Ads "destroyed" TV. Streaming only became popular because it meant no fucking ads. Now ads are destroying streaming. Circle of capitalist life, I suppose.
Yup, that's why I subscribed to Netflix. I refused to get a TV sub because of all the stupid ads. Netflix offered enough of a selection and had no ads. I cancelled my Disney+ sub because I wasn't willing to pay the increased "no ads" price, and I'm trying to convince my wife to drop Netflix because of the increased "no ads" price. We also had problems with both service because we downloaded a bunch of videos to watch offline a week or two in advance (we had back-to-back trips), and we couldn't access our content offline when we needed it.
Ads can suck on a fat one, I'm going back to buying physical media. I don't care too much about the selection, I care about not having ads. I pay for Nebula because, you guessed it, no ads. I would pay for YouTube Premium, but their app sucks for offline viewing, and I'm better off with alternatives (e.g. Grayjay is a much better experience offline than YouTube Premium). I'm willing to pay extra to avoid ads, and the market seems intent on abusing me for it, so I'm noping out.
And I do agree with the first part of the statement...but I think a good chunk of us here use Linux so the latter part falls flat.
Perhaps we'll see it similar moreso to Unix. Where activity pub is Unix and is used around the world. But Linux is still used by a small portion of the population.
The fragmentation and exclusivity bullshit sucks, but streaming, on demand, in any length of time I want to spend in a sitting, without ads? I barely watched TV before streaming, because it wasn't worth the downsides.
When I moved out my first decision was to not get cable anymore. Streaming wasn't even a factor in that decision as Netflix was only just starting here. I just didn't care about all the drivel broken up by increasingly long commercial blocks. Lack of quality killed TV for me, not streaming.
Unfortunately in my country HBO was only available as an add-on, so you'd need an expensive cable subscription you didn't want and then pay extra for the concent you'd actually wanted to see. Pretty bad deal.