Thats because the overall content is shifting to become more authentic and genuine. Most people become famous for being themselves and the oversaturated MrBeast effect is slowly retired. Even MrBeast toned down his smile on the thumbnail
@@bumblebeegamerrealhaha…I actually checked after reading your comment and yea his recent thumbnails do not have the same trend of smile as his older vids…..still averages 150 mil views tho
Why are we still paying for WiFi and the telephone and subscriptions when these companies are selling our information, is a question i often ask myself.
@@dicekolev5360 nowadays people are really busy, you just cant assume everyone lives the same life as you, maybe the person has a job to work and a family to feed and they had just forgotten it, it is only part of human nature. or maybe their family had subscribed and they had just remembered to cancel it now. I had also thought how people could forget such a thing until it happened to me.
@@rodrigojds Its true that companies exist to make a profit, but unfortunately its also their job to maintain their trust with customers. Just because your company needs to make profit, doesnt mean they can exploit workers or piss their userbase which makes them lose customers. Its really not an excuse to resort to unethical practices, and not be transparent in communication. Of course no one offers a service for free, but charging more for less perks will definately push away customers. Look at Disneyland and Cable TV. You pay more for the former and you get less benefits than you did. The latter, you initially pay for no commercials at a fair price and now you pay at least 200 dollars with commercials
@@rodrigojds I understand companies need to make money, but its their job to make sure the changes they make do not hurt their customers and tarnish their reputation. Just because companies need to profit doesnt mean they can take away people's games, charge more for less perks, mistreat employees, or go against their company's foundation No company is going to give a free service for obvious reasons, but companies shouldnt be surprise that people are angry at them for valid reasons and turn away from them. Yes, no company gives you a free phone, but at least not all of them make it difficult to repair your phone or overcharge for repairs for the sake of profit Not all companies give you games for free, but not all companies give poor experiences with shady DRM, buggy unfinished graphics and gameplay, barebones plot, and main story content locked behind a paywall, all while being priced at $70. Even worse, these companies are able to revoke access to your games because of a legal loophole. The same can be said for streaming services where you used to be able to watch Cartoon Network shows on HBO, and now most of them are completely wiped I understand businesses need to make money, but there is a fine difference between needing to turn a profit and just being a greedy company. If needing to turn a profit requires screwing with the trust of the community, running scams, losing trust of investors, and introducing unethical practices, despite still being a sucessful company, then thats problematic In most cases, you can find another product or buy a good indie game if you dont like whatever the company sells, hell you can leave a review. But in some cases such as RUclips's treatment towards content creators and Comcast's attitude towards cable television, there is no choice. They are relatively successful companies and financially stable, yet they demand more money. I understand employees need to be paid, maintainence needs money, electricity needs money, etc, but clearly corporate greed runs rampant. Many silicon valley companies layoff hundreds and thousands of employees and some form Unions and protest due to unfair working conditions. So unless if companies are transparent with whats happening, then they shouldnt be surprised people dont like them
Ive had a feeling these services are getting worse yet more expensive. It feels good hearing you articulate these thoughts I’ve had for years now. I knew I wasn’t crazy
@@manthe3711 Meanwhile I can't see myself signing up for even one subscription service because "am I actually gonna be using it? not likely? then why bother" while he has like a dozen services while having probably far less free time than I do. I see it less as him spending "so much" as him failing to resist the companies selling him crap he probably isn't using all that much anyway. Different people have different priorities, though seeing him spend 1200 pounds on subscriptions makes me go "but why?"
@@yashrastogi149 The more people are aware of the issue, the more likely they are to support solutions. Small steps are all we have, unless you got a better plan?
@@HunterTracks Being aware of the fact is not enough to have these companies change their policies and even if through some miracle they did "change" how long did think it would take them to start exploiting the consumers again?
Thank you for making this. This is happening in "services," tech hardware and big supermarkets. Need to shop local with small business. The only solution I can think of.
I hate that every time you get a question like "would you like to receive notifications?" the only possible options are "Yes" and "Not now". What about the "No" option?
Here's a trick! First, click "yes", then, when the browser itself asks you if you want to allow notifications, click "no". Longer explanation: there's a web technology called "browser notification", which allows websites to tell your browser to send you a notification. Now, due to user protection stuff, websites first have to ask for permission from your browser, which in turn asks you, the user. And once you told the browser you don't want to receive notifications from a certain website, that website can't ask for permission ever again. That means most websites first try to ask you directly, before asking the browser. This way, they can keep asking again and again. The way to get back at them is to first act as if you want to receive notifications, then, when the website asks the browser, simply deny it. Boom, done.
I think there are a few US states that passed a law saying companies who let you sign up online can’t force you to cancel by phone. Laws need to go even further than this though.
And for the love of god can we please get a policy stating that no FREE trial can require your credit card information (so we can steal some money from you when you inevitably forget that you even signed up?)
Ahem! My first port of call when looking at companies and subs, how easy is it to cancel if I get a sniff that it's hard or impossible to cancel or made dificult. I won't use it. 👍
Man you have NAILED this!!! I have been noticing this but didn’t realize how bad it really is. I recently canceled my prime subscription as delivery is not only not 1 day anymore… it’s now 3, 4 sometimes even 5 days and I’m not talking just non prime direct from seller stuff, I’m talking stuff sold and shipped by Amazon. Why am I paying $140 a year when I can get faster delivery from Best Buy or Walmart with no membership. The worst part about it is it’s not because the items are 3, 4, 5 days away because once they ship, I find out that the items were a couple hours away and Amazon just did not process the order. I’m sorry but I’m not paying $140 a year for you to sit on an order for 3-4 days that’s only two hours driving distance away.
Same. Cancelled everything. Stopped shopping at big corpo stores for my regular needs and I'm unexpectedly saving around 5k a year. I thought I would pay a premium for avoiding it and I am 1 to 1 but I found I don't actually use the services enough to warrant a subscription of any kind, outside of my phone.
And then he does a surfshark commercial, which is really odd to me. Even _he_ still wants the money more than he values his own integrity. Btw: There are creators who publish how much those VPN companies offered them, and state the VPN deals are among the most profitable you can get.
I never started. Facebook was always suspect to me because they don't give a shit about privacy. Amazon exploits their employees and suppliers, as does Uber. They also destroy local businesses who don't have the ability to abuse tax loopholes as the multinationals do.
The problem is our anger is slightly misdirected. Although some blame needs to be shared by the companies, we need to be mindful of the fact that everyone has commitments and debts to repay including countries, and if there was a productivity decline for 2 years and govts tried to solve it by going further into debt, we should remember that inflation will rise. Sadly, our approach now is: spend the stimulus check today, think about consequences later. We let the govt get away with a lot of things.
I wonder if things will loop, people start pirating everything again, the companies tries to fight it, they eventually give up and offer a good service to people, people stop pirating, the service becomes shit, people start pirating.
"they eventually give up"....i have news for you they never gave up, in fact "pirating side" has been loosing ground heavily for the last 15 years. Today's much harder to find pirated products than it was 15-20 years ago
@@theghostofbabanovac7069what??? I live in a third world nation where I remember Quake 1 literally meant a month paycheck from my parents... In 2001. Now with the internet, I screw over so many big corps and made a small business from bootleg CDs it's not even funny, God bless the internet. It made me even realise religion is bullshit, can you imagine that???!!!
@@HazelwithaZ I'm having hope that one of these days, hopefully when I'm gray and decaying so as to witness it, big corporations will make one last slip, and people turn to localised merchant guilds except with internet. We really only need the word of mouth to go around enough, but I bet someone will come and call me a communist. I don't even believe we were made equal in luck and fortune. But some douche having a mega yacht chaffs my ass like old school jeans.
This video is top tier. (Without the tricky charges). Don't forget the pricing that looks reasonable until you realize they've divided the year's cost (along with the discount that only ever applies to the yearly sub) by 12 and when you toggle to monthly (if there's even that option) the prices shoot up. The hidden cancel link is getting more and more prevalent. I had to do research to figure out how to cancel. This happened more than once. The subscription pausing is just a trick to charge you later because who remembers that 3 months later? (Well I do because I started getting meticulous with these things and I put them in my calendar). My comment is already too long but THIS VIDEO!! YESSS.
As a coder who has to work for these tech companies for a living (they are almost all like this), I am very glad that influencers finally started covering the ice berg of dark Tech patterns. Thank you for doing the right thing! P.S. There are some great open source softwares out there. But Android, iOS, macOS, and even Windows now, have dark patterns to prevent us from using them, to such a degree, that it almost gaslights the users against open source. On top of that, some open source softwares might be backed by foreign governments. And now everything just feels so dark, that I, an open source enthusiast, almost want to leave programming as a whole. It's disgusting. (Edit: removed mentions of vim.) (Also, I know programmers are partially at fault too. But to solve a problem, we need to understand it. This is literally the most I can safely disclose at the moment. I am very sorry)
Its so wild to think of the beginning of the internet only 30ish years ago was just people connecting on forums, and in such a brief amount of time we now have companies competing for our attention addiction while increasingly using that data to extract any money we might acquire. We are being gaslit to blindly accept the greatest wealth inequality the earth has ever known with our very human need to be a part of something bigger. Like when you are a prime member, you are entitled to free shipping options, and as the word member is defined you are part of a whole group of people who are "entitled to something." When we feel like we are a part of something, and we are being rewarded for that, we are less likely to make critical decisions against the thing we are a part of because we feel like it would disrupt our network of support and we have a deep psychological instinct to maintain that order. It is so insidious! How long has amz been price fixing and manipulating the market in their favor and we consumers are just now starting to figure this out? It is most likely a core part of their business model yet I've only heard investigative reporting on it recently.
