Technology has started to make it easier and easier to be anti consumer. To maximise how much you can extract out of consumers.

It is making it easier to understand and control exactly how they use products and services. This allows you to structure your price and offering to give them the minimum amount they’ll accept at the maximum price. Allows you to strip features out and offer them for extra. Allows you to hide things behind ongoing subscriptions. Allows you to better lock people into products and services, making it more difficult to switch/leave.

All of this was possible (and being done) before, but technology makes this so much easier/better.

Technologies often start out by making something easier for the consumer. But beyond the early stages, it’s all about making the world better - for the corporations developing and selling products and services.

Exactly!

This pretty much summarises it.

A good alternative. I moved across too.

Youtube is the only thing there isn’t a really viable alternative to at this stage.

March 2000. Bigpond Cable. Such a step up in speed (although I can’t remember what that initial cable speed was) and suddenly we were always connected.

I had a faster connection than anyone I knew at that time :)

Thanks for sharing.

All too often the free and open alternatives (or these days even just the non-subscription alternatives!) involve compromising some features or convenience.

But not always.