David August ❌👑Modern streaming.
That Old Guy With the Beard@davidaugust @billyjoebowers Also, HBO Max negotiated with the creators and then sold it to MAX in a back room deal. Then, before the ink was dry, MAX traded it to HBO MAX for future consideration of HBO and HBO MAX content under the rebranded HBO MAXWELL MAX platform.
MacCruiskeen@davidaugust That's a drag. Poob had all the good stuff.
@maccruiskeen they really did.
joriki
Astrobach 
Real talk: where the good torrents at these days? I was in the scene up to 2010 then streaming became quite viable so I stopped, now it sucks and I would like to find films again.
Hubert Figuière
felis_catus_domesticus
dominic@rorystarr @hub if they're blocked where you live and you're not into VPNs, there are proxies and indexes of said proxies. Takes a few tries to find one that hasn't also been blocked, but then it's all good.
I guess I don't understand VPNs as a service, not as a technology. Like, pricing, risks, etc. I do understand what they do.
I'm in Canada but I am on a shared internet with someone who would be less than understanding to get a warning letter. That and the fact that I've been out of it for so long, leads me to be concerned I now lack the wisdom I had about torrents way back when. And I am interested to see the options because these streaming services are failing.
CynBlogger™️Dissents
jbz@davidaugust Mubi is quite good actually
Dusty@davidaugust I have the heretical view that it's not only possible, but wise to just post one's own videos on one's own blog with #RSS. As long as the videos are shot in a lower resolution, they are much smaller in size. Hundreds of such videos (say ~160MB each, for an hour's video in 360p) can be saved in the tens of GB that come with renting cheap VPS'. Then a javascript video player like clappr embeds the videos on one's personal web pages. A mountain of #enshittification is avoided in this way.
All the "broken glass" we're being dragged over - as is in the OP - results from unwisely trusting 3rd parties to host the videos. My unpopular opinion is: don't use those 3rd parties, period. Be the 1st party, even if your efforts are a little amateur-looking. The key is to quit being greedy with high resolution - which plays into the hands of #AI, btw. This is to make the file sizes more wieldly and self-manageable. No transcoding, etc. Every such simplification matters.
**You get to set your own license this way also**, such as:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
@d1 You're not wrong, and if one has no aim to monetize video, or get paid to make them, that can work.
@davidaugust
Anecdotally: A video on Youtube needs to have at least 30,000 views, apparently, before you even so much as earn $300US on it:
"The True Costs of Being on YouTube":
https://carlalallimusic.substack.com/p/the-true-costs-of-being-on-youtube
Also note 👆 : They, #Youtube, are keeping 2 of every 3 dollars of ad revenue that passes through them.
And as to in-video ad sposorships: only about 0.21% of all Youtube content creators have such sponsorships:
"How a computer that 'drunk dials' videos is exposing YouTube's secrets":
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250213-youtube-at-20-a-computer-that-drunk-dials-online-videos-reveals-statistics-that-google-doesnt-want-you-to-know
panda ♥️ 🇪🇺
Corb_The_Lesser@d1 @davidaugust I am much more likely to click on a video hosted *at* a blog than to click through to Youtube, etc. I don't want to be there.
Mx Verda@d1 @davidaugust also gotta mention PeerTube, Loops, and whatever else exists that I haven't heard of yet, but yes. 1080p is nice and certainly noticeably nicer than 360p... but also so much bigger. I'm sure 4K is nicer, but I wouldn't know as I wear glasses regardless.
My Actual Brain@davidaugust This is so true! I live in a different country than the rest of my family. So often, we cannot easily watch the same shows due to regional differences.
Additionally, my wife and I have our App Store set to different regions, so only one of us can have Disney+ on our phones. As the app is different for each country and I can’t log in using the app for the US store.
I also can’t change my region in the App Store or I’ll risk losing other US apps that I need.
@my_actual_brain yeah, it get complex fast.
Some of this I suspect the companies have not fully thought through.
Irenes (many)@davidaugust @my_actual_brain ah. we're ex-Google privacy.
we can say from personal experience that the companies are aware of it, but thinking about it costs more in lawyer time than they want to spend, so they'd prefer not to
@davidaugust @my_actual_brain in cases where the app itself is different, by the way, that's likely because one country allows drastically more data collection than the other. just a guess though, we have no direct knowledge of that.
@davidaugust @my_actual_brain anyway, our life advice is to pirate stuff, tbh. if companies aren't willing to sell it to you.........
Archangel Valerie@davidaugust just pirate bro
RealGene ☣️@davidaugust
Staying in another hotel. The new season of The Bear began last night. It's produced by FX. Great! FX is on the hotel cable. Nope, FX is showing a movie.
This FX show is only available on Hulu.
Third spruce tree on the left@RealGene @davidaugust ok, I won't make the crack about how I literally have this downloading at home rn.
What I will ask is how the fuck do tv/movie executives expect to build any fucking brand loyalty like this?
me: I want to watch The Bear S4E01
exec: that's a Fleem exclusive
me: ok, I've managed to obtain legit access to Fleem
exec: oh no, hahaha, you don't live in Anglia and have the 3 magic gems of Ankh
me: fuck off.
viewer loyalty is to shows, not to networks/platforms
@tezoatlipoca @RealGene & executives spent years building shows exclusive to their streamers, hoping to build subscriber bases as financial foundation of their production pipeline (I wildly oversimplify).
Then decided to fight w/key suppliers & munge brands they’d spent yrs building & now license their libraries, the whole business reason individual streamers exist, to every streamer out there.
It’s malpractice & maybe even malfeasance.
@davidaugust I will always post this until media/streaming execs figure it out.
https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
The vast majority of people will PAY for content they like IF you make it fucking easy to obtain it. Platform exclusives, region locked, while lucrative absolutely make it impossible for anyone to watch ur shit.
Apple had this right back when iTunes did movies and TV. $10 for a season, $1-2 for an episode $3-5 for a movie. A la fucking carte. I lapped that shit up cause it was EASY..
@tezoatlipoca you are quite right. For almost 20 years it has been crystal clear the audience wants tk watch what it wants where it wants when it wants, and if they can’t do that through the legitimate sources easily, pirates are more than happy to offer.
And execs have too often never grasped that.
Perfect comic to include. Nicely done.
Michael@davidaugust Tixee has it, but only till June 30th.
gunstick@davidaugust I use torrent. Works perfectly since decades.
GeePawHill@gunstick @davidaugust Same same.
Pomegranate Pirate 🏳️🌈🏴☠️@davidaugust It's gotten so much like a shell game... support your local library's stats and use your card to stream Kanopy free, it's better than netflix. The public library version rocks, the version Touro University had sucked, default to Public library, if your school Kanopy sucks.
crispycat 
@davidaugust but please don't download movies!!!
@crispycat 100%. Downloading movies means no one who made it gets paid, and they need to get paid to keep making movies and TV.
@davidaugust @crispycat do the movie teams have a patreon, kofi, liberapay, poob, mubi, pwee
@MxVerda @davidaugust unfortunately i have never seen any that do-their contracts with big media probably prohibit that
@MxVerda @davidaugust "intellectual property" as a whole enables media corpos to abuse artists and consumers in a number of ways while enriching the stakeholders. we need an entirely new system that makes culture free (as in freedom to consume and create) while providing a means for creators to survive in a capitalist system
Matilda Love@davidaugust you can lick your corporate overlords' boots all you want, i'm not gonna join you