@@leskipbayless3280yeah, dude probably burnt out and has way more money than things to do with it, those tech bros' value systems get twisted AF, the hundo he donated to a millionaire is more than likely "a chump change" or "well worth the money" in his mind, which is ridiculously sad in all honesty
@@ferran5047 The point is that he is a dedicated programmer (hence using vim) but EVEN THEN he still wants to quit. It is part of the comment why are you complaining?
My language teacher has 2 airbnb flats in São Paulo, and he’s noticed they weren’t showing up in search - because they were priced TOO LOW, he had to up the price because he was loosing clients. That means Airbnb is artificially pushing prices up
Yes. All these internet companies are more a less scam. Airbnb is one of the worst companies, they allso willing rent out ur place to be used as a sex hotel or to sell drugs, airbnb do not care.
Not only that, but if you price a product too low for its market price it might look as less reputable, people might think it’s too good to be true thus recurring to other options.
@@franciscosousa5913the only reason that is, is because everyone overprices. If people started normalizing a fair price, that problem wouldn’t exist. It’s one of those things that get worse the more people follow it. Fair prices should not be met with skepticism, it’s a symptom of the current market that will implode on itself. Nothing is priced to low these days, it’s either super overvalued or just a little overvalued but since every company and industry is doing the same, no one can just go elsewhere. Air BNB prices are absolutely insane. They used to compete with hotels but damn if hotels aren’t half price or even a third of the price of similar air bnbs
Before it was a no brainer to use Airbnb, nowadays it really depends on the location. Sometimes hotels offer a better price. Especially for flats that are only used for sleeping
Yeah this just reminded me to cancel my Uber one sub. They did the 3 months free offer which is coming up in a month. I have no intention on keeping it. I only order once or twice a month so not worthwhile for me to use that. Most of the time I just go pickup my food so no need for it.
Thank you so much for the attention you paid to detect these dark patterns, and the guts you showed to raise your voice, and the kindness you showed to spread awareness regarding these dark patterns among your viewers.
I realised a few months ago the same pattern, when I decided for myself I dont want to play the games of these companies. So i rigorously cancelled all my subscriptions and looked for other alternatives. Now I dont take an Uber, I take the bus or go by train, I stopped binging shows on Netflix but started reading books from my local library and don't order food, but cook myself. I would even say that my quality of life improoved drastically
And you can sail the seas if you really want to watch something. not that hard to find either :). Fuck these corporations. Refuse sugar and over consumerism and they will fall.
Congratz! This is a great lifestyle choice and also gives you back more control over what you eat and consume. This, in term, makes it easier to determine what defines you, and, in exchange, who you are and who you become!
One thing I absolutely hate is nearly every online tool trying to sell you a subscription for "premium service". I just need to make my png transparent, give me a break.
There are photoshop versions before 2021 for that 😉 they removed normal png export that has been there since the 90s and i never updated to the latest crappy version of it
The proof of him being a good RUclipsr is the last two videos, completely honest, genuine and not caring about what the company will do to him after the video.
But this whole video was basically a plug for SurfShark VPN, yet another subscription service - the irony 😂 And remember the piece he’s quoting is only possible if you pay for the service upfront in its entirety, so his per month price is quite grey
He's correct about a lot of what he says, however... The basket nonsense is kinda dumb. It wasn't £4 it had shipping of another £4 unless you spend £30. Also the website is a local business that sells cheap decorations. That would be like me complaining about how dollar tree has cheap decorative glass, and that on Amazon for the same thing it's more expensive... Makes no sense.
Man pays £20,000 for useless tech and complains about £2.99 fee not because he can’t afford it, but because he knows I can’t afford it. This man is a hero.
The answer is piracy. If you can't afford the subscriptions, just pirate the content. It's morally wrong, but being morally wrong to corporations is a morally right thing to do, since corporations don't even have morals to begin with. The only people who deserve your subscription money are small creators of services or products that you enjoy. If corporations aren't going to make it convenient for you to pay, you shouldn't pay them. If paying is not owning, then pirating is not stealing.
There was a video of yours 2 years ago called "Ι'm worried about humanity" which was one of my favourite investigative pieces on youtube. This is now my favourite one. Amazing work on the video and I hope you keep posting more off these videos.
Funny thing is, as a German that's how life's always been. We're taking the bicycle to get around, pick up some food and head to a friend's place, then ride home afterwards. No uber and no food delivery service. It's just so convenient that way, but of course the city has to be built for cycling.
Well, it swaps over to EU as well. Personally I think some services are not safe in private hands, they should be state owned. You can call me socialist or communist or whatever you want, but consider this: A private company will always be profit oriented, never people oriented. A government has to be people oriented. Ergo, things like education, health ensurance and food production should be stateowned period.
You are spot on. We are living in a time when big corporations are gaining all of the power over the consumer and it's scary. This is just the beginning. Imagine how far this might go in another decade.
Thankfully the EU has very strong regulation and will contain these practices in the EU. Governments need to regulate to these industries. More regulations not less. America and UK seem to be more into less regulations and allowing companies to exploit the consumer.
@@TimHaggerty-ox8bl Well, not everyone knows. OP for example probably wouldn't have known without this video, and believe me your average person doesn't really notice so whether or no you personally already knew doesn't mean that the video is without merit.
These subscription models are everywhere and it's a cancer. Subscriptions for things that have no reason needing a subscription. Even car manufacturers want to soft-lock features your car already has behind a subscription (including Key FOBs). All the people over the years who've nagged and rolled their eyes, excusing criticism away as anti-progress... they deserve a large part of the blame for enabling this imo
helped the widow of a friend sort her financial woes after his death by going through all the shit she pays for but don't use, it was a nightmare, more than 600€ thrown away each month for nothing, like two gym subscriptions she says she had "cancelled" including one for a place that closed down in her city in 2020. took close to two months to cancel everything as some "required" sending registered mail twice. 😑 oh yeah, and two "security suites" for a windows pc she doesn't have. 🤡
@@kittytraildamn that is rotten to the core, cheers that you helped her out and I hope that the system will change. But I fear that too many people wont care enough to force the businesses to stop these practices
@@merkasable she signed for all those but never checks her bank statements or email, it's a nightmare as she has now new subs for coffee pods and some beauty/skincare products. i'm not sure she really understands that her monthly available for discretionary spending money has been divided by more than 3 since my friend death... 😑
@@kittytrail Had a case where my friend was paying for ant-virus and the cancel page leads to an error 404 page, in the end i teached him that he can call his credit card company and ask them to cancel any subscription from there AND ask for a chargeback for everything he didin't use by just telling he got scamed.
@@adrianocs4 depends where you are on this planet. here, you cannot cancel directly your payment as contract law is enforced quite well both for the company interests and for the customer ones and judges tend to side with the customer in case of a doubt (much like ebay's CS way of doing things) as the threshold of "proof" is higher for professionals than for laymen. there are lots of loopholes like unilateral contract terms modifications that will free you from the most robust contract if you don't agree with those changes (say roaming incoming SMS charges in Zimbabwe for your cellphone contract while you won't _ever_ need it), even if the new terms are in your favor of if they encompass a part you never used nor ever planned to use. one of the biggest problem is when the corporation is american or english and you have to go through their vile anglo shenanigans about the customer always being right as long as he pays, as soon as he stops or wants to stop, they consider you literally like a traitor and an ignoble person that cannot appreciate their infinite generosity in having you as a customer. or if you have to deal with cheap arsed 3rd world CS reps that neither understand what you say or mean nor do you understand what they're saying... 😑 add that most people are pretty much gullible and won't read the contract they're agreeing to nor would they understand half of it if they took the time to do so. 😑
22:16 "So what do we do about it?" The answer is simple - since corporations are all infected with parasitic shareholders, the best option is to just avoid subscriptions altogether. Obtain your media in ways that you can ensure you will have access to it indefinitely without worry that some provider will one day vanish taking your money and leaving you with nothing. If there is no legitimate way to do this, then it seems piracy should be deemed the correct consumer option.
I keep telling Robert Reich's lemmings this all the time: if you don't like a service or how much a company is making, don't buy their stuff. We are a consumer society that has to keep up with the Jones', MUST HAVE the latest & greatest, while not realizing they are playing a game that they can't win. Live humble, live simple, live basic and life is so much more enjoyable.
The economy continues to monopolize American companies are not investing money into innovation and productivity. They are growing through stock buybacks to inflate prices and through buying other smaller companies and expanding and driving out smaller competitors. This is the undeniable trend until republicans become serious about anti trust laws. We either have to abandon these monopolies and contribute to consume from companies that democratize access and control to the masses or we are screwed.
The economy continues to monopolize American companies are not investing money into innovation and productivity. They are growing through stock buybacks to inflate prices and through buying other smaller companies and expanding and driving out smaller competitors. This is the undeniable trend until republicans become serious about anti trust laws. We either have to abandon these monopolies and contribute to consume from companies that democratize access and control to the masses or we are screwed.
Trick is, for movies, if it's a Netflix produced movie (or any other platform) it will probably never have a physical release. So no only do we have to maintain our subscription or resubscribe if we ever want to watch it again, it will never have the same level of quality as the disk at the same "quality level". And even if you pirate it, that will almost always be even worse.
@@linnoff False. Pirating it has the same exact quality as the highest resolution available at the time for release. Pirates are very particular in the quality of their media libraries.
As someone who will definitely forget about subscriptions, When I sign up for a free trial, I put a reminder to cancel it in my phone's calendar. Then right before it comes up for the charge, I get the calendar reminder, and I can decide if want to keep it it not.
Oh, whine. I pay $0 for youtube's wonderful services, like every time I return to home page it reloads all the links in 5 seconds and all the thumbnails in 10. Yes, in that order. To different links.
@@johnsmith-cw3woWhen most laws are written in favor of corporations due to lobbying, it's called end stage capitalism, aka (corporate+state) fa$ci$m. Unregulated capitalism always ends up in the same manner, some would say that in time, all forms of capitalism do, the only difference is how fast it progresses to that dystopian end stage..
