Disney+ changes subscriber agreement to allow ads on every plan
Disney+ has updated its subscriber agreement to allow advertising before and after movies and shows across every subscription tier. The change quietly ends completely ad-free streaming on the platform, even for those paying top dollar.
That includes the Premium plan, which costs $18.99 a month and was originally sold on the promise of an uninterrupted viewing experience.
Subscribers now face an on-screen prompt when logging in, requiring them to actively accept the updated terms before they can keep watching.
https://www.dexerto.com/tv-movies/disney-changes-subscriber-agreement-to-allow-ads-on-every-plan-3410354/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
173 replies
WE HAVE ALTERED THE AGREEMENT
PRAY WE DO NOT ALTER IT FURTHER
[heavy breathing]
haha that's so fitting
Bespin was the original enshittification, a long time ago and a galaxy far away
Corporate enshittification accelerates and Disney is leading the way.
They're really speedrunning it. Alas, I expected nothing less.
Wait didn’t Prime and Netflix do this already? After Hulu and YouTube went nuts with ads?
Disney sucks but seems like this is one of the last to ad ads.
IIRC, netflix did it only for a few plans
It was still added after initially not having any ads.
See ye on the high seas, matey! Arrr.
Some republican politicians are actually trying to push a legislation to require ISPs and VPN providers and whatever to block “foreign pirating sites”. I know there will always be a way for those who know what they’re doing, but they’re squeezing people little by little into having to pay these subscriptions no matter what companies do. I’ll personally just quit watching tv altogether if I had no choice but to pay these fuckers. I have zero subscriptions and I’d like to keep it that way.
My owned library is thousands of libraries. I'm with you, I'm checking out of current media if they want me to watch ads.
My public library still checks out DVDs. Some titles are blu-rays even. Get an optical drive and rip away. For free.
True that. I use both, Kanopy and physical from the library. I have a 42TB HPE server that has a ton of content. If it ever dies to where I can’t revive it anymore and all pirating sites are blocked, I’m fucking going back to the old days of dvd/blu-ray players. I will get me one of those portable ones like I had before and start watching. I’ll never pay them a fucking dollar.
Don't forget thrift stores, you can get old media there super cheap and some thrift stores support good causes so you still aren't giving money to the shitty companies but you are helping the thrift store survive and helping someone that needs it to keep a job.
Omfg, thank you so much for bringing that up. Totally forgot about this. Definitely first on the list.
This in particular makes me miss rental stores. Should have gotten into ripping twenty years ago.
Drink up me ‘earties, yo ho!
Allows is doing a lot of heavy lifting
The are deliberately adding ads
My only streaming service
Stremio is so good too
Only 3.49€ a month too !
😁
(My VPN cost)
I've been a Transmission person for decades, what's the reason to switch?
If you are happy, no reason to switch. I like the integrated search engine and the http remote control of qbittorrent, but whatever floats your pirate ship.
Remember that if you sign up for Disney+, you waive the right to sue them if they kill you at one of their restaurants.
What the actual hell. I am going to be a revenge pirate now
How can you sue someone from beyond the grave anyways?
Family on your behalf.
This is what capitalism does. Its endless profit growth requirement is not possible under any real market conditions. So it inevitably starts squeezing it’s own customers and degrading it’s own service to maintain these unrealistic demands for profit. The more consolidated the market becomes, the worse the outcomes. Anti-trust was always a half measure. The problem is capitalism is inherently unsustainable and can only lead to negative outcomes for it’s products and services over time. Nothing can grow infinitely and that pursuit will always collapse bringing societal pain.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
I don’t think it’s really the fault of the economic system of capitalism exactly. There’s nothing about “private ownership of the means of production” that requires infinite growth. For that I blame Wall Street in particular.
Name a time in history private ownership hasn’t metastasized into monopolies and imperialism. Wall Street as a financial hub didn’t even exist till 1817 and didn’t gain much hold on the world till far later. The first stock market was in 1611 in Amsterdam. British capitalism fueled British imperial rise before America even existed. Capitalism is just smaller fiefdoms under owner monarchs. It always exploits labor and slowly takes more and more power to oppress for its own gains. People are real quick to forget how awful businesses were to labor in the past. Union members died to get us the little we have they are again stripping away. Systems that centralize power with an unaccountable minority always do the same thing.
