So don't sign up. Go without.

and if you're technically capable, self host and share with friends/family. fuck corporate greed
I get the sentiment but this is not really an option most of the time if you want to stick with lawful methods. For instance, I cannot watch most movies or TV series these days without a subscription to some service.
- i think its imporant we destigmatize piracy, honestly.

Permanently Deleted

I think the subscription overload has to do with the whole 90s kids are the only ones who know how to build and fix computers. We know how to go out and find alternatives or roll our own services. Hell we invented digital piracy so we are comfortable with not subscribing.

I only subscribe to two services, Google storage so my family's mobile devices can auto backup and Spotify because I like the suggestion engine and it's easier for my kids to stream music. For everything else there's piracy.

So then there is this new generation that are clueless in tech so these companies can nickel and dime them because they don't know any better. I know I try to teach my kids how to use tech but they just don't have an interest like I did.
- Lol bruh, have some self reflection. People do it because it's easier. If you have the time to have all the hobbies that other people have and to roll your own home servers that's great, but that means you have an above average amount of free time. Otherwise, other people have hobbies that don't include server OS updates and choose to spend their time there and pay for someone else to manage their servers.
- IDK, a kid not knowing how to pirate is weird too, at least where I live. That would mean their parents actually buying them media, which, in my experience, is not that frequent of a sight. I had classmates who had subscriptions just to feel good about consciously paying for the content (they were also upper-middle-class). The rest didn't really think about ethics and just pirated, the information on how to do it spreads through kids' collectives pretty easily. It seems to me that many of them don't even know that what they and their families are doing is "piracy"...
- 90s kids are the only ones who know how to build and fix computers.
  
  Aww dude
I have a bunch of smart devices - light bulbs, wall plugs, etc. They all connect to Home Assistant running on my own server and I don't need to pay any subscriptions.

IoT is not the problem, corporate greed is.
- I do agree that it's pretty cool that HA can be used for free, but if you like something and use it regularly please find ways to contribute.
Microsoft expects me to pay for Office 365? No, fuck you, I’ve got LibreOffice and your older Office software still works as good. Your word processing program, Word, hasn’t really changed that much since 2007 or even 2003. Hell, maybe not since 1997!

So I moved to foss probably about 20 years ago and have been going back and forth between libre office and open office.

A couple of years ago my wife wanted me office, so I got the subscription...and man it's so much better than either of those two, and to suggest that maybe it hasn't changed since 1997 is mindboggling.

I'm a big proponent of not signing up for these services, but this paragraph really misses the mark for me.
- Disagree. E.g. Word typography is not as advanced as LibreOffice. And words document master is buggy as hell.
  
  But yes. Excel can handle big files now. Still sucks at im- and exporting different csv formats...
  
  But... Because it's integrated so we'll with windows, is faster most of the time.
  
  In reality: of course word should be a better program and it does get lots of loving from redmond. Only because: if no new features, no new sales. And since word is mostly a solved problem, redmond invented new problems...
  
  Working with a LO user and a sub par program always beats working with a word user who can't use styles, review, and merge documents.
- To me office is the bonus to the cloud storage and syncing. Yeah I know it’s easy to run a NAS but the UX of having to manage it is a headache and quite frankly it gives me more piece of mind to pass the buck of getting pwned to Microsoft or Google
- Just use Google Docs then. Yes, it's Google. Yes, it will somewhat tie you into their ecosystem but Google Docs are free, get regular updates and are pretty good overall. I've been using Google Docs for many years now. I occasionally use Office365 for work and Google Docs is just as good, if not better.
Hell, maybe not since 1997!

Office 2000 was peak office: it had the definitive version of Clippit, and every actually useful feature you'll probably ever need to type and edit any sort of document.

...I will say, though, that Excel has improved for the weirdos that want 100,000 row spreadsheets since then, but I mean, that's a small group of people who need serious help.

This has nothing to do with anything, but whatever.
- 100k rows is a small data set for a lot of what I look at, but that is at work.
  
  Let me split it down.
  
  For work use, 100% has to be Excel. For personal use, either of the FOSS is more than enough.
- ...Good god, someone actually called him Clippit. I never thought the day would come
- I don't know exactly when the features arrived, but things like xlookup, power query, live data connections, etc have been welcome improvements in Excel.
  