@@SoccerBoyAP Which was simply their future prediction, based on looking at companies like Uber (which ppl really liked when that opinion piece was written), imagine if every service was like uber and ppl actually were happy with all the services, then you would "Own nothing and be happy", it's not some sinister future plan. WEF has no real power over anything lol
Eh I disagree. I believe the elite players out there have nefarious intentions. It would be one thing if these billionaires were just rich and successful. These are the same people who openly say you will be eating bugs and view us as cattle. It’s like they’re anti-humanity, no shred of empathy or wanting the average person to live a fulfilling and rich life. It will only get worse when AI gets to the point where the middle class is not needed at all. Quite demonic really.
He doesn't need a sponsor. He's about to surpass Apple in subscribers and it is a tech channel. The amount of ad money he's pulling is terrifying to think about. Glad he decided to take advantage of his sponsor-independence and giant audience to sting giant companies in the balls.
@@olekbeluga314 If he needs to grow his business, he does need sponsorships. It's just most of the companies he mentioned don't do youtube channel sponsorships usually so he is ok. If he goes after Surfshark, DBrand, etc. he may bring in huge losses.
@@sensualbydomeni dude he is just..... so incompetent. complains about everything and misinformation. you can get a one month ps sub. for a tech channel he is just a consumer. the japan ep was good. otherwise very whiny. to each their own.
@@mitsunam7001 People cry and moan that things cost money. I think Disney+ never made money. Spotify is I think also losing money and the artists gets paid almost nothing. People cry about about it but forgot buying a single CD or LP costs more then 2 months subscription. Spotify is too cheap.
I am so glad someone finally made this video. These are the things I’ve been talking about for years. The companies who “enshitify” their services have a well deserved downfall coming their way.
- and the countries who claim they "index the tax rates" - eventually they simply take your paycheck and give you your "social" allowance. Be happy, own nothing.
but your companies are shells. it's you and your neighbors who lose out long-term. the investors are conglomerates themselves. the CEO can fly away to Barbados
Uber also tries to refuse refunds when you cancel Uber one a few days before the renewal date, claiming that it takes several days to cancel the payment and therefore there’s nothing they can do and the payment will be taken and can’t be refunded. It takes 5 minutes of telling them that’s it’s illegal to not give a refund when cancelling BEFORE the renewal and then magically they find the ability to refund the payment. They’re a terrible company, barely use them anymore.
Uber one is really the worst. Fell into that trap myself and it took me 2 hours to even cancel the subscription. It wasn't possible few days before and after you got charged. I mean lol - are you serious??
Say this video gets 10M views. If 1% of the audience cancels a $10/mo subscription, you just saved people $10,000,000 one year from now... Hats off to you!
WHO TF if your script writer!? They are so good!! Placed with your editors, the transition in the conversation is sooooo good!! and you normally have a single camera set up, maybe two for a few special takes. Ah I would kill to intern on your team!
I used to work for Uber, and what I found strange is how they charge both sides. They add extra fees for customers ordering food, and they take 25% of what they pay drivers, which seems absurd. It's like signing a contract with a company, getting paid for your work, and then having to give 25% back for the services they provide you. Have you ever heard of a company charging its employees or contractors for the essential services needed to get the job done? That's exactly what's happening here. They take a significant percentage from everywhere because they're covering some of the delivery costs, yet they still charge the drivers for doing the work. At this point, it's unclear who’s the employer and who’s the employee. I also suspect they take a percentage from the sellers, making it an incredibly profitable business model-earning more than the sellers without even having a product of their own except the online services and apps.
They take an extra 30% cut on the sellers. That's why most of items on UberEats are now more expensive than their "in-house" counterparts. To recoup their margins even with Uber's scandalous cut on their products
@@RobS8769The 25% is the service charge they deduct, and it is unrelated to the right to work or taxes. Individuals working for Uber are responsible for managing and paying their own income taxes.
"Tiering" comes straight out of the Airlines Industry. Instead of creating new better quality Tiers, they broke down the existing ones into ones with less features.
@@Prometheus7272 Pretty much; in the old days of the airline industry, first class was the only thing available: there were plenty of room, very comfy, great customer service, etc. Nowadays, it's in the tier system where first class is now the upper tier at a higher price and economy is the lowest tier where they shove people in like a tuna can.
I would argue the way airlines approached this had an overall positive effect (making air travel more accessible), but other industries bent it to make it malicious.
This is by far the best video you've uploaded within the last 6 months. I don't think people think about these things. They just pay for stuff for ease of convenience
I am at 0:10 and stopped to say. I just told my significant other youtube, google etc seem to shitify heavily. She said it is because they keep throwing people out and automating everything or replacing with foreign employees. I think it's just greed, but lets see what you say.
The darkest pattern: being forced to close ads, instead of them closing themselves. double plus dark: making it nearly impossible to close an ad instead of opening the link.
@@riley1636 Ads used to end without user input. It was an intentional design shift when that changed. Though it may not sound like much, it's yet another change that was forced on us, despite it making the experience worse.
@@lithelily yeah but that's not trickery, it's just shitty. dark patterns aren't synonymous with shitty, they're synonymous with "tactics to get you to do things we want you to without you realizing we're forcing you to" aka tricking you.
This video really summed what's going on in the last ~5 years. Everything just slowly turn into shit: shorts, ads, fees, etc. Internet is really broken these days.
Yep, the entire economy is now based on tricking us. I’m so tired of subscriptions. I don’t do free trials anymore because they make it so hard to cancel that you put it off until the last day and they hope you give up trying to find the link to cancel and keep paying
you can thank share holder capitalism. I remember when the talks about free internet and open software technology were at the forefront, but then people went... nooo let s just give them something and it will be fine. Now that they are the only game is town you see why it was an important fight to win. Give them a finger, they ll take the balls next.
Ikr it just all feels so bad compared to pre-2020 imo I feel like RUclips and Google are making the occasional effort to go in the right direction though, like YT recently asking users to choose the content they actually would like to see more of
@@pigimiceli i think its more about large monopoly companies in tech (e.g. Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Netfilix) that can base their whole business strategies on enshittification. There is no viable alternatives for the users to seek higher quality services. In the non-internet world, we don't have this problem. With cars, restaurant etc we can always choose to go for competitor if we are not satisfied with the product we get.
@@guillaumelane3374 Honestly RUclips are one of the worst ones. They keep locking existing features behind the paywall and increasing the number of ads.
yes this is stupid, im in the uk where tipping isnt common because the uk pay the staff an ok wage, but they still want tips, f that ill go out my self to go get the damn thing. aint tipping when the pricing on everything is higher than instore, ontop of that they add a service charge and a delivery fee, why do i need to tip when everything is already higher than it needs to be, its just pure greed.
Has?! It always was. They sphear headed the subscription service for software. But they never fixed their products, with subscription their products became worse
you have to cancel it from time to time and take the black friday offer with 40% discount. last december i canceled it and they gave me 2 months for free. but its still f expensive
My favorite is a website being "on sale" for only 12 hours left. But they're ALWAYS on sale, so that 50% was always their intended price, preying on FOMO of having a deal.
Udemy increases price after multiple visits. It initially fooled me into buying courses in haste (they were good Cs related courses but i could've bought them as per need hadn't i thought prices don't actually increase using discount coupons etc)
Anyone who puts a time limit on the availability of their product is trying to make you panic buy. Legitimate salesmen have always done this, but the ploy is mostly used by scammers nowadays.
One of the things that I realised with youtube specifically was, that if you ever not skip a skippable ad, there is a chance that youtube will assume that you fell asleep and will simply use your proceeding session to make them money. I have woken up to multi hour ads running while I was asleep, or checking my history in the morning and finding content from creators that I have never seen before and have nothing to do with what I usually watch or what I had on when I fell asleep.
When you cancel the subscription, Netflix still has the data of your credit card ready to be reactivated and you can never remove it unless you insert a different card info . Not being able to remove the credit card from their settings should be illegal.
@bills6093 CC companies like Visa and Mastercard both have a service called “Automatic Billing Updater” - it essentially updates the companies with new card info without your manual intervention so your subscriptions can keep going. This is also why you see your new card getting charged when you clearly remember you had originally subscribed using a card that has since expired, for example.
so nice to have the big guys called out, including the shareholders, that dont have the best interests in mind of who they serve, just greed, not service.
Worst thing is Google imo. You often cant even find useful information anymore, you'll only find companies who want to sell you something for your problem. And I'm not only talking about ads. Its about SEO....
I'm a 20 year advertiser. Google wants to make sure that it's mostly paid clicks that I get, and at the same time their customer service is horrid. I spend $6000 a month with them, yet the 2 or 3 times a year that I call with a problem I get a call center with script readers who don't help at all. It used to be that interns from Stanford or Berkeley would man the phones, but that ended 10 years ago or so.
@@sirlawrencet I think they're just literally "too big to fail" at this point. They know you need them if you want to advertise online these days... so they don't give a shit :/ Edit: I remember it used to be pretty solid customer service too (at least on the business side of things anyway)
Google search + reddit. Like redditors opinions aren't perfect but at least you get a diverse group of people with differing opinions talking about the topic you're interested in and then maybe u can form an opinion based off of that
I think one of the worst parts is being unable to cancel your subscription within the app on your phone and having to go through their website to cancel and then having to jump through the hurdles as well it's just become predatory and we are all just accepting it as a society so nothing will change anytime soon
@@glockenrein You can use the mobile website too, can't say if inside the App works But still it's easily available on either device and is mandatory by EU law Don't think inside the App is mandatory
@@terrabixNothing wrong with subscriptions. Just specific ones, especially food delivery and streaming ones. VPNs are definitely worth the price if you can get them for like $3/month or so
Thank god you mentioned the pausing membership concept. Dashpass was still going to charge me in THREE DAYS despite me pausing my membership months ago. I tried to cancel. Its all in spanish. When I tap one and proceed theirs literally NO cancel button.