Fair point well argued and cited. I have no counter.
Marx explains that the primary use of capital is to accumulate more capital. No one who invests money is satisfied with an equal or lesser value in return. Note that this is disanalogous to a direct exchange of goods. If I give you a coat and you give me a chair, we are satisfied with the trade because the use-values are heterogenous even though the exchange-value is homogenous and [if the trade is fair] equivalent. But there is no reason to exchange $100 for $100 because the two are the same. (This is not to say we should go back to the barter system: the point is that capitalist commodity production leads to capital, which leads to an expectation of infinite profits.) Once you have a pile of money, you can either sit on it or you can throw it back into the market in an effort to get more money.
Marx argues that, under capitalism, money itself becomes fetishized, since the owners of private commodity production pursue ever greater profit. More precisely, they pursue more surplus-value to appropriate from the value created by the labor-power they purchase from workers.
Good explanation of why I’m wrong without saying I’m wrong. Thanks!
is this what you really think? im a little bit in awe of how braindead this analysis is. vegemite? the product made from brewers scraps? thats the product you use to defend capitalism??
Cool story.
Never go full retard.
This is easily one of the most delusional, confused, and dumb things I've ever read.
If I see an ad it’s over. I pay so I can feign being free of ad bullshit subconsciously.
People are so normalized to ads. I have many, many friends who either use YT free and wait patiently for 2 x 1 minute apps before every video AND ad breaks. I tell them about adblockers and they laugh and say "they dont mind". Or they play for YT premium and I tell them that adblockers exist and they say "i dont mind paying". Genuinely blows my mind
That's how they do it, add 10% ads every year and normal people just figures it's the new normal.
Imagine if people just stopped paying these companies. I guarantee you that most people have more entertainment than they can consume in their lifetime. They just want to have everything and these companies know it.
Also they could just pirate it if they wanted something new.
"Ad-free" has always been bullshit because every steamer runs ads for their own content at the start/end of everything and has giant "WATCH NEXT" "COMING SOON" "TRENDING NOW" banners on every screen.
Yeah. All the companies seem to think that ads for their own products don’t count as ads. Same with all these ad free mobile games…. 99% of them show ads for in game purchases.
I think that the bullshit mental gymnastics that they all went through to allow them to do that was to call them promotions, not ads.
Promotions are less annoying but still annoying.
"Hey heres a show thats popular with people who also watched what you watched, maybe you will too IDK." Isnt as grating as "Have you considered going into 70k of debt for an oversized truck you dont need?" Every 10 minutes.
The secret recipe: add 10% a year and people start normalize it!
-"Well, some ads are okay like buy a car I mean I don't care, I mean it's way worse having your balls electroshocked every 10 minutes!!"
If I read the article correctly, that’s exactly what they’re talking about. Promo prerolls.
My jellyfin server doesn't have ads
There are no ads in my paperback books either :-)
Imagine paying to see ads. That has got to be the ultimate cuckoldry.
It's what we did with cable.
Was only using Disney and pirated the rest. Now we will be pirating every damn thing just like I did 20 years ago. Fuck any service that will not give you the option to pay for ad free.
Yeaaahhh. That's how you keep customers isn't it?
You probably will keep most, yeah. People are suckers and will put up with nearly anything. Plus the lost revenue from people unsubscribing will be offset by the additional income from the ads. You can expect that to already be priced in.
I am told that back in ancient times people survived somehow with very few viewing options. They listened to radio, read books, magazines and newspapers and such for entertainment and information. Sometimes they talked to each other in person or on a phone. Sounds a little crazy but I might give some of these a try. Personal media streaming is an interesting bypass I would like to explore as well.
It is not streaming and doesn’t address the advertising part of the conversation but if you are lucky enough to be able to set up a good antenna appropriately placed, over the air (OTA) may be an option for some for some television. Location is a constraining factor.
