Agree, but we're still better off than we were. I was paying over $130 a month for DirecTV in 2014 and a no-ads subscription wasn't available. Today, I'm paying $30 a month for what I want and I cancel/switch services when something comes available that I want to watch.

We traded one tether for another. Sovereignty requires owning the source, not renting access. As Seneca noted, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. Return to self-possession.

It was apparent decades ago when streaming services first popped off that this was the inevitability. Its business 101, capture market share with aggressive pricing as the challenger and then when market majority is yours, act like the incumbant (monopoly) and make as much revenue as possible knowing already where the customers acceptable budget is and then seeing how far you can push that further bfr losing your monopoly to the next challenger.

The same thing we do every night, Pinky, fiat enshitification.