As an older silicon valley tech worker, I kinda avoided participating in many of this. I stuck with taxis, picking up my food, not installing apps, rotating streaming services and limiting social media platforms. Maybe I saw how user data and privacy was coopted or the insane startup funding to capture market share would have to lead to insane commoditization in the end. I'm all for innovation, but all the surveillance capitalism and sh@#&!tification really has gone too far.
Fully agreed. I'm an older non-silicone valley tech worker. I saw these traps coming a mile away. I never joined Facebook. I never use delivery. I was an earl Netflix subscriber... until it was flooded with garbage, and realized I essentially never found anything I liked on it and quickly cancelled it. I don't sign up for Amazon prime, and when I do, I game the crap out of them at get the "free trial" service for a week, then immediately cancel the service (which they let you do). I have almost zero apps installed on my phone. In fact, if I could get rid of my smart phone, I think I would, and just go with a dumb feature phone. You just have to see the angle these companies are using. It's all fairly obvious. So much of tech today is a trap.
I started with an in-company Saturday afternoon class, soldering resistors, condensers, etc. onto a 1-board base 16 "computer", and finished up (I think) working on the merger of a data center /"cloud" company with a smaller (sexier) startup in the same industry. .. And, like you, I have avoided participating in much of what is happening now: sticking with taxis, picking up the food or eating in the restaurant, not getting a smart phone =not installing apps, no wifi, limiting social media platforms, etc., but still happy to work online. The sh@#&!tification really has gone too far, and being cynical / suspicious of all convenient free things is justified.
I'm also an older non-silicone valley tech worker. In the words of Admiral Akbar "Its a Trap!" I'm not sure why more people don't see this stuff as a trap. I never joined Facebook, because I saw it for what it is right away. I tried Netflix early on. The first several years I had it were GREAT. It recommended things I actually liked. That it turned to garbage, and I cancelled it. I've long though all these delivery services were a trap. It's too easy to get so adjusted to these delivery services, and then going out yourself seems like a chore. It's not... I actually prefer going to the actual restaurant and interacting with people. Isn't that just a normal part of life? I hate apps, and essentially don't install any of them. If I could ditch my smart phone, I think I would. It's sadly become this weird expectation that you MUST have your phone on you. I've literally gone to restaurants and they didn't want to give me a menu.... just use your smart phone. No thanks. Honestly? I think this is one of the rare cases in the world where being the "get off my lawn, you whippersnappers" is actually a GOOD thing. So much of the tech world has turned out to be a total bust.
It's funny cause the precedent before was that ordering online was cheaper than just going to the store yourself, but now it's actually the opposite. What used to be convenient is now just predatory.
Ordering online is cheaper, it only gets expensive when you buy from big companies and even then it's cheaper for them. If physical stores had better ways of jacking up prices they would and they still do some sneaky tricks.
One of capitalism's "killer apps" is pricing goods efficiently. For example, if I'm an apple farmer, how many apples do I need to sell in order to pay for the new engine on my truck? As it turns out, for most things in general, free markets do a good job deciding the efficient point. It doesn't work for things like medicine where people can't just opt to use the product, but it does for things like delivery services. The same people here complaining about the cost of online services that deliver to your house would also probably complain about workers not getting paid enough. And these services LOSE money for the companies. You know why? It's never been efficient to have a single person deliver you a $10 lunch. It uses an insane amount of resources for almost no benefit. It's SUPPOSED TO cost this much, because it's ridiculously inefficient and resource hungry. You all might as well complain that you can't get your food delivered by helicopter for cheap.
Piracy is exploding once again with the current streaming landscape. There used to be a couple of services with everything at a good price. This almost killed off piracy. Now there are so many services, all with ever increasing prices and shrinking offerings. Everyone is going back downloading shows or using android boxes.
I used to be able to walk to the store and buy DVDs. It's a distribution problem. There is nothing entertainment related within walking distance anymore when there used to be: arcades, book stores, comic book stores, video stores...all gone.
@@freedustin Big tech companies are the same as Big box retailers. They kill off small businesses and then monopolize the market. Capitalism is bad for societies doesn't matter how much ever you defend it. "For profit" is always their core.
yeah there was this russian game developer on twitter who said she doesnt even gaf if kids wanna pirate her game bc "shes been there" LOL. i think her name is nikoteenie or something @@IamTaniwha
something my partner and I have noticed recently (last 6 months) is the length and frequency of adverts on RUclips (free) have been increasing at quite an alarming rate, alongside adverts for their premium subscription, of course.....
Putting ads in Netflix, Prime and soon to also be Disney+ is absolutely insane! Why are we even paying for it if we are still being forced to watch the ADS
the answer is "piracy", i used to subscribe to spotify, youtube, netflix, crunchyroll, qobuz then i canceled everything except youtube and pirate movies, series. It's ridiculous when you have to pay for 4 months subscrition just to watch 1 seri
@@JanKowalski-wb8ih have never payed any subscription (except iCloud for 1€) it just forces me to use it, cause i don't want to pay it for nothing with piracy you can watch something, have 3 months of life in between and then watch something again without having in mind that you are constantly paying for something you rarely use
They said it only now, but went on from like 60s, with TVs, milkmen and electricity bill... It really is, a technocracy beofeudalism, corpocracy - we are ants the those at power, they give us just specks, "gifts" to appease masses from rising up...
9:41 - I used to work for 4 food delivery restaurants, and most places make stop on the way to dropping your food off. Most (not all ofc) times I took out a delivery, I was bringing 1 or more other orders with me to places that were on the way or in the same general area. This is a normal practice done by food places to make your wait time lower than if only 1 delivery went out at a time
This video needs to go viral. Either directly, or as small video shorts in TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Remember people, VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS and always THINK TWICE before buying something.
@@MisdrexI actually was recommended this video, but that’s most likely because I’m subscribed to his channel! Still good that I saw it, but I don’t know if I would’ve seen it if I wasn’t subbed to the channel. Either way, THIS NEEDS TO GO VIRAL INDEED!
Calling out these predatory patterns these companies use to exploit it's customers by a person like Arun is great. It reaches a lot more people. Appreciate the effort.
Health insurance companies in the US have been doing this and worse forever. Imagine you try to watch a movie on Netflix and it tells you “We will review your request and let you know our decision in 30 days.” A month later you get a letter saying your request to watch that movie is denied because their entertainment expert decided you don’t need to watch it. But you can appeal. “Deny, delay, defend.”
people pay medical bills? why? illegals dont have to, so neither should you. say no to hospital bills! it's easy. in NY, there are laws that protect patients from being ripped off by hospitals. no need to pay. the law also protects your credit.
@@BobRooney290 The fact that all you got from his comment is that 'illegals' are the problem in this thing, is so sad. Even if all the illegals will be gone, insurance companies will still be the same problem. And at this point, I believe republicans will just blame legal immigrants for all the problem after they one day might have fixed illegal migration. Newsflash, the big coroporations and the tax system helping the rich and powerfull are a way larger problem than Miguel illegaly comming to pick your corps every spring by illegaly crossing the border.
Such idealism in this video, only makes sense a minority of people have the money and power in the world, survival of the fittest, the world and humans aren't made to be solidaric and strive for equality, it's not in our nature, why it'll never change.
Doordash and Uber eats really make you appreciate normal prices and even grocery shopping. A Panera bread bowl is about $17 and room temperature with delivery, $9 in person, or $5 if I buy the soup and bread at a grocery store
Also now they pump more adds than tv, and pay the creators less and less. In fact many large channels can't even support themselves now without sponsor adds. Time for some competition.
i think amazon do this where they default pick the slowest is to stop their infrastructure from imploding but how would that make any sense since automatically most would notice and change it?
My personal "favorite..." when hulu charges you for an ad free tier, and still give you ads and only say some of their products are ad free, despite being advertised otherwise
One friend told me that RUclips premium does NOT REMOVE ALL ADS, it leaves the SPONSORED ONES, AND I AM NOT MEANING THE CONTENT CREATORS ONES, I MEAN THINGS LIKE PAID ADS
Companies changing their TOS is also something that irks me, especially when I've already paid for it. Where else in the world can you change a contract without having to pay some kind of penalty?
The fact that they can change it without your consent is the issue. A contract is a binding agreement between two parties, changing any of it will require the consent of both parties. Now legally, you probably already agree to consent to their TOS (and any changes made to it later on) when you pay for a subscription. This might be legally right, but ethically and morally it is wrong. I would prefer the law to have more consumer protections built in, but sadly we are not living in that world just yet. For this reason alone, one should never buy a subscription to any service that can change their TOS after the fact. This is the only guaranteed way to prevent this kind of misuse.
@@pinobluevogel6458 But it also makes sense that companies make you agree to an agreement that they can change without prior notice because otherwise they will forever be stuck with a loss making business that they can't change since they will need to ask every single individual that has agreed to it which is outright ridiculous. However, what they CAN do is update the agreement and then make new users agree to that and the old users can have the old agreement upto their agreement expiration date.
@@iriswaldenburger2315 It's not illegal, you get updated ToS in the EU all the time. But they have to offer you the option to not agree and cancel your contract immediately.
And don't forget that the change will be some small part not highlighted at all in about a 100 pages of other corporate legalise rubbish. I think it's time that consumers make there own standardised TOS and simply don't use companies that don't use that standard.
A very needed video! One more point should be added to the video where Google Play Store apps advertise subscriptions of X $ / month, yet whenever you click subscribe and pay, you realize that you were charged for the entire 12 months of the year with no refund possibility. It happened to me several times.