I don’t object to paying a fair price for a service but I do object to “let’s take you for as much as we can possibly get”.
The older you get the easier it gets to abandon all streaming services to be honest.
Every high production value movie is a cliche you can guess 5 minutes in. And the few outliers get so much publicity you will probably hear about them anyway and be able to get a copy through other means.
I guess it's also why apparently CD sales have been picking up. Easier to just rip your favorite music and listen to/stream your own collection than deal with a mess of different services.
Do they still get to kill your spouse if you sign up?
Disney says man can't sue over wife's death because he agreed to Disney+ terms of service
NUTS!
They immediately dropped the arbitration argument once the bad publicity started, but it wasn't truly tested in court so they could try again on a less public case.
If I were a Disney+ subscriber, I would issue a chargeback every bill, stating that I am not getting the service I agreed to, until they dropped me as a customer.
Also, 🏴☠️
that implies having the service withput using it.c from other repliea, you are forced to accept the new terms or you dont see anything. But i like your way of thinking
You know what? I think that Assassin's Creed IV was the best game in the series.
I'm on duo for Disney and Hulu. Didn't get any prompt when logging in just now, but ads are an instant cancel.
It’s promos at the end and beginning of programs, not in the middle.
Not excusing it, just clarifying it.
Promos for other programs on +, or adverts for products?
Promos for other programs on + (so far anyway)
I tried to explain this earlier and got downvoted. 🙄
Edit: not that downvotes matter at all, it’s just frustrating. Sometimes there is zero room for nuance or context on the Fediverse.
The headline doesn’t invite room for nuance, and there’s a higher concentration of pirates here.
And— again, not to excuse it— most streaming services already do these types of promos, even Apple TV (meant to be the prestige one).
I don’t think they’ll slide into putting them in the middle of shows, but I do think they’ll charge more for ad-free than they’d have ever made from the user on ad-supported, and they’ll make the ads so annoying on ad tiers to pull users into ad-free tiers.
Prime is the worst one afaic: ads in the middle, ads on both ends, and ads on the pause screen, and clicking Enter shops for whatever the ad is about about. Not to mention the ads in the program itself (Prime boxes, Amazon trucks, etc.).
I was at my parent’s house and they watch that 9-1-1 Ryan Murphy show; oh my fucking god, I thought the Subway sandwich ad in the Hawaii-5-O was embarrassing: this program plugged three things in less than a minute.
Plus, they made ad free a separate payment so they could force people that pay yearly for prime to start paying extra right away.
How did you make it this far with Hulu? I noped out of that shit probably around 2014.
Yep, they were one of the first ones to start doing this. You want me to pay and you’re going to show me ads? Fuck no. You either get one or the other.
It's $2 more than just Disney and family likes it.
they were one of the first that tried to get you to pay and have ads. I went no fucking way, never will they get my business.
As I recall, that was back when they were transitioning from having only a free ad-supported service to having a paid ad-free tier. Some of their contracts with a very small, specific set of shows didn’t allow them to be ad-free. Everything else was ad-free. And eventually they renegotiated those contracts and got everything ad-free. But people made a huuuuuge deal about how you’d be paying and still watch ads. It was like, four or five shows? And this was when Hulu was pretty much everything from current seasons on broadcast television, so they had a shitload of shows. I never saw an ad when I paid for it back then.
Never enough profit, huh?
Welcome to capitalism.
Oh excellent, an excuse to drop it that my fiance will have to accept.
Cancel it, you'll be okay.
I think there are people who still buy cable. As a non cable person I remember being amazed a decade or so ago when I saw what was mostly on. reality shows with more commercials than free over the air tv. and people pay for that. nuts.
Over the last year I lived with my parents to take care of them and occasionally I had to entertain myself with their cable TV. I used to spend hours channel surfing and there was almost always lots of stuff to choose from. Now I just end up watching Beat Bobby Flay because there's absolutely nothing else to watch. And I don't really want to watch Beat Bobby Flay either.