  Heck, even textbefore is a great QOL improvement.
Microsoft expects me to pay for Office 365? No, fuck you, I’ve got LibreOffice and your older Office software still works as good. Your word processing program, Word, hasn’t really changed that much since 2007 or even 2003. Hell, maybe not since 1997!

Yeah, it's a word processor. I don't need a newer with more features that I will never use. Some of these might make sense for a business with collaborative projects and such, but your average home user doesn't need it.
Adobe expect me to pay for Premire Pro? No, fuck you, i've got Kdenlive and it feels like premium-quality app
My subscribtions are Protonmail, Mullvad VPN and ChatGPT. On top of that I'm paying a voluntary monthy donation to a podcast.

That's it. If I had to guess, YouTube premium will be the next one but so far adblocking still seems to work.
In theory open source can help you escape subscription hell but Gimp and LibreOffice do not have feature parity with Photoshop and MS Office and have significantly inferior UX. Maybe for word processing, LibreOffice or an older version of Office is fine, but that is not true at all for spreadsheets. So much the case that I would rather use Python Dataframes + Juypter notebooks than LibreOffice Calc.

This is also the case for Indesign vs Scribus, Illustrator vs Inkscape, Autocad vs Freecad. Audacity is fairly powerful but again horrible UX. That list goes on I am sure.

Vote with your wallet. Boycott rent seeking companies that lock away their IP and charge money for access to it.

For example, FOR ADOBE TO DESERVE MY MONEY EVERY MONTH, 100% OF THEIR TECHNOLOGIES SHOULD BE OPEN SOURCE.

The only rent I happily pay for is a good VPN.

jokes on them, i still use CS6.

wankers.
- Yea. Still use my full suite $200 adobe from being student. Like what, a decade old at this point?
I pay for music streaming on Tidal. I have a pretty big library of music from attempts to get away from streaming (and keep it up on Soulseek), but I use curated playlists too much to get away from streaming
- I definitely don't recommend that you look up Tidal downloaders that allow users to keep the music they want from the service. You definitely don't want to build a whole digital library that way.
Boycott rent seeking companies

That's all of capitalism.
- yes it is.....
God forbid a programmer be compensated for their labor.

I mean yeah, subscription services are shitty, but what's wrong with lifetime purchases?
- As a programmer, and an open source one paid handsomely, fuck subscriptions and asshole software companies.
- I’m actually a programmer. There are ways to compensate us that doesn’t force people to pay rent for our work.
- You buy a pair of shoes, the maker is paid. Why do you have to pay the bastard every month?
- I mean yeah, subscription services are shitty, but what’s wrong with lifetime purchases?
  
  This thread is about subscriptions. So I'd assume that when people talk about 'rent seeking companies' etc, they are referring to subscription payments rather than lifetime purchases.
- Adobe still has lifetime purchases?
- I am a programmer, and I get paid whether or not the product is bought. Shovel your dogshit somewhere else.
- Between you [and] the developer there is a mega corp... Programmer is paid a salary. Corpo pays bare minimum for labour. It doesnt matter if you buy product personally or not.
  
  With that being said if everybody did the same, it would hurt the corpo but thats the goal... They need to get their act together and while idiots keep paying blindly, they wont.
- This doesn’t really make sense. Programmers are usually just paid a salary. My salary is the same regardless of how many subscribers there are. I don’t give a shit. If everyone started pirating everything it wouldn’t really impact my job. There’s plenty of dev work to do.

That's why I used Kodi, a Plex server, and modded youtube. Fuck ads and fuck subscriptions

I chatted with my uncle recently, and he told me about a movie from 2006. I asked where to watch it, he said you can watch it free on YouTube. Stop by my parents house, we decide to watch movie. It was 1 hour and 30 minutes, Runtime. There was 3 minute ads every 10 minutes. The movie was good, but heavily dampered by ADS. To the point you would start to get invested and zone into the movie. Then BAM ADS, the only other option was to buy the movie for $4 on prime or pay for a hulu subscription.