If your country has consumer protections like this, always pay for everything online with a credit card so you can reverse the payment if they do these shady things. Else, don't buy any subscriptions - I don't (besides the Amazon prime I share and spotify)
Yeah, and I totally get the social media part. I just want to scroll down and see my friends from way back in elementary school doing stuff but all I see are ads.
That dark pattern thing is no joke. As someone who has worked for one of these companies, there are literal back and forth meetings for a week+ over things as minor as a line of text to try and deceive/shakedown a consumer while still not breeching consumer rights (mostly using loopholes/technicalities). Whenever these companies enter new countries they treat consumers like kings till they have a monopoly and websites will have dark pattern marketing stuff turned off. Amazon for example has very few of these shady features enabled in countries they're still building a userbase in like Australia(for now)
I have actually tried to pay for Amazon Prime Video twice. It suspends my account after the free period and tells me to contact customer support. They don't have one though. After 30 minutes of googling, I found a phone number. That phone number had no country code. Tried to call it and it went to the national guard. Googled for another hour, and found nothing. They ask you to contact a support that does not exist! Now they have updated it, so I had to send in a picture of my credit card and an ID. So my social security number and my bank account info needs to be sendt in a picture, where it said real people were going to look through it. And if you refuse, you have to contact the costumer support, that does not exist! It is an extremely shitty system all around
The big missing part is in this video is their is no mention of the words: start-up, VC-funding and disruption or disruptive innovation (and possibly silicon valley). Because when these (especially VC) companies say: disruption, they mean: destroy the market and competition through VC funding a non-sustainable business model and so they can cash in later by creating a higher prices.
Yeah as soon as amazon make any significant moves to fuck over their australian customers, i'll cancel my amazon account, fortunately it's quite hard to screw over consumers here as we have some of the best consumer protection laws, assuming the ACCC can be bothered.
@@fenix849 be aware, amazon comes to your country to destroy the competition, so by giving them money instead of local companies you are destroying companies in your own country (or maybe weakening European companies).
@@autohmae bto it's too late, even if he mentioned that, pricing will not change nor drop. We, below the poverty line, will be on hunger games for a bag of rice wheat or something, while the rich will laugh at us or bet at us.
Imagine if all running subscriptions were automatically cancelled (by law) when the company changes their subscriptions features (e.g. removing features to add them to a higher tier)
In their newest bid to scam consumers, companies are not even letting your subscription run out if you cancel it, and not offering a refund for the time. I had this happen twice recently, once with Fi Collar subscription, and also with AT&T prepaid service. In both cases if you cancel your service with time left, your service is immediately ended the day of cancellation.
They are optimized in seemingly every country they operate in. In Germany for example, Adobe must grant you a 14 day window to cancel a new subscription. They tell you to save huge amounts of money by subscribing for 12 months as they probably know - most new users dont use it for that long. If you forget to cancel the subscription, it gets renewed for 12 months, but you can cancel any month, right? - Yea, but they want 50% of the total expense of 12 months as a fee for you getting out of the contract. The only way to still bamboozle them is by "upgrading" or downgrading the subscription, causing a new contract - which you then can cancel in the 14 day window, causing them to instantly nullify the contract. Best thing is, the down- or upgrade will refund you any remaining time you had. But oh boy do they try to fish for those not realizing and paying the 6 months for basically nothing.
Ordering food online for delivery is completely insane with the taxes, fees, unhealthy choices and you don't really know what happens to your order between the restaurant and your house.
I am a driver for Uber and DoorDash. I can tell you that in 99% cases nothing happens to your food between the restaurants and it is dropped at your door. Almost all of us just put it in a thermal back or if it’s cold in a cold Right away I’m driving to your house. We just wanna keep our job. We have no interest in messing with your food for those who mess with the food there are serious consequences and honestly we don’t wanna dot that. we get seriously abused by these companies and I guess, if driver is at their breaking point and see no hope in going on then might do something like not deliver the food because they’re just about to have the app turned off on them and lose their job in a second and really don’t care what happens to them or your food. The better you tip the driver the batter driver you’re gonna get. We only get two dollar base pay for every delivery from these companies. They really want to extract as much money as they can from all parties involved, which is the driver, the customer, and the restaurant, it really makes nobody happy, but they keep trying to pitch all of these three parties against each other while they hide between a very opaque wall.
Yeah, I'm more than happy to pick up my own food. What really gets me is what's happened at my Youngest's university. They have a Student Center with a fairly large food court. Only, you can't order food from most of the restaurants, you have to place an order on an Apple iPad-like kiosk. Take a guess who owns the kiosk? Grubhub. You literally cannot order food from the restaurants directly--you have to order through a third-party company which or course, tacks on a service fee for using their stupid kiosk. And I doubt many of the students have noticed this.
Exactly. I've shut down a lot of consumption due to getting ripped off. I basically cook nice things organic and local at home. And Uber? I'm willing to walk 5+ miles or wait to get away from surge, I also open Lyft and Uber and makre sure to use the cheapest option.
One of the worst instances I've seen is a service where if you try to cancel the service early to avoid paying again next month, they end your access to the service immediately, then only /if/ you're in the first 3 days of that service, they refund the month's subscription cost within 1-2 business weeks. This means you have to cancel the service on the very last day you intend to use it, any earlier and you're being robbed of the service you paid for, and any later and they're basically holding your money hostage for two weeks so they can profit off of investments using customer funds. They'll take your payment in 10 seconds, but despite it being possible to return it in 30 minutes, worst case 2-3 days, they make you wait two whole weeks. It's absurd.
One helpful tip is to go to your local library. Ours actually has a lot of pretty recent movies in the dvd section. We can pick out a few movies we want to watch, watch them, and then take them back. Kind of reminds me of how Netflix started out haha
@@tjones44236 Gave a thrift store a few hundred dvds not long ago. We have not bought a new dvd in 15 plus years. I did buy a couple rare films that I could not find online maybe 10 plus years ago. Other than that we stream them or don't watch them.
@@tjones44236 No reason not to buy the discs. Most can be had quite cheaply. And yeah, you haven't suffered negative consequences... yet. You never do until you do, and then of course, it's too late.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
The last two videos have been brutally honest and genuine, I really like this type of content.
Thats because the overall content is shifting to become more authentic and genuine. Most people become famous for being themselves and the oversaturated MrBeast effect is slowly retired. Even MrBeast toned down his smile on the thumbnail
@@bumblebeegamerrealhaha…I actually checked after reading your comment and yea his recent thumbnails do not have the same trend of smile as his older vids…..still averages 150 mil views tho
@@hityouwiththatdduddudu I mean MrBeast religiously studies the algorithm unsurprisingly
me too!
And yet this video was basically a massive plug for SurfShark VPN which is yet another subscription based service 😂🤦🏼♂️
The fact that amazon has added a "rent" system (for old movies too) despite of having a prime membership is just outrageous
You have every movie ever made on the internet for free
This is why I just bought a DVD player and started collecting DVDs again
@@nunocarneiro464 yaaaaaar
can probly find that old film in charity for £1-2 and keep it forever.
I eat the cotton candy from my walls
The best subscription I ever had is piracy.
Real
100% 👍👊
Arrgh!
True
tru
Why are we still paying for WiFi and the telephone and subscriptions when these companies are selling our information, is a question i often ask myself.
😅😮😢
True.
You're absolutely right
Very good point.
just cancelled 3 of my subscriptions that i had forgotten to cancel. and its all thanks to you, keep it up!
Same!!!
How do you guys forget such thing?!?!
@@dicekolev5360 Not bookkeeping + being too rich, I guess. 😁
@@dicekolev5360goes to show that predatory practices those scum companies do actually works
@@dicekolev5360 nowadays people are really busy, you just cant assume everyone lives the same life as you, maybe the person has a job to work and a family to feed and they had just forgotten it, it is only part of human nature. or maybe their family had subscribed and they had just remembered to cancel it now. I had also thought how people could forget such a thing until it happened to me.
"charging for what used to be free"
literally sums up every company today
literally every company that exists, exists to make a profit. No company out there provides a service for free.
That's basic economics
@@rodrigojds Its true that companies exist to make a profit, but unfortunately its also their job to maintain their trust with customers.
Just because your company needs to make profit, doesnt mean they can exploit workers or piss their userbase which makes them lose customers.
Its really not an excuse to resort to unethical practices, and not be transparent in communication.
Of course no one offers a service for free, but charging more for less perks will definately push away customers.
Look at Disneyland and Cable TV.
You pay more for the former and you get less benefits than you did. The latter, you initially pay for no commercials at a fair price and now you pay at least 200 dollars with commercials
@@rodrigojdsAnd that's why it's called "business", not "charity"
@@DavidHutchinson0713 exactly. Would you give your phone away for free? No. So why would companies do that?
@@rodrigojds I understand companies need to make money, but its their job to make sure the changes they make do not hurt their customers and tarnish their reputation.
Just because companies need to profit doesnt mean they can take away people's games, charge more for less perks, mistreat employees, or go against their company's foundation
No company is going to give a free service for obvious reasons, but companies shouldnt be surprise that people are angry at them for valid reasons and turn away from them.
Yes, no company gives you a free phone, but at least not all of them make it difficult to repair your phone or overcharge for repairs for the sake of profit
Not all companies give you games for free, but not all companies give poor experiences with shady DRM, buggy unfinished graphics and gameplay, barebones plot, and main story content locked behind a paywall, all while being priced at $70.
Even worse, these companies are able to revoke access to your games because of a legal loophole.
The same can be said for streaming services where you used to be able to watch Cartoon Network shows on HBO, and now most of them are completely wiped
I understand businesses need to make money, but there is a fine difference between needing to turn a profit and just being a greedy company.
If needing to turn a profit requires screwing with the trust of the community, running scams, losing trust of investors, and introducing unethical practices, despite still being a sucessful company, then thats problematic
In most cases, you can find another product or buy a good indie game if you dont like whatever the company sells, hell you can leave a review.
