That’s it. We pulled the plug.

We got the announcement from Netflix that our Basic plan was being discontinued. We would no longer get ad-free viewing on one screen. Netflix had the gall to frame this as a way to reduce our spending by incorporating ads in our content. We paid for the Basic plan specifically to avoid ads in our streaming. If we wanted to pay more for content AND watch ads, we’d just sign up for a cable streaming package.

We broke the news to our daughter, and she took it remarkably well. Maybe it was because she was watching Big City Greens on Disney+ and wasn’t really paying attention. Kids are funny like that.
This month we’re cancelling Amazon Prime and Netflix, but Netflix stings a bit more.

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I’m really angry that Netflix’s path through enshittification is working…

I hate that consumers are opting to make the streaming experience worse, and supporting a business model that treats consumers poorly.

It’s a funny emotional thing in my brain.

Netflix was the longest unbroken subscription streak for any media service I’ve ever used. I’ve not subscribed to anything, no newspaper, magazine, or media service, longer than Netflix. We’ve been monthly paying customers since the earliest days of sending DVD’s through the mail. Until last year, we always paid for the highest quality streaming options Netflix had to offer. It was almost a badge of pride to support a business that delivered such a good value to its customers.

Unfortunately, as Netflix faced more competition, and the costs of operating streaming services started putting pressure on executives (to please shareholders), Netflix flipped a switch. It became clear they weren’t interested in making the best service they could for the customers, but to find ways of impressing investors. Yet again, a brilliant service was pivoting, and end-users were no longer the focus of its attention.

This move to cancel comes at an interesting time though. It stings a bit less, as we just genuinely haven’t been watching a lot of Netflix. Even when there’s an exclusive that’s kinda fun like Axel F, I’ve sat through numerous other titles like Atlas with more of a shrug. It’s difficult to get too invested in a show, as we know “The Netflix Pattern”. A show runner will purposely build a massive cliffhanger into a season, hoping they will be popular enough with Netflix’s black-box algorithm to get a season two.

Anymore, I’m not really investing in any TV unless I know for a fact that I’ll get either a “mystery” or “crime” of the week with little season-long homework, or that the show is able to commit to a plan. If more shows came out like Breaking Bad or Ted Lasso, where the show runner was confident enough to say “after four seasons, we’re done, and this is the story I want to tell”, I would watch a LOT more TV.

Netflix does not encourage that kind of production. “The Netflix Pattern” is to string you along from season to season, and inevitably you get left off with unresolved plot points when Netflix pulls the plug.

Three-Body Problem might break that mold, but I’m one of those insufferable nerds who read the books. If I can’t watch the remaining seasons (who knows if we’ll really get a satisfying conclusion to this adaption), I’ll be fine knowing how the story concludes in the books, but I digress…

What really stings though, I’m still perpetually frustrated at how anti-consumer the perceived value is here. Netflix markets these awful moves as ways to IMPROVE the consumer experience, but it’s almost Orwellian double-think that takes the audience for granted. I refuse to do business with a company that thinks it’s too big to care about its customers.

“We’re making this worse, and we know you won’t cancel.”

It didn’t have to be this way.

Netflix ascribes a “value” to several key metrics. Prices fluctuate on ads, number of screens, and quality of the streams. It makes sense in my brain, that we should be able to choose plans based on those options. Netflix disagrees. They apply pain points to each plan that “encourage” the consumer to move up to more expensive plans.

What I really want is an ad-free option, with 4K streaming, on one screen. There’s no way to buy that. I’m sure there are folks living in areas with poor data connections, that want two or more screens at a time, but would be fine with 720p resolution.

We’re not doing ads in our home. That’s a deal breaker. Of course, there is no in-between option. The jump from the “Standard with Ads” plan to the “Standard Ad -Free” plan is more than twice as expensive.

This is made even more galling by the ridiculous “geo-policing” Netflix is enforcing now. If I pay for “two screens of streaming” it shouldn’t matter WHERE those screens are. Netflix is a media streaming service, and a significant amount of their traffic has to come from mobile gadgets.

Attaching plan details to a physical location is yet another way to squeeze more money out of situations consumers took for granted. It’s hilarious to see a perk like “Four Simultaneous Streams” then be attached to one physical billing address.

You can download content on up to SIX different devices! Make sure those devices check in at home! Gee THANKS NETFLIX!

It’s like the airline model of squeezing customers for more cash.

You keep making the basic service more and more miserable by removing features, so you can sell the old benefits as separate “upgrades” now. I NEED to suffer the dehumanizing indignity of air travel for work and to visit my relatives. I do NOT have to be treated this poorly from a service that is supposed to entertain me.

We’ve gone from spending the most we could at Netflix, to spending nothing. I’m not saying Netflix will NEVER get any of our money, but from now on, we’re adding them to “The Rotation”. We MIGHT check in for a month if there’s something we really want to watch, but Netflix is no longer a forgone conclusion expense.

Goodbye Amazon Prime. Goodbye Netflix.

It’s even funnier to think, that while we’ve been paying significant amounts of money every month to streamers, we’ve still been doing things like checking out physical movies from the local library. We’ve been paying for streamers, but sometimes what we want to watch is on a service like Hoopla or Kanopy, which is attached to our library cards.

Plus, for every month I’m NOT spending money on Hulu, Max, Netflix, or Amazon, I feel pretty good about buying a movie or two I love, and adding them to my Plex server. We had a HUGE crate of old DVDs and Blu-Rays that I’ve gone through digitizing, and our movie collection is formidable now. I’m starting to do the same to our TV DVD collections, that just takes a bit longer to organize.

Have you ever had that issue, where you download a movie or show on a service like Netflix, but then while traveling, something happens, and you can’t watch that show until you can sign into your account, or hook up your device to some WiFi? Maybe that only ever happened to us, but it happened A LOT on our daughter’s tablet. We had to keep verifying our account, and she would get really frustrated when she couldn’t just watch the show she wanted on a long road trip.

You know what NEVER happens when I download a movie from my Plex server to my daughter’s tablet? The above paragraph. That NEVER happens with the media collection I control and manage. I digress again…

Netflix used to be the gold standard, but now it’s time to say goodbye. 

I’m sad that I’m not going to miss it as much as I thought I would…