I know subscriptions are stupid and i agree, but its just so infuriating! Pay $7.89 for streaming service which may or may not have the thing you want to watch. For it to most likely to be on streaming service B. Or you go buy the DVD assuming you can. Which now you own a movie that may be CRAP.

You just cant ethically win :/
- IMO: Pirate it guilt-free without a second thought. If you enjoy it, and deem it worthy of a rewatch - then buy the DVD/Blu-Ray.
  
  Then rip a quality copy of it, and delete the previously downloaded one.
- How did you have the patience for that? Is immediately nope out
- Thing is, corporations twist ethics so when we obey we lose and when they fuck us over they win
- When movies were on cable they'd at least edit the movie to fit between ad breaks. Modern streaming services have no concern for the content, and will just drop an ad wherever.
- I wish so much that I could browse what’s on a streaming site before signing up.
Plex has started to enshittify as well. I switched to jellyfin because Plex had features behind pay walls and kept going "oops I accidentally changed your settings so you have to look at the plex home screen with ads for our streaming service".
Fuck ads and fuck subscriptions

How do you imagine developers and content creators to get paid if neither of these two options is acceptable to you?
- Honestly mate, I am not a tankie or even politically left in my country, but when looking at the insane results for these enormous companies and the ever increasing greed with ads/price hikes, I’ve just had enough.
  
  I know it’s not morally right to steal, but I refuse to support companies like Alphabet paying their CEO 200+ million a year. If they manage to block me out when skirting their ads, then I’ll find something else to spend my time on.
  
  So you’re right, I just don’t care anymore.
  
  I do pay for Nebula though!
- Pay por the permanent ownership of the sold product.
  
  As they say. If selling isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.
  
  If a seller doesn't give me option to own their products I will certainly never steal them.
- by selling me a license that lets me run their software on my own machine, not theirs. Like in the old times
- Theres A difference between running a profitable buisness and ruining the whole user experience to please the shareholders.
- Not everything should be for profit. I 'member the good old days when people made poorly designed website to share their passion and help others. I 'member the good old days when people developed freewares, even proprietary softwares, just for the fun of it.
- Am a developer, please do not pay for any software subscription if you don’t think it’s worth it.
  
  Us devs would love to give the best experience, but if the customer is willing to pay for a shit experience, guess which path management makes you take.
- I spend LOTS of money on physical media. Like on the order of thousands per year. If a company doesn't release their media physically, I figure they don't want my money and just pirate it.
- My favorite subscription is when I buy a “lifetime license” to a software and then 4 years later they move to SaaS. And now I just pay to beta test the software.
- One-time purchases.
- FUCK CONTENT, LET ALL THE MINDLESS DISTRACTION DIE, WE'D BE BETTER OFF IN THE STREETS, SPENDING TIME TOGETHER, BUILDING SOMETHING, ACTUALLY TALKING TO EACH OTHER!
  Says a tiny edgelord in me. I would never write something like this, I'm an adult.

the biggest reason for subscriptions is. 1. consumer laws don't protect it. and 2. you can quit your job and don't have to be actually productive and work for a living because your users will just keep on "buying" the product every month indefinitely. and finally 3. subscription basically gives you monopoly in any given area you host it; because the user will usually not look or even have the means to look for options or alternatives once they have already tied a percentage of their monthly income to a company for the software or service they provide - as wallets got spread thinner and thinner until they, now, are entirely swallowed by subscriptions.

the only people arguing in favor of subscriptions are those who don't want to work for a living while still taking advantage of the capitalist system.

I worked at Amazon and the head of Ring said their best customers were people who bought a subscription and then put the camera in a drawer and forgot about it. They don't even want to provide you a service. They want you to absentmindedly give them money every month because you forgot to cancel.
- Fine, but this is on the buyer not on the seller.
  I mean, if you buy a subscription to something and then don't use it (or forgot to cancel while not using it) is not really a seller fail: you would have wasted your money even you'd have bought it without a subscription.
  
  I get subscriptions are (mostly) bad, but it is not always a seller fault and the buyer should be aware of what he is doing or spending money.
The only case where a subscription can be good is if you don't have that much money to afford something(if its a one time purchase), because you would have to save up for some time. That's the only case where a subscription can be good, but this doesn't apply to 99% of them
- It's expensive being poor
- It's pertinent if you only need something for a short time, or if you want to test something before committing to buying it.
  