But in some cases such as RUclips's treatment towards content creators and Comcast's attitude towards cable television, there is no choice. They are relatively successful companies and financially stable, yet they demand more money.
I understand employees need to be paid, maintainence needs money, electricity needs money, etc, but clearly corporate greed runs rampant.
Many silicon valley companies layoff hundreds and thousands of employees and some form Unions and protest due to unfair working conditions.
So unless if companies are transparent with whats happening, then they shouldnt be surprised people dont like them
if buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing.
That's deep..
Oh wow!!
get this man to the top! 🔥💯
When buying is renting then piracy is borrowing :D
Dude. Couldn't be said better
Ive had a feeling these services are getting worse yet more expensive. It feels good hearing you articulate these thoughts I’ve had for years now. I knew I wasn’t crazy
Bro be exposing everyone💀
fr tho
Ong ong fr fr
Frfr
Fr these thugs *need* to be exposed
fr and I appreciate that
Pretty nice to hear a RUclipsr of your size talking about Big Tech BS, keep it up!
Arun is so rich that he spends the equivalent of France's minimum wage on subscription every month.
@@manthe3711 Meanwhile I can't see myself signing up for even one subscription service because "am I actually gonna be using it? not likely? then why bother" while he has like a dozen services while having probably far less free time than I do. I see it less as him spending "so much" as him failing to resist the companies selling him crap he probably isn't using all that much anyway. Different people have different priorities, though seeing him spend 1200 pounds on subscriptions makes me go "but why?"
Unfortunately it won't do shit.
@@yashrastogi149 The more people are aware of the issue, the more likely they are to support solutions. Small steps are all we have, unless you got a better plan?
@@HunterTracks Being aware of the fact is not enough to have these companies change their policies and even if through some miracle they did "change" how long did think it would take them to start exploiting the consumers again?
Im loving this trend of big youtubers exposing big companies
finally...
Who else?
I'm loving this trend of big youtubers exposing big companies
11:39 is basically U.S. health "care" system lol
YES! We need more famous RUclipsrs exposing everything
Thank you for making this. This is happening in "services," tech hardware and big supermarkets. Need to shop local with small business. The only solution I can think of.
I hate that every time you get a question like "would you like to receive notifications?" the only possible options are "Yes" and "Not now". What about the "No" option?
Exactly, and yes is highlighted in green and “maybe later” isn’t even highlighted
I have a "Never" option on my Google Pixel. All the android devices I have used have this option or something equivalent.
Sue the company over and over again for violating the right to say no.
@davidbyrnes8541 that's probably just a cover up to the later button under it.
Here's a trick! First, click "yes", then, when the browser itself asks you if you want to allow notifications, click "no".
Longer explanation: there's a web technology called "browser notification", which allows websites to tell your browser to send you a notification. Now, due to user protection stuff, websites first have to ask for permission from your browser, which in turn asks you, the user. And once you told the browser you don't want to receive notifications from a certain website, that website can't ask for permission ever again. That means most websites first try to ask you directly, before asking the browser. This way, they can keep asking again and again. The way to get back at them is to first act as if you want to receive notifications, then, when the website asks the browser, simply deny it. Boom, done.
This is the kind of work we want to see more and more.
Not just phone or gadget reviews
This.
fr
Yes!
Yes yes yes yeah
That would be nice, but this guy kinda built his channel on phone and gadget reviews. To suddenly stop would be a brave move.
A policy I’ve wanted more and more: cancellation of a service can take no more interactions than signing up.
I think there are a few US states that passed a law saying companies who let you sign up online can’t force you to cancel by phone. Laws need to go even further than this though.
And for the love of god can we please get a policy stating that no FREE trial can require your credit card information (so we can steal some money from you when you inevitably forget that you even signed up?)
Like gym membership. Sign up online, must go in to cancel so that they can guilt you into not leaving
Can’t you take companies to court for this?
Ahem! My first port of call when looking at companies and subs, how easy is it to cancel if I get a sniff that it's hard or impossible to cancel or made dificult. I won't use it. 👍
Man you have NAILED this!!! I have been noticing this but didn’t realize how bad it really is.
I recently canceled my prime subscription as delivery is not only not 1 day anymore… it’s now 3, 4 sometimes even 5 days and I’m not talking just non prime direct from seller stuff, I’m talking stuff sold and shipped by Amazon. Why am I paying $140 a year when I can get faster delivery from Best Buy or Walmart with no membership. The worst part about it is it’s not because the items are 3, 4, 5 days away because once they ship, I find out that the items were a couple hours away and Amazon just did not process the order. I’m sorry but I’m not paying $140 a year for you to sit on an order for 3-4 days that’s only two hours driving distance away.
Yeah, I watch movies and listen to music with prime as well as free delivery
For a non Prime user like me, Amazon instead auto selects the paid fast delivery instead of the slower free option 😂
Me too! I won't ever subscribe to prime when I have the chance to collect things swiftly from shops close to my house
Of course. 🤕
I cancelled my subscription to Prime and I still get all the same delivery options, including "Prime Free". I honestly don't see the difference.
@@lakojake4215 until the end of the month, Bro
same lmao, i rarely use Amazon so i don't mind using the slow option that comes next month if needed.
In the past 2 years I found myself canceling everything... This guy just explained why.
Same. Cancelled everything. Stopped shopping at big corpo stores for my regular needs and I'm unexpectedly saving around 5k a year. I thought I would pay a premium for avoiding it and I am 1 to 1 but I found I don't actually use the services enough to warrant a subscription of any kind, outside of my phone.
And then he does a surfshark commercial, which is really odd to me. Even _he_ still wants the money more than he values his own integrity. Btw: There are creators who publish how much those VPN companies offered them, and state the VPN deals are among the most profitable you can get.
Me too
I never started. Facebook was always suspect to me because they don't give a shit about privacy. Amazon exploits their employees and suppliers, as does Uber. They also destroy local businesses who don't have the ability to abuse tax loopholes as the multinationals do.
The problem is our anger is slightly misdirected. Although some blame needs to be shared by the companies, we need to be mindful of the fact that everyone has commitments and debts to repay including countries, and if there was a productivity decline for 2 years and govts tried to solve it by going further into debt, we should remember that inflation will rise. Sadly, our approach now is: spend the stimulus check today, think about consequences later. We let the govt get away with a lot of things.
I wonder if things will loop, people start pirating everything again, the companies tries to fight it, they eventually give up and offer a good service to people, people stop pirating, the service becomes shit, people start pirating.
"they eventually give up"....i have news for you they never gave up, in fact "pirating side" has been loosing ground heavily for the last 15 years. Today's much harder to find pirated products than it was 15-20 years ago
@@theghostofbabanovac7069what??? I live in a third world nation where I remember Quake 1 literally meant a month paycheck from my parents... In 2001. Now with the internet, I screw over so many big corps and made a small business from bootleg CDs it's not even funny, God bless the internet. It made me even realise religion is bullshit, can you imagine that???!!!
Let's find out... Time to start the cycle again!
@@HazelwithaZ I'm having hope that one of these days, hopefully when I'm gray and decaying so as to witness it, big corporations will make one last slip, and people turn to localised merchant guilds except with internet. We really only need the word of mouth to go around enough, but I bet someone will come and call me a communist. I don't even believe we were made equal in luck and fortune. But some douche having a mega yacht chaffs my ass like old school jeans.
@@theghostofbabanovac7069 Pirating has been losing ground? I mean, it could be but I hiiiiighly doubt it. Have you heard of say, Nordvpn.
This video is top tier. (Without the tricky charges). Don't forget the pricing that looks reasonable until you realize they've divided the year's cost (along with the discount that only ever applies to the yearly sub) by 12 and when you toggle to monthly (if there's even that option) the prices shoot up. The hidden cancel link is getting more and more prevalent. I had to do research to figure out how to cancel. This happened more than once. The subscription pausing is just a trick to charge you later because who remembers that 3 months later? (Well I do because I started getting meticulous with these things and I put them in my calendar). My comment is already too long but THIS VIDEO!! YESSS.
As a coder who has to work for these tech companies for a living (they are almost all like this), I am very glad that influencers finally started covering the ice berg of dark Tech patterns. Thank you for doing the right thing!
P.S. There are some great open source softwares out there. But Android, iOS, macOS, and even Windows now, have dark patterns to prevent us from using them, to such a degree, that it almost gaslights the users against open source. On top of that, some open source softwares might be backed by foreign governments. And now everything just feels so dark, that I, an open source enthusiast, almost want to leave programming as a whole. It's disgusting.
(Edit: removed mentions of vim.)
(Also, I know programmers are partially at fault too. But to solve a problem, we need to understand it. This is literally the most I can safely disclose at the moment. I am very sorry)
Donating a multi millionaire $100 is even more insane, especially when $30 goes straight to Google.
Its so wild to think of the beginning of the internet only 30ish years ago was just people connecting on forums, and in such a brief amount of time we now have companies competing for our attention addiction while increasingly using that data to extract any money we might acquire. We are being gaslit to blindly accept the greatest wealth inequality the earth has ever known with our very human need to be a part of something bigger.
Like when you are a prime member, you are entitled to free shipping options, and as the word member is defined you are part of a whole group of people who are "entitled to something." When we feel like we are a part of something, and we are being rewarded for that, we are less likely to make critical decisions against the thing we are a part of because we feel like it would disrupt our network of support and we have a deep psychological instinct to maintain that order. It is so insidious! How long has amz been price fixing and manipulating the market in their favor and we consumers are just now starting to figure this out? It is most likely a core part of their business model yet I've only heard investigative reporting on it recently.
