I was an early supporter of Netflix streaming; I remember talking my family into signing up and being able to enjoy watching TV shows and movies online (without having to download them!). It wasn’t new, per se, I remember missing an episode of the 5th season of Lost and being able to watch it the next day, either on Hulu or ABC’s website. Streaming video was a thing, the question was being able to (legally) watch movies and tv with it. So Netflix, with its deep vault (as opposed to most networks’ websites and Hulu, which offered only the few most recent episodes), entered the gap and had a lot you could watch. Whole seasons of television shows without having to visit a video rental store.
It’s easy to forget how dang wild this was at the time. To ‘watch something on demand’ just meant you owned the tv or movie on physical media (or had found a less-than-legal means of watching it). Netflix changed that and it was huge. For a minute there, it seemed like so much was on Netflix; you could watch Star Wars, you could watch Firefly, you could watch Mamma Mia! It was all on Netflix, not spread out around a bunch of DVDs at home or on cable networks.
But then everyone wanted a piece of the pie. HBO got in on the game, releasing Game of Thrones episodes as they aired on their normal channel. Amazon let you stream stuff with Prime, though only certain items were available. Disney joined the fray in 2019, leveraging their impressive content vault to get a leg up. Paramount’s in it too, so is NBC with Peacock. Heck, even Apple has decided to join the fun despite it once being known as a company that made computers. Stuff left Netflix to go home, deals ran out, and now it feels like you need a half-a-dozen streaming accounts to keep up with whatever television you’re watching. If you’re following The Last of Us, Ted Lasso, The Great British Bake Off, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds you’re going to need four accounts — and all of those except The Last of Us are only on streaming, so you can’t watch it on television like in the olden days of 2008.
And now Netflix is cracking down on password sharing.
And so many sites are removing shows that never got physical releases and there will be no way to watch them.
Cory Doctorow describes this whole process as ‘enshittification,’ where a new product is introduced, changes the playing field to the point where alternatives wither away, and then slowly but steadily gets worse but you still use it because what else is there? We’ve seen it happen with Facebook killing all other social sites (and instant messaging!) and then becoming awful. Uber and Lyft killed taxis and now charge high prices while screwing over their drives. Even WordPress itself, where this blog is hosted, feels so much more obtuse than when I started.
Streaming started out fantastic: rather than paying for cable or DVDs, you paid a single subscription fee to access a huge collection whenever you wanted. Now you’ve gotta get those piecemeal and, even then, you’re paying more than you used to for a lesser service — it’s been enshiffitied. It’s frustrating as hell, and a symptom of the larger issues of the modern internet, especially because I can remember when things were better.
Essays, Not Rants! 