🏴☠️
I've been holding out a long time. I will pay what it takes to access content I want to see and avoid ads. I want money to make it to the artists. But if there is no option to avoid ads, then I will not pay for your service anymore. I would imagine many others feel the same way. Seems like a very foolish decision.
I am beyond that. I just quit being a consumer all together. There is plenty of things that I can give attention to anyways. For free, with no pirating involved.
Get a library card and rent some DVDs or read some books.
Controversial opinion, a lot of those artists are already paid when it comes to TV. Fuck that, in my opinion.
Did You know that today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day?
Where did the frugal pirate get his hook?
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler At the secondhand store! :::
(on a completely unrelated note)
🏴☠️
And you just know the normies will keep paying
Guys, we live in a dystopian world. Such bullshit! Most everything about society is dystopian. I don't think there is any redeeming quality to the fuckers that are in charge of it all.
There is one. Self destructive personalities often leads to their own demise. So most likely the
richsociopath class kills itself.Edit: or we do it for them. Listen Luigi isn't just a good idea. It would force change. They don't fear their mortality.
Fuck all these streaming service. I want Stremio, with the ability to pay a little directly to the creators of the things I watch. We need to break this system and replace it by something fair for the artists and creators, not to a fucking corporation that will give them pennies. People are willing to pay an amount for the media they consume, we just need to redirect the money to right people.until then stremio all the way.
I feel scammed.
I always bought DVDs to avoid ads and that was nice, then they made streaming more affordable and convenient.
Then they quietly dropped releasing streaming shows on physical media and now it’s more expensive and has ads.
You tricked me!
I remember physical VHS and DVDs also had a lot of advertisement back in the day. Self marketing for different movies, releases etc
At least with VHS you could fast forward past the FBI notice and ads. Unskippable DVD ads was why I never thought badly about torrents.
Rip it and burn a backup without the ads?
You could also get players that ignored the can't skip flag.
That is the way
Those are fun and dated now. The streaming services won't leave anything after the profit is gone.
Fair enough
Already long gone. All streaming services are terrible value now. They all got too greedy.
Ah yes. Behold my trusty old jellyfin server with sonarr and radarr
Have you build your own server? Or did you buy a NAS?
I bought a shell of a supermicro super storer, put ATX components in it, and outfitted it with 8x 10 TB drives in ZFS RAID Z2.
I have to 50 TB of storage and I can scale to 200 TB relatively easily. Streaming services are gone in my household.
I'm using a 2019 Dell SFF (Small Form Factor) desktop. It idles around 20 watts with max power of 80 watts, which is important. My old desktop idled at 100 watts.
This machine has no trouble doing everything I need for a media server. It's running VMware ESXi, with multiple VM's. One VM is for the Jellyfin server, one is the file server, one is a video conversion/DVD ripper/CD ripper, etc.
While ripping DVD's and converting videos, that box still has no problem serving multiple video streams for Jellyfin.
It really takes so little to stream, especially if you work toward limiting transcoding. Still, even when transcoding I don't run into performance bottlenecks.
Out of curiosity, why are VMs, streaming or transcoding needed? I've always just accessed and played the movie files directly from the media center PC via some form of ssh or nfs. Even works from my phone on the go with a Wireguard VPN. Have I been missing out on something?
Guess it depends on what you have on your server. Streaming a Blu-ray movie in full quality to your phone might not be the most desirable thing to do... so you can watch the full "non-compressed" movie at home on the big screen and have a smaller version served to your phone.
Can't wait to hear from the crowd that said it was fine when they introduced an ad tier because they still had a non-ad tier. Despite everyone that has seen how this always goes before telling them it was only a matter of time before legally watching Disney owned content was going to mean paying a substantial monthly fee and having to sit through ads.
Let this be a lesson everyone that said that. Once they build the mechanism to have the ads, they will not be able to resist turning up the dial for the easy ad money.
Sounds like a class action lawsuit based on false promises is in order
This is why regulation paired with antitrust enforcement is important, which hasn't existed in any meaningful sense in the US since before Reagan. Healthy competion would drastically lessen the likelihood of such anti-consumer practices.