@@leskipbayless3280yeah, dude probably burnt out and has way more money than things to do with it, those tech bros' value systems get twisted AF, the hundo he donated to a millionaire is more than likely "a chump change" or "well worth the money" in his mind, which is ridiculously sad in all honesty
Bro made sure to let everyone know he uses vim 💀
@@ferran5047 The point is that he is a dedicated programmer (hence using vim) but EVEN THEN he still wants to quit. It is part of the comment why are you complaining?
My language teacher has 2 airbnb flats in São Paulo, and he’s noticed they weren’t showing up in search - because they were priced TOO LOW, he had to up the price because he was loosing clients. That means Airbnb is artificially pushing prices up
Yes. All these internet companies are more a less scam.
Airbnb is one of the worst companies, they allso willing rent out ur place to be used as a sex hotel or to sell drugs, airbnb do not care.
Not only that, but if you price a product too low for its market price it might look as less reputable, people might think it’s too good to be true thus recurring to other options.
I dont get it. How can AirBNB not want low prices, sure they get to take more from your teacher but Airbnb is competing w hotels at the same time.
@@franciscosousa5913the only reason that is, is because everyone overprices. If people started normalizing a fair price, that problem wouldn’t exist. It’s one of those things that get worse the more people follow it. Fair prices should not be met with skepticism, it’s a symptom of the current market that will implode on itself.
Nothing is priced to low these days, it’s either super overvalued or just a little overvalued but since every company and industry is doing the same, no one can just go elsewhere. Air BNB prices are absolutely insane. They used to compete with hotels but damn if hotels aren’t half price or even a third of the price of similar air bnbs
Before it was a no brainer to use Airbnb, nowadays it really depends on the location. Sometimes hotels offer a better price. Especially for flats that are only used for sleeping
This is honestly one of the most valuable videos you've ever published
This
Yeah this just reminded me to cancel my Uber one sub. They did the 3 months free offer which is coming up in a month. I have no intention on keeping it. I only order once or twice a month so not worthwhile for me to use that. Most of the time I just go pickup my food so no need for it.
This video deserves to be seen by more people, it's the sort of education big companies don't want people to know
For me this is one of the most valuable RUclips channels ever in existence.
Thank you so much for the attention you paid to detect these dark patterns, and the guts you showed to raise your voice, and the kindness you showed to spread awareness regarding these dark patterns among your viewers.
I realised a few months ago the same pattern, when I decided for myself I dont want to play the games of these companies. So i rigorously cancelled all my subscriptions and looked for other alternatives. Now I dont take an Uber, I take the bus or go by train, I stopped binging shows on Netflix but started reading books from my local library and don't order food, but cook myself. I would even say that my quality of life improoved drastically
GOOD ON YOU. Project Gutenberg for e-books out of copywrite. Ive read hundreds.
People like to complain about public services, but it turns out that public transit and libraries have been "the fourth step" all along.
Way to go!
And you can sail the seas if you really want to watch something. not that hard to find either :). Fuck these corporations. Refuse sugar and over consumerism and they will fall.
Congratz! This is a great lifestyle choice and also gives you back more control over what you eat and consume.
This, in term, makes it easier to determine what defines you, and, in exchange, who you are and who you become!
One thing I absolutely hate is nearly every online tool trying to sell you a subscription for "premium service".
I just need to make my png transparent, give me a break.
There are photoshop versions before 2021 for that 😉 they removed normal png export that has been there since the 90s and i never updated to the latest crappy version of it
The proof of him being a good RUclipsr is the last two videos, completely honest, genuine and not caring about what the company will do to him after the video.
But this whole video was basically a plug for SurfShark VPN, yet another subscription service - the irony 😂
And remember the piece he’s quoting is only possible if you pay for the service upfront in its entirety, so his per month price is quite grey
He's correct about a lot of what he says, however... The basket nonsense is kinda dumb. It wasn't £4 it had shipping of another £4 unless you spend £30.
Also the website is a local business that sells cheap decorations. That would be like me complaining about how dollar tree has cheap decorative glass, and that on Amazon for the same thing it's more expensive... Makes no sense.
@@christiansimmons630 yes they side by side BANKRUPT own subscriber
What will they do to him?
@@SebeastMr-zh4px Never sponser him.
Man pays £20,000 for useless tech and complains about £2.99 fee not because he can’t afford it, but because he knows I can’t afford it. This man is a hero.
This had me in the first half ngl
The more expensive subscription get, the more i feel like getting an eyepatch and a hook
I'm already there brother. Arrrr! Working on the peg-leg right now.
😂😅
Most games nowadays are not that great and they also overpriced asf especially AAA. So there is no reason to NOT become a good ol' pirate😊
The more expensive subscription get, the more i feel like getting a eyepatch and a hook
@@ainzer2903 😂😂lol
The answer is piracy. If you can't afford the subscriptions, just pirate the content. It's morally wrong, but being morally wrong to corporations is a morally right thing to do, since corporations don't even have morals to begin with. The only people who deserve your subscription money are small creators of services or products that you enjoy. If corporations aren't going to make it convenient for you to pay, you shouldn't pay them. If paying is not owning, then pirating is not stealing.
Pirating adobe products is morally right
@@domacihlebac5739and so is pirating nintendo games
Yt revanced for everyone who hates ads, sponsored content etc
The answer is not piracy but doing another thing.
Better than wasted time on pirated content. Pirating content is for junkie of content.
If you act immorally towards someone who is immoral. That makes your action moral.
It's easy as that.
You can hate it, but you can't deny it.
There was a video of yours 2 years ago called "Ι'm worried about humanity" which was one of my favourite investigative pieces on youtube. This is now my favourite one. Amazing work on the video and I hope you keep posting more off these videos.
I understand your pov....but aren't you too pessimistic?
@@ryuuuoooI feel like he's being rather realistic. Where do you think he was being too negative?
@@ryuuuooobetter to be pessimistic/realistic then living in a little bubble of illusions and thinking everything is ok.
Well...*puts on pirate hat* time to collect old Blurays, drive to get my own food, get rides from friends instead of corporations and use ad blockers
Funny thing is, as a German that's how life's always been. We're taking the bicycle to get around, pick up some food and head to a friend's place, then ride home afterwards. No uber and no food delivery service. It's just so convenient that way, but of course the city has to be built for cycling.
11:39
"Imagine what happens if companies like this get in charge of your medical and emergency services."
American here.
I don't have to imagine...
exactly, it's already a reality
Well, it swaps over to EU as well. Personally I think some services are not safe in private hands, they should be state owned. You can call me socialist or communist or whatever you want, but consider this: A private company will always be profit oriented, never people oriented. A government has to be people oriented.
Ergo, things like education, health ensurance and food production should be stateowned period.
AMERICAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! FREEDOM AND DEBT BABY!!!!!!!!!!!! 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅☀☀☀☀
bro leave the US asap
this is not a country anymore
@@ExiHyp governments only people oriented for CEOs and the wealthy 1%.. I don't trust them either.
You are spot on. We are living in a time when big corporations are gaining all of the power over the consumer and it's scary. This is just the beginning. Imagine how far this might go in another decade.
Just don't buy from them, first money you save is the one you don't spend. Just think twice before you buy : do I really need this?
And factor in AI.
@@troubadour723 nah AI us just a gimmick, and it's not efficient in terms of resources.
@ Hope you’re right. Tech bros seem pretty confident about it.
Thankfully the EU has very strong regulation and will contain these practices in the EU.
Governments need to regulate to these industries. More regulations not less. America and UK seem to be more into less regulations and allowing companies to exploit the consumer.
I'm glad someone on RUclips talks about this. I've began to think this only happens to me, and I'm living in a bubble.
Thats the other problem everyone is living in a bubble, cancel the subscriptions, dont waste your money.
Frrr
I dont get it, people have been talking about this for years…..
@@Daniel-rp7nb Me neither. Are all these tricks just now occurring to this man? I mean, I like him but tell me something I don't know.
@@TimHaggerty-ox8bl Well, not everyone knows. OP for example probably wouldn't have known without this video, and believe me your average person doesn't really notice so whether or no you personally already knew doesn't mean that the video is without merit.
The real problem here is the effect of moving monopolies online. Great video exposing the tactics of how they keep us trapped in this cycle.
His transparency is the reason he is the best tech youtuber
So a 'Subscribe' to this channel could cause bankruptcy 😂
Mkbhd
@@TheMercWithMouthdon't be slow
but the irony is that he is also promoting a subscription at the end of the video
@@ABDUL_KAREEM_SEYAL valid opinion but tbh I believe Arun is better
These subscription models are everywhere and it's a cancer. Subscriptions for things that have no reason needing a subscription. Even car manufacturers want to soft-lock features your car already has behind a subscription (including Key FOBs). All the people over the years who've nagged and rolled their eyes, excusing criticism away as anti-progress... they deserve a large part of the blame for enabling this imo
helped the widow of a friend sort her financial woes after his death by going through all the shit she pays for but don't use, it was a nightmare, more than 600€ thrown away each month for nothing, like two gym subscriptions she says she had "cancelled" including one for a place that closed down in her city in 2020. took close to two months to cancel everything as some "required" sending registered mail twice. 😑
oh yeah, and two "security suites" for a windows pc she doesn't have. 🤡
@@kittytraildamn that is rotten to the core, cheers that you helped her out and I hope that the system will change. But I fear that too many people wont care enough to force the businesses to stop these practices
@@merkasable she signed for all those but never checks her bank statements or email, it's a nightmare as she has now new subs for coffee pods and some beauty/skincare products. i'm not sure she really understands that her monthly available for discretionary spending money has been divided by more than 3 since my friend death... 😑
@@kittytrail Had a case where my friend was paying for ant-virus and the cancel page leads to an error 404 page, in the end i teached him that he can call his credit card company and ask them to cancel any subscription from there AND ask for a chargeback for everything he didin't use by just telling he got scamed.
