy as a practical alternative.
Fragmentation and Return to Cable-Like Practices
A significant portion of the conversation revolves around how streaming services, initially lauded as a more consumer-friendly alternative to cable TV, have increasingly adopted the same problematic practices. Users feel they are being forced to subscribe to an ever-growing number of services, leading to a fragmented and expensive content ecosystem.
- "It's amazing how blurred the line is getting between streaming and cable TV," noted platevoltage.
- sunrunner elaborated on this by stating, "It really doesn't seem like it has to be that complicated, yet somehow we've gone from channels with markedly anti-consumer fixed bundles to a massively fragmented ecosystem where it genuinely seems like the streaming services don't actually want you to subscribe by the amount of the effort that goes into making things hard to watch or doing everything that could make the streaming experience worse (region availability, paid tier ads, lower bitrate stream quality, and so on)."
- squigz echoed this sentiment, highlighting the cyclical nature of the issue: "It already came full circle some years ago when we started seeing new streaming services every year, and those companies pulling their content from other platforms to put on their own. Then you had to think about what services you need, whether you still want those services, etc. Just like cable! Absurd."
- The issue of bundled services and the increasing complexity of managing subscriptions was also brought up: kotaKat expressed, "It’s also getting tiring of this massive fragmentation of streaming services as a whole combined with a weird game of rebundling various providers in either deals direct from the streaming platforms/their overlords, or rebundling all of these streaming services into “free” offers with other service providers and THEIR offerings."
- The comparison to cable's past issues, such as paying for unwanted channels, was also made: "prasadjoglekar remarked, "Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV. Sarcasm aside, the one problem folks had with Cable was the inability to upgrade without getting locked into another 2 year contract. Streaming solves that one problem while enshittifying all the other good things."
- nickthegreek also chimed in with, "and hardware rental fees ads on top of your service bundling a bunch of channels you didnt ask for and increase price outages the list goes on" as elements that are now present in streaming services.
Perceived Decline in Content Quality and Availability
Another prominent theme is the perception that the quality of original content has diminished, and the availability of a diverse range of programming, especially older or non-American content, has decreased.
- neves stated, "If a movie has a Netflix label in it, it is a sure signal of a bad movie with a boring script made based on data."
- mvdtnz offered a more critical assessment: "I'd say for me Netflix movies have less than a 5% hit rate. They're an excellent place to start if you desire a suitably (and needlessly) racially and sexually diverse cast, the most bland cinematography and grading possible, and scripts explicitly designed for viewers who are paying more attention to their phones than the show."
- The loss of older content and niche titles was lamented: epolanski noted, "Even many American movies are no shows on most streaming platforms. Sometimes I'm like: 'Let's take the top 30 movies that critics loved the most in US in year X'. As soon as it's earlier than 2005 you're gonna find less than half available across most streaming platforms, unless for renting/buying."
- neves also felt a decline in overall options: "For me worse than the can't pay is the lack of options. In the VHS time I had more good movie options than in the current streaming services. I remember when I bing watched Kurozawa or Mario Monicelli's movies. Now it's very hard to find non American cinema. The tech is there, but the System fail us."
- The fragmentation of even specific IPs across multiple services was highlighted with the Pokémon example: "crooked-v shared, "To really sum it all up in one place, check out the absurdity of the official guide on where to watch the Pokemon cartoon: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-... And that doesn't even actually list the movies, which are even more fragmented."
Piracy as a Service Solution
The overwhelming sentiment is that the current service problems with legitimate streaming platforms are driving users back to piracy. Users see piracy as an enabler of a better "service" in terms of availability, convenience, and freedom from restrictions.
- The often-quoted sentiment, "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" by Gabe Newell, was referenced by sunrunner, who expanded on what "service" entails: "Availability by Company, Availability by Global Region, Stream Quality, Advert Policy... Quality and availability of captions, audio description and any other media accessibility options."
- Many users explicitly stated their turn to piracy due to these perceived service failures. jbirer said, "My main issue is that they're now slowly testing the waters to see if they can make you watch ads while still paying for the subscription, and at that point, might as well take advantage of Romania's lack of law enforcement and hit the torrent websites."
- godzillabrennus observed, "It's like an advertisement for torrent sites... I had no idea it was that bad out there..."
- Gud was direct in their support for piracy as a response to system failures: "It’s pretty obvious that no one wants to subscribe and look for some content on 5 different platforms. While the pirate goes to his or her favourite torrent site and downloads it all, with the added bonus of having offline, permanent access."
- alt227 stated, "They make it this way. Buying a second hand DVD does not give any money to content creators, and I still get to watch the movie."
- mattbee shared a personal anecdote: "A week ago I downloaded a couple of movies and shows from Netflix for my 6yo daughter, to watch on a 3hr flight. Worked nicely! Today we made the return flight. She opens Netflix, and ⅔ of the films have now "expired" with no notice and she can't watch the one she wanted. For the next flight I'll remember to pirate!"
- pi-rat had a similar experience: "We only made it halfway before bedtime, but since she was coming back in two weeks, we decided to save the rest for her next visit. Two weeks later, she returned... We opened Netflix, ready to hit play - and lo and behold… the movie had vanished from the catalog. Be a cool uncle, be a pirate."
- codokode questioned the morality of paying when others don't: "When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one can make moral arguments against piracy now."
- imglorp argued, "if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.”
- bsimpson reflected on past media company tactics: "I was in film school in the 00s, when the media companies were in the news for trying to bankrupt the families of high schoolers to make a point that piracy is bad... It was pretty disgusting to see the people in charge of the companies that were trying to ruin people's lives over widespread behavior, themselves participating in that behavior, and with no sense of irony or remorse."
- ratelimitsteve described paying for a "pirate streaming site" because its "product is better" due to its comprehensive library, high quality, lack of ads, device freedom, and responsive support.
In essence, the discussion paints a picture of a streaming market that has become so fragmented, restrictive, and, at times, lacking in content quality, that it has inadvertently created ideal conditions for piracy to thrive as a superior service. The users are not necessarily against paying for content, but they are against the current "service" offerings from legitimate providers.