Businesses with high barrier to entry naturally will have fewer competitors(airlines, cell networks, etc.) and so need healthy regulation, or preferably nationalization.
There was one when amazon did the same. In favor of amazon...
I think the dumbfuck judge said it was merely 'modification of benefits, so it doesnt count', or some shit along those lines. This probably the reason why more companies do it now.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-beats-ad-tier-class-action-subscription-trickery-1236318700/
You probably agree to changes like this when you sign up. You wouldn't purposely agree to it but they write it that way and it stands up in court.
Ah the classic enshifitied double dip. "Yes, you're paying us.. but we want more money, and these guys will give us lots to advertise to you, So fuck you and behave"
But but, it's so they can provide you with a BETTER experience!
Disney should be aware that they are a big corporation with a lot of well-known output.
Well-known enough that it will still have a lot of seeders many years after release.
You know there are tons of terrible news stories that affect us and we can’t do anything about it.
Then there is stuff like this that just makes me feel great about my choices, ahhhhhh, so satisfying to see.
New super premium plans will now be rolling out for 29.99 with guaranteed no ads
** terms and conditions apply, ads may still be show without warning, consult your doctor **
Capitalism is so old hat. Everyone knows they are being treated unfairly and we just sort of grimace and bare it. Enough already! Let's move on to a more enlightened phase of humanities progression. What's the next new thing? C'mon! In the words of a favourite american troubadour, "We don't have to say goodbye if we all go!".
Lmao. Like really. I could never have ever paid for the Disney channel, that itself is too close to an ad to begin with.
And now they are going to fuck with their base, the people who love their brand. They probably wont even blink.
And no I am not talking about the casuals, I an talking the top teir plan who worship the mouse.
Fuck Disney, always been shit, nothing was worth paying them money.
Nah. I am finally at a place that even that is too much effort. Stopping consuming and going out and doing is working better for me. They don't want to offer whatever they have expect to pay too much and get ads, I would rather it not live in world and just be done with it.
Its like we dont like XYZ so we borrow a copy and tell someone how we liked and, and it perpetuates the desire for XYZ. I figure I no longer want to be a link in that chain.
I have so many other ways to entertain myself it just isnt worth it anymore.
What in the fuckety fuckfuck?
The constant rising tide of "oh, we're adding ads to your current tier, but here's a new ad-free upgrade option!" was bad enough. But "Actually no, you can't even pay for ad-free streaming if you want to. Gfys." is sooo fucked. What are they even thinking, from a business perspective, do they really believe they have their user base so locked in that they can get away with this? (Don't answer that; the sad truth is, they probably do believe so, and they're probably right...).
Also, that on-screen prompt better include an option for an immediate downgrade and/or pro-rated refund (it probably doesn't).
I dropped Amazon the day they decided to charge $50/year for add free prime videos that used to be ad free and no extra fee. Fuck Amazon Prime.
I never had it, even before the days when I started boycotting amazon, I would always get the free shipping anyway. If I wanted something small, I would wait till I had a few things on my list and then I'd get them all at once to reach the "free shipping" threshold. There was no point in paying a subscription just to get free shipping on everything.
Yeah, screw this. Haven't been subscribed to Disney+ for a year now and I certainly won't return. If you have children, I guess you're fucked though.
I stopped paying for D+ when they doubled their price within a year. Guess I'll continue torrenting.
Fucking what? Well, cancel away and then Google the letters at the start of the words in this sentence:
Fucking Mouse, He's Yucky
So, what's the point of paying for the premium plan? Do you get more content for it?
I kicked them to the curb a few years ago because the price increases wouldnt stop. If only I got pay raises as frequently as they raised them. Get fucked streaming services...
Not on Kodi it doesn't :)
I would probably get this fact checked asap because I found this posted over two hours ago when I was checking over in the Disney+ Subreddit to see if anything is being said there about this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DisneyPlus/comments/1wl7wzk/psa_no_ads_are_not_being_added_to_all_movies_and/
Created by a Disney mod as a locked post. They would certainly have an incentive to be less than honest about ads coming to premium tiers.