@@adrianocs4 depends where you are on this planet. here, you cannot cancel directly your payment as contract law is enforced quite well both for the company interests and for the customer ones and judges tend to side with the customer in case of a doubt (much like ebay's CS way of doing things) as the threshold of "proof" is higher for professionals than for laymen. there are lots of loopholes like unilateral contract terms modifications that will free you from the most robust contract if you don't agree with those changes (say roaming incoming SMS charges in Zimbabwe for your cellphone contract while you won't _ever_ need it), even if the new terms are in your favor of if they encompass a part you never used nor ever planned to use. one of the biggest problem is when the corporation is american or english and you have to go through their vile anglo shenanigans about the customer always being right as long as he pays, as soon as he stops or wants to stop, they consider you literally like a traitor and an ignoble person that cannot appreciate their infinite generosity in having you as a customer. or if you have to deal with cheap arsed 3rd world CS reps that neither understand what you say or mean nor do you understand what they're saying... 😑
add that most people are pretty much gullible and won't read the contract they're agreeing to nor would they understand half of it if they took the time to do so. 😑
22:16 "So what do we do about it?" The answer is simple - since corporations are all infected with parasitic shareholders, the best option is to just avoid subscriptions altogether. Obtain your media in ways that you can ensure you will have access to it indefinitely without worry that some provider will one day vanish taking your money and leaving you with nothing. If there is no legitimate way to do this, then it seems piracy should be deemed the correct consumer option.
I keep telling Robert Reich's lemmings this all the time: if you don't like a service or how much a company is making, don't buy their stuff. We are a consumer society that has to keep up with the Jones', MUST HAVE the latest & greatest, while not realizing they are playing a game that they can't win. Live humble, live simple, live basic and life is so much more enjoyable.
The economy continues to monopolize
American companies are not investing money into innovation and productivity. They are growing through stock buybacks to inflate prices and through buying other smaller companies and expanding and driving out smaller competitors.
This is the undeniable trend until republicans become serious about anti trust laws.
We either have to abandon these monopolies and contribute to consume from companies that democratize access and control to the masses or we are screwed.
The economy continues to monopolize
American companies are not investing money into innovation and productivity. They are growing through stock buybacks to inflate prices and through buying other smaller companies and expanding and driving out smaller competitors.
This is the undeniable trend until republicans become serious about anti trust laws.
We either have to abandon these monopolies and contribute to consume from companies that democratize access and control to the masses or we are screwed.
Trick is, for movies, if it's a Netflix produced movie (or any other platform) it will probably never have a physical release. So no only do we have to maintain our subscription or resubscribe if we ever want to watch it again, it will never have the same level of quality as the disk at the same "quality level". And even if you pirate it, that will almost always be even worse.
@@linnoff False. Pirating it has the same exact quality as the highest resolution available at the time for release. Pirates are very particular in the quality of their media libraries.
As someone who will definitely forget about subscriptions, When I sign up for a free trial, I put a reminder to cancel it in my phone's calendar. Then right before it comes up for the charge, I get the calendar reminder, and I can decide if want to keep it it not.
“Now you pay as much you used to before these services, but you don’t own anything either” is exactly the biggest problem.
supply and demand my dude... free market right wing capitalism for the win. 💪
You pay a lot more than when you had to purchase things
If you're not owning it in the first place, piracy is not stealing.
Oh, whine. I pay $0 for youtube's wonderful services, like every time I return to home page it reloads all the links in 5 seconds and all the thumbnails in 10. Yes, in that order. To different links.
@@johnsmith-cw3woWhen most laws are written in favor of corporations due to lobbying, it's called end stage capitalism, aka (corporate+state) fa$ci$m.
Unregulated capitalism always ends up in the same manner, some would say that in time, all forms of capitalism do, the only difference is how fast it progresses to that dystopian end stage..
Most important line in all this “and you own nothing” - exactly where they want us
WEF - "You will own nothing, and you'll be happy"
@@SoccerBoyAP Which was simply their future prediction, based on looking at companies like Uber (which ppl really liked when that opinion piece was written), imagine if every service was like uber and ppl actually were happy with all the services, then you would "Own nothing and be happy", it's not some sinister future plan. WEF has no real power over anything lol
Eh I disagree. I believe the elite players out there have nefarious intentions. It would be one thing if these billionaires were just rich and successful. These are the same people who openly say you will be eating bugs and view us as cattle. It’s like they’re anti-humanity, no shred of empathy or wanting the average person to live a fulfilling and rich life. It will only get worse when AI gets to the point where the middle class is not needed at all. Quite demonic really.
@@bagthebag8049it is certainly one of their objectives, though.
@@bagthebag8049bro are you actually defending WEF?
Bro just lost every chance of a sponsor just to speak fax, couldn't be more proud
He doesn't need a sponsor. He's about to surpass Apple in subscribers and it is a tech channel. The amount of ad money he's pulling is terrifying to think about. Glad he decided to take advantage of his sponsor-independence and giant audience to sting giant companies in the balls.
@@olekbeluga314 If he needs to grow his business, he does need sponsorships. It's just most of the companies he mentioned don't do youtube channel sponsorships usually so he is ok. If he goes after Surfshark, DBrand, etc. he may bring in huge losses.
Wait and see.
These companies dont need sponsorships anyways, hence why they're doing enshitification.
@@sensualbydomeni dude he is just..... so incompetent. complains about everything and misinformation. you can get a one month ps sub. for a tech channel he is just a consumer. the japan ep was good. otherwise very whiny. to each their own.
this issue has been greatly frustrating - THANK YOU.
I’ve just cancelled UberOne, Spotify, Disney+, all thanks to this video opening my eyes!
Thank you, Arun!
cry more
@@mordante01 What?
@@mitsunam7001 People cry and moan that things cost money. I think Disney+ never made money. Spotify is I think also losing money and the artists gets paid almost nothing.
People cry about about it but forgot buying a single CD or LP costs more then 2 months subscription. Spotify is too cheap.
Me too
@@mordante01 WEE WOO WEE WOO DEPRESSION ALERT
I am so glad someone finally made this video. These are the things I’ve been talking about for years. The companies who “enshitify” their services have a well deserved downfall coming their way.
- and the countries who claim they "index the tax rates" - eventually they simply take your paycheck and give you your "social" allowance. Be happy, own nothing.
Hopefully, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Once a company reaches a certain size it's nearly impossible for it to collapse.
but your companies are shells. it's you and your neighbors who lose out long-term. the investors are conglomerates themselves. the CEO can fly away to Barbados
TBH Louis Rossman has been talking about this already way back.
Uber also tries to refuse refunds when you cancel Uber one a few days before the renewal date, claiming that it takes several days to cancel the payment and therefore there’s nothing they can do and the payment will be taken and can’t be refunded. It takes 5 minutes of telling them that’s it’s illegal to not give a refund when cancelling BEFORE the renewal and then magically they find the ability to refund the payment. They’re a terrible company, barely use them anymore.
you can also dispute the charge using your bank
Uber is a TERRIBLE company TERRIBLE
Uber is owned by one of the most extortive banking families in the history of human beings, Rothschild.
Privacy com cards are great for this
Uber one is really the worst. Fell into that trap myself and it took me 2 hours to even cancel the subscription. It wasn't possible few days before and after you got charged. I mean lol - are you serious??
Really thought-provoking. Thanks for posting. The irony of having a CTA for a subscription service at the end wasn’t lost on me. 😊
“Imagine what happens if companies like this get in charge of your medical services”… sir you just described America
💯
Exactly !
That's really sad tbh
Honestly might still be better than the NHS at this point.
@@caasieu at least the nhs is free, if you want better service, there is still private healthcare
Say this video gets 10M views. If 1% of the audience cancels a $10/mo subscription, you just saved people $10,000,000 one year from now... Hats off to you!
10%*
Cancelled my Amazon Prime around halfway this video XD
Or $1,000,000.
Both works.
@@grasz yeah 1M monthly or 10M a year from now :)
Don't be cowards guys let's do it
"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing"
- a wise guy
This has become one of my favorite sayings
Best quote I read today
Based
shark tanks honest reaction ._.
Piracy isn't stealing, it's just renting
WHO TF if your script writer!? They are so good!! Placed with your editors, the transition in the conversation is sooooo good!! and you normally have a single camera set up, maybe two for a few special takes.
Ah I would kill to intern on your team!
I used to work for Uber, and what I found strange is how they charge both sides. They add extra fees for customers ordering food, and they take 25% of what they pay drivers, which seems absurd. It's like signing a contract with a company, getting paid for your work, and then having to give 25% back for the services they provide you. Have you ever heard of a company charging its employees or contractors for the essential services needed to get the job done? That's exactly what's happening here. They take a significant percentage from everywhere because they're covering some of the delivery costs, yet they still charge the drivers for doing the work. At this point, it's unclear who’s the employer and who’s the employee. I also suspect they take a percentage from the sellers, making it an incredibly profitable business model-earning more than the sellers without even having a product of their own except the online services and apps.
This is true for startup companies like gojek and grab in indonesia
They take an extra 30% cut on the sellers. That's why most of items on UberEats are now more expensive than their "in-house" counterparts. To recoup their margins even with Uber's scandalous cut on their products
Income Tax. You have to pay for the right to work.
@@RobS8769The 25% is the service charge they deduct, and it is unrelated to the right to work or taxes. Individuals working for Uber are responsible for managing and paying their own income taxes.
"Tiering" comes straight out of the Airlines Industry. Instead of creating new better quality Tiers, they broke down the existing ones into ones with less features.
So wait does that mean 1st class used to be standard or am I misunderstanding this?
@@Prometheus7272 Pretty much; in the old days of the airline industry, first class was the only thing available: there were plenty of room, very comfy, great customer service, etc.
Nowadays, it's in the tier system where first class is now