  Otherwise, there's few cases where renting makes sense.

Found this out when I wanted a decent journaling app for Android. All the most popular ones have subscription tiers that amount to hundreds of dollar over just a few years.... for a fucking journal app? what the hell!

Not only that but they can train their AI's on all their subscribers' journal entries. Check F-Droid.org for some free, privacy respecting FLOSS journaling apps.
- There is this one app on there called PTO (plain text organizer) that is pretty interesting. It basically just gives you a new plaintext file each day to journal on
Definitely feel ya there. I highly recommend Obsidian or Joplin. Not sure what features you're looking for, but I've found Obsidian refreshingly simple. Aso nice knowing that it's just markdown files on my device that can't be sold as data.
- if you are looking for an Foss alternative for obsidian, check out logseq. it isn't a 1 for 1 copy of obsidian and its feature set, but the way I use them they are identical, besides the source code availability!
- I love Obsidian. It blows away every other notes app I've used. I use it seemlessly across Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac devices. It's as customizable as you want it to be, even if that means "not at all".
  
  I've set mine up with all kinds of templates and automation to populate and organize my daily notes, notes on books I've read, notes about people I meet, project notes, the list goes on and on...
  
  And if I ever decide not to use Obsidian any more, all of the notes are stored as markdown files on my device(s). So I don't lose anything. Not even the formatting. Just make sure to back up your vault, in case you lose the device itself.
F-Droid... An open source app store with exactly that: Apps without BS

only way i'll be happy with that is if no one owns anything. corporations, people, billionaires. Otherwise might as well burn it all down, why should care if i dont own anything.

Yep, it's a propertarian conspiracy theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You'll_own_nothing_and_be_happy

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fact-check-the-world-economic-forum-does-not-have-a-stated-goal-to-have-people-idUSKBN2AP2SP/
- This is why fact checks are bullshit. Reuters admits that
  
  a WEF social media video from 2016 that stated eight predictions about the world in 2030, including: “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy. What you want you’ll rent, and it’ll be delivered by drone.”
  
  Now to make the statement false they bring in a strawman "Stated goal" condition and prove that particular part to be false, then claim that makes the whole thing false.
  
  Such bullshit.

Worst is, if you don't subscribe to specific services, people will call you the odd one out

That's fine, I started doing my thing and stopped caring what the world thinks.
Those people are dumb and weird.
Yep. Those people aren't my friends.
I look forward to the range of emotion someone's face acts out when I tell them that I don't have FB or I don't have Amazon Prime.

🤌
Random memory just appeared. When i was in highschool, i used to sit with a group of people one of which. Begain a conversation talking about invader zim, everybody kinda pitched into the conversation with quibs and factoids about the animated series. Execept of me, as invader zim was only on your local soul sucking, nipple rubbing cable company (south park reference insues). The girl asked what i thought about the show? I simply explained i never had or cared for cable. To which basically apalled her, "how do you not have cable", "what do you watch!" I replied antenna. Then for the next 30minutes of lunch there was a hole song and dance about how ive never watched (insert cable tv show). Im glad i didnt grow up with cable, the three stooges were fun to watch, and the fun of me and my dad watching is forever with me. The whole "flix cult" sounds similar to my cable tv experience.

WHAT YOU DONT HAVE

DISNEY PLUS (they can kill you now)

HULU (they have your favorite show! Only season 3 though cause fuck you!)

Netflix (has netflix originals which are very hit or miss)

"If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing."

I heard this before and it is becoming more true each day.

That's cool, I do not have a single subscription and will never, ever have one. If I can't buy your product, I'll sail the 7 seas

How do i pirate insurance?
- I made my own "cell phone service" but it only works within 10m of my home.
- start your own reserve fund but this one kinda requires to already gave sufficient assets to eat day 1 adverse event.
- Maybe become a sovereign citizen? YMMV.
How do you get home internet service without a subscription? I'm down to try it.

Next up, (cell) phone plans.

(though fuck landlines phones too)

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy!

Can we get communism already?

we need some kind of "subscribers bill of rights" both to discourage and to check the stupid business models.

