Tech’s broken promises: Streaming is now just as expensive and confusing as cable. Ubers cost as much as taxis. And the cloud is no longer cheap::Some tech is getting pricier and looking a lot like the older services it was supposed to beat. From video streaming to ride-hailing and cloud computing.

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This has nothing to do with tech and EVERYTHING to do with FUCKING CAPITALISM.

    What a dumb fucking post, tech didn’t promise us shit were still living in a capitalist nightmare where quarterly earnings are far and above the primary value, over any and all people.

    What the fuck is this waaaa tech didn’t usher in an age of utopia!!! It’s almost like we have to solve other problems first. Fucks sake

    • Deftdrummer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Can we actually have a discussion on what’s at hand here instead of knee jerk reactions?

      Perhaps you had to have been there for all the “building better worlds” and “bringing people together” horseshit every silicon valley company was spewing since the dot com boom in the 2000’s

      It’s not an actual promise so don’t act pedantic. The point is- society was sold these concepts and ideas as solutions to existing problems, and they’ve instead become bigger and more expensive problems.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Honestly, not to blame the public, but people were sitting here for the last decade going, don’t like being censored? Don’t use Google/Facebook/whatever. Don’t like being tracked across the internet? Don’t use Google/Facebook/whatever. And everyone kept using it. As for streaming services, I mean, if you don’t want monopolistic pricing power, abolish copyright/DMCA. We complain constantly about the consequences of these big corps but society keeps religiously buying shit from them or participating in their services. Just like complaining constantly about global warming but driving your car 3 miles to the store to get a 1L bottle of water. We set up these structures and put people in these positions where they can exploit you, then act surprised when they do, and we have an excuse for why we think every individual part of it needs to stay exactly the same.

        OK, maybe to blame the public a little.

        • Whirlybird
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          1 year ago

          A huge portion of the public that are now complaining about capitalism also said “they’re private companies they can do what they want” when people complained about being censored on twitter/facebook/etc.

          People are stupid. Think of the average persons intelligence, then think that half the population are dumber than that.

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Cheaper has never been a promise of big tech. Better, personalized, more convenient, flexible, faster. Cheaper? I missed the promise where we’d get all these benefits for nothing, and in fact be given discounts for getting all these benefits.

        Before anyone starts: yes Uber is better than a taxi. Yes, cloud computing is better than on-premises. I’m so sad for this author who can’t work their streaming services, but as bad as cable? Give me a break.

        • Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yea cable sucked way more, atleast we aren’t locked into contracts with these services. Subscribe for a month watch the last years entire catalog and unsubscribe, rinse and repeat. You don’t need every subscription to be always active.

            • Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Haha good luck with forcing people into a contract when you got like 2 shows airing at any given time. If they want a contract the content has to explode by atleast 4 fold

          • scarabic@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yyyyep. The way they package channels is so irritating. And the advertising load you get with cable TV is intolerable to me. My parents are conditioned to it after decades but it drives me insane fast.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, but they said those things before going public or when a few people had the vast majority of shares.

        If they cash out, there’s now a board in control, and the big investors want big returns. So that’s the direction companies inevitably go.

        Because if capitalism.

        It might be the same company, but it’s often not the same people calling the shots

      • Nix@merv.news
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        1 year ago

        They were/are solutions to some of the problems though. Uber makes it way easier and convenient to get a ride which also helped lower the amount of drunk driving happening. Streaming made it was more convenient to watch what i want to watch when i want to watch it and without ads.

        The real solution would be for public infrastructure like subways, busses, etc so we dont need privatized solutions that start cheap and then ramp up the prices when we’re hooked. And we could have had films/series that get funded directly by the viewers without middlemen so for a cheaper price we can enjoy the art and have the money go directly to the artists but we instead we got different middlemen

        • Illegal_Prime@dmv.social
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          1 year ago

          Friendly reminder that Uber makes use of public infrastructure to do its thing.

          As do all the airlines.

    • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      “Tech” doesn’t exist. Entire concept is a lie propagated by companies trying to appear like something different.
      Not a tech company - a taxi company, a short term rental company, a video distribution company …

      Look at what they sell, not what tools they use to do it.

      • sudo@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        “the cloud isn’t tech it’s a rental company” is a pretty dumb take tbh.

        Like, if you’re trying to argue that AWS (or gcp, azure) services don’t provide technical solutions that aren’t available otherwise you just don’t know what you’re talking about. Is it expensive, yeah it definitely can be. But cloud is much more than server rentals at this point. Want a host that gives you bare metal? Great there are ‘rentals’ to choose from. I can see arguing SaaS hasn’t really ‘tech’, but PasS and IaaS provide technology and solutions to problems. I hate Daddy Jeff as much as the next guy but AWS is very much ‘tech’.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I could buy a server and run AD. I can rent a cloud server and run AD. In that way, you’re correct.

          But what I want to do is buy a local server and run AAD. They won’t let me. Their cloud solutions are an artificial limitation to force us to rent servers rather than license software. It’s another form of vendor lockin.

        • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          You know how to fix air conditioning? How about program an alarm system? These are side services a storage company provides their clients to enhance their main product. If uber is a taxi company and Netflix is just Blockbuster 2.0, the cloud is just a big Westies in the sky.

      • Neve8028@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Uber isn’t a taxi company. They don’t own a fleet. They’re a company that makes an app.

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Capitalism would never allow utopia to come about, because the concept of utopia doesn’t allow for an unequal distribution of goods. The inequality is very much a feature, not a bug.

    • 9point6@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m not usually one for an ad hominem, but it’s business insider—that’s probably one conclusion they are incapable of arriving at

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Agree, it’s 100% greed for investors’ money. But it’s way easier to get away with lying in tech than in most other industries.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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        1 year ago

        It’s not even that; those services were subsidized by investors money on this idea that once you get a user base, you can then capitalize on the user base.

        Those promises were made at a loss which later had to become a profit. It’s like Discord, there’s no way hosting literal hundreds of thousands of servers for free and killing all the competition can and will continue indefinitely. I wouldn’t be surprised if their monetization gets even more aggressive because transmitting all of that audio and video is not cheap.

        That’s not even a “capitalism” thing, that’s just a “someone’s got to do the work thing” and the majority of gamers went “yup that somebody can not be free!” And what always happens does, the existing solutions lost tons of revenue and became increasingly stagnant because they can’t compete with “free”.

        That’s why I’ve started paying for stuff (even when there’s a “free” option or paying more for domestically produced goods – even when there’s a “cheaper” option). Cheap isn’t cheap when it comes to manufactured goods (i.e., cheap imported junk), and free isn’t free when it comes to online services. Ultimately, somebody’s gotta make “free” happen (even if it’s a government, and then that really means the tax payer).

        The race to the bottom only exists because that’s what people vote for with their wallets. If it wasn’t rewarded with sales, it wouldn’t happen.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      I guess the thing where tech is relevant is that regulations thought it was different, so they didn’t apply the rules against dumping and other illegal tactics (“because they’re a start-up, it’s different when they lose money year over year”).

    • ssboomman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Technology has and will always be awesome…… unless it’s in a society that is structured in an inherently exploitative way.

    • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Well, you’re right that the bigger issue is people expecting tech to solve social problems created by social structure. But Yes, tech is absolutely failing at this. How could it not?

      Why not instead take this show of contempt for tech as another chance for people to recognize the underlying issue, not as a threat to the future of tech developments.