This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Yo ho yo ho.
I don't understand how people paying for prime can stand that crappy prime video UI anyway.
I'm deep into the seven seas but I still use prime because a family member pays for it. Its a decent enough ui and has some live stuff I can throw on to keep kids entertained. However, I've already added the shows I watch on prime to my jellyfin server just because this change is going to make me not want to use it anymore.
Yep. I don’t consider it as a valuable streaming platform. If they removed it from the general prime I would not buy it separately.
The player interface is excellent. Being able to see who the actors are in each scene is one of my favorite UI features.
I agree that finding a thing you want to watch is meh at best. Especially because they mix in rentals, purchasable content, and prime content all in the home interface window.
That said, yo ho matey.
Yes, X-ray is a fantastic feature. I have to give them that. The rest of it is trash.
The moment each show got a pre-reel for another Amazon show this was clearly the path they where taking.
Already cancelled a good 6 months ago.
Yeah, Prime Video already has commercials.
Yeah I thought that was a pretty obvious attempt to ease people into it. So this news doesn't come as a shock. If anything I'm surprised it took this long.
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership,”
The double-speak is relatively subtle, but it's always interesting to see how much work they put into gaslighting their customers:
Pretty gross, Amazon.
The enshittification will continue until profit margins improve
Enshitification won't stop until the frogs realize that they are being boiled to death and jump out of the pot.
I'm getting really tired of all this enshitification.
Now corporations start with that bulshit of "oh, that model wasn't sustainable actually" even though it worked perfectly fine for the last decade and they still get record profits year after year. They keep ripping everything from under us, this gotta stop.
The only reason I ever had Prime was free shipping, then I realized as soon as I bundled my orders to be over a certain dollar figure I STILL got free shipping, I kicked Prime to the curb.
For me it was the "Amazon Day" shipping that bundles up a week's worth of separate orders into one shipping day. Convenient sure but now I'm not getting 2-day shipping... so what am I paying for again? I'll just bundle up the orders and shipping my damn self.
I cancelled Amazon Prime awhile ago when the customer service took a nose dive and I realized too many of the 3rd party vendors were using Amazon as their defective products outlet.
But I actively and permanently skipped out on an Amazon Prime subscription because they refused to give me a pro-rated refund on the remaining 8-9 months of service after I cancelled. They literally told me that they start with the pro-rated amount, then subtract out the cost of all the "free" movie/show/music rentals as well as all the "free" shipping on orders during the time you've had prime, and you only get whatever remains (if anything). Within the first 3 -4 months, I had already accrued enough "free" $5.99 shipping and $3 - $4 rentals that it exceeded the $100 or whatever cost of a prime membership was back in those days, so I got no refund. Bunch of crooks.
No surprise, I'm completely on board with folks kicking Prime to the curb.
Amazon has been progressively getting worse and worse. I was not a member of Prime for the video. It was a nice perk.
The combination of Amazon making it hard to search for things to buy, the huge amount of low quality crap for sale with confusing descriptions, and this most recent change of putting in place ads if I do not pay an additional fee has led me to cancel my subscription.
They have taken the enshittification too far. Good bye Amazon. Hello Home Depot, Target, et al.
It's like a second golden age of internet piracy, and it's happening because streaming over saturated itself just like cable lmao
streaming has absolutely no future. if they keep pulling shit like this it's going to decline even faster. i suppose it's more about sucking off advertisers than it is pleasing customers, too....if you're going to fail anyway why can't you at least make a positive difference in the world?
The mods removed my comment with a link to a great free streaming site with the reason "don't link directly to pirated content." (great censorship!)
I don't see that in the rules, so I guess it's one of those "mystery" rules they can just make up on the spot.
Anyways, you can find free streaming sites here: https://rentry.co/megathread-movies-and-tv#streaming
I recommend using fmovies. Make sure you have Adnauseam or uBlock Origin installed.
oooh yay more content to collect from torrents. Bye Bye Prime.
I have Prime and have never actually used it. I still watch Amazon shows, but I'll be fucked if I use their shit interface or expose myself to their datamining to do it. Let alone watch fucking ads.
Piracy is a UX issue.
Remember the times when we paid for such a service to get rid of ads? By now I cancelled my prime membership.
Nice to know I can finally cancel Prime though. The entire value proposition has now gone. Free shipping is hugely conditional (and prices are artificially jacked to cover it in the first place), and now they want to put the worst thing on the internet (ads) into the only component of Prime I still sorta kinda use sometimes. I'd rather keep the $140 a year or whatever.
If there are commercials, why should someone need an Amazon Prime membership at all? It becomes just like broadcast TV then, and they should just allow anyone to watch to maximize revenue. They have all this AWS infrastructure to deliver video, why not maximize the use of it?
Amazon has turned to utter shit these days. They've been requiring you to show your ID to get a refund. Getting asked by some Indian dude who I can barely understand a picture of my government issued ID sure doesn't feel comforting.
Guess I’ll just start downloading that content too because I’m not paying you more for the same shit. I’d get rid of it altogether if it wasn’t just included as part of prime in general.
Oh look. Another reason for piracy.
I don’t use Amazon much anymore anyway, because the products are overwhelmed with cheap, poor quality trash you couldn’t peddle on alibaba and completely worthless, largely faked reviews and ratings. I order once or twice a year some replacement cable or adapter I can’t find anywhere else reasonably quick, but that’s pretty much it, so canceling over this ad bullshit doesn’t really hurt me much.
Next on the list is my Netflix sub, which I largely use just for oldtrek reruns as second screen background noise while I use my computer. I could probably, uh, procure those shows fairly easy, or splurge on a collectors edition and would still save money.
fuck this company, the only thing i bought on amazon was filament for my 3d-printers. now that i zeroed in on a brand, i can just buy it at their online store. goodbye amazon.
What a bunch of cunts. FFS, it is never enough. Their return policy sucks now, too. It used to be that if Amazon fucked up your order, they'd refund you and you could keep the product. It made ordering online a relatively risk-free proposition. Now, they won't refund you until you ship it back, even if it is their fuck up, which really kills the convenience factor. Plus, you get to over-pay for most things. What's not to love?
Amazon wants us to learn how to safely pirate? We'll ok if that's what they want.
Enshitification continues to march ever boldly onward.
Thankfully, much of Amazons content shows up on Usenet so I can just download the ad-free versions there and then watch it.