It won't make any difference. There's a gamers Bill of Rights that nobody remembers. It was produced by the owner of a company that now ignores that it ever existed.

I pirate everything, own everything and I'm happy as fuck. I even share my Jellyfin server with 20 other people so they can share in my joy.

They should pay you monthly for your costs. (:

I’m not sure what the logical outcome of this escalating arms race of enshittification will be, but as a career Sysadmin I’ve been able to avoid a LOT of this bullshit through self hosting, which is something a (Non-tech nerd) layman isn’t going to bother with, for as long as existing products (and their subscriptions) are still within “tolerable” levels.

But the thing is, a lot of the convenience with computing devices today didn’t exist in the 90’s, when it was more common for young normies to have what would be considered above average computer technical skills today.

When the entire market turns into inescapable subscriptions, the market for a non-technical friendly appliance box, like Synology came close to doing, shows up to corner the market on hardware you can own and run your own shit on with minimal headaches and no subscriptions.

In short, people with the money to spend can't be arsed to inconvenience themselves with self hosting or 'alternative' sources.

Folk without the money find a way through perceived necessity and maybe learn something on the way.

Then there's people with the money and the know-how who are just looking to save or do so on principle.

Younger generations grow up with subscriptions and black boxes that are not ultimately under their own control, and lack the knowledge to change it.

It's a sad state of affairs, but their tolerance for ads and subscription slop keeps attention away from people like me.
- Counterpoint - younger generations grow up in the same poverty as their parents (so that any subscriptions are unlikely) and even if they don't - their media needs may not fully align with what their parents would buy. So children in my experience do find ways to pirate. Maybe not the best ways, but still.
To the extent you are able to (particularly if trying to stay legal).

So for streaming content, much of that isn't available to 'buy' at all. Even for the stuff you can "buy", technically speaking in many jurisdictions it's not legal to be able to rip your DVD or Blu Rays or remove DRM from a digital download.

For certain software, on-premise editions have been abolished or priced into the stratosphere because they don't want that market to exist anymore. Some of that software has competent alternatives, but sometimes your choice is dictated by your clients and partners, and opting for a less compatible or merely perceived as less compatible option is a non starter. Even among on-premise editions, a lot of software vendors have switched to still having it by subscription as the only legal way to keep using it. Again, maybe for those software you can get away by breaking the law as a workaround, but legally...

This is of course assuming the conversation narrowly applies to software type things. Everyone is also rebranding 'leasing' as 'as a service' and are copying much of the software playbook, for the same reasons, including making purchase of equipment more expensive to steer people toward the 'as a service' revenue strategy.

Then going beyond the 'tech' industry, it's getting really hard to buy a house rather than rent it from some company that has been pouring money into acquiring all the available real estate.

Makes me wanna throw out my hp printer I bearly use.
Edit: the printer was discovered broken lol

Brother. Get a Brother.
- Oh yeah my idea
You should. The next time you want to use it, it'll probably do some bullshit. Better to be rid of it now than be coerced into giving HP money in the future. If you need a printer, replace it with whatever Brother laser printer is on sale at the moment.

the only things in life im happy owning is my home, my transportation and my informatics

Currently I have hbo max free with my phone plan, plex on nas and my local library. I also have YouTube music family plan, but I started putting songs on nas recently, maybe I’ll replace that too.

Can someone explain the "be happy" part of the "you'll own nothing and be happy" quote? I fail to see what is there to be happy about.

I'm not OP but I think it means "Providers are saying consumers should accept subscription-based models without complaint"
It came from a speaker a few years ago at the Davos World Economic Forum. Davos is where the ultra rich gather each year to plot out how to be even more evil.
- I feel like someone needs to point out that this saying is often conflated with the idea of 15 minute cities.
  
  The idea of 15 minute cities is that people want their amenities within 15 minutes so they don’t have to drive.
  
  It is not an idea to keep you confined and take away your ownership of things.

I don’t why but the fact this is on YouTube seems hypocritical but I can’t put my finger on it.

That's not hypocritical. That's reaching your target audience.

Subscriptions Are Ruining Our Lives. Here's Why They're Everywhere Now. | You'll own nothing and you'll be happy!

Vote with your wallet. Boycott rent seeking companies that lock away their IP and charge money for access to it.