Damn... that post has some serious 'Ministry of Truth' vibes. Wild.
Sail the seas 🏴☠️
Gotta watch my new marvels though /s
I've never had Disney and it hasn't stopped me from watching them one way or another
I pay for the lower tier plan because it makes it easy for my kids. I block their ads with ublock origin.
Yeah, I guess I'll see how that goes for a bit, though if Disney does what YouTube tries to do and succeeds, I'll cancel my sub. Oh and this is one fewer reason to care about my PS5, which acted like a Disney+ box for a while but doesn't have decent ad blocking.
This is the way.
You're gonna be force fed this shit everywhere all the time until you fuckin' buy something and then it's on to the next one
Arrrrr
Isn't the Mouse messing with copyright where we got the term Mickey Mouse law?
Crazy, now, to think that it was ever an anomaly.
I don't see this sticking at all. I imagine lots of companies will pop up to offer the needed services so even if the big players block foreign piracy sites, others won't.
yeah....most VPNs operate out of BVI so it has zero jurisdiction. I don't see them pushing BVI to acquiesce because all the "secret" wealth pipelines go through BVI for the exact reason why VPNs operate from there.
because of this all the coverage for this feels like an astroturf for something more important, like how poorly the war in Iran is going, or the diaper bitch, or Epstein, or take your pick.
it's just noise, they have no way to enforce this without also hurting their bottom line.
Glad I have kept my 1000+ dvd/bluray movie collection, given the way streaming has become nothing but fricken ads
who knew that streaming services aren't the most sustainable business model... it would be real funny when Netflix roll back to disc rental.
Lol. Sucks to suck. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I was only staying there for Furious. That's probably it for me.
I think it was after the Jimmy Kimmel nonsense we decided not to resubscribe and just never went back. I’m about done with all of them at this point
Scumbags
I actually hope this happens more. People need to quit paying for subscriptions. Every fucking thing has a subscription and every fucking subscription inevitably adds ads to their PAID subscription while increasing costs AND decreasing features.
It’s all absolutely unacceptable. Quit enabling these fuckers. Every company feels like they are entitled to a portion of my monthly income and I’m sick to death of it.
Usenet + Jellyfin ftw
So, stupid question, I have anywhere from 2-4 little kids running around the house at any time, and a partner that is recovering from a very serious illness. Can I change my whole game to the high seas with all of that going on? Like, I usually can't stay seated for more than 5 minutes at a time. How difficult and how long does the switch over usually take?
Some on here seem to be way overcomplicating things. Just stick the movie files on any old box with a large drive (even a Raspberry Pi could work with external USB drives) and then access them via some form of file share: ssh (sftp, sshfs), nfs, cifs, etc. And then play the file with a standard media player, VLC, mpv... most media players are smart enough not to try to load the entire file at once and so streaming is automatic.
Hugging my MUBI subscription tighter
The Disney ad-free tier is literally the same as Peacock's ad-tier for movies. Wtf
Is this them weaseling ads into all of their content or is it more because of offering sports or something?
(Full disclaimer I assume they are being anti consumer by default -- but I also know they all the platforms are trying to stream sports. My wife has four different platforms for soccer, and still can't see every game she wants)
People are such sheeple
In the UK we have had Sky Television for decades. Its a paid for subscription service, but ALL of its channels have adverts and has done since its inception. I don't understand why people are so surpised that ads are now appearing in paid for subscription based TV apps, it was a matter of time. It sucks, but you know, there are ways around it...
Its because these people were paying for the ad free tier that explicitly stated no ads.
Ads have been a thing since forever in radio and cable, but when you are paying explicitly for the ad fee service and a company decides to show you ads anyways without dropping you to cheaper ad tier its understandable to be pissed.
Ok good point. I've never bothered to look deep enough into the terms and conditions (who does?), but there are obviously clauses that say they can do this at any time.
Ok, but the point is it's a scummy move, not that they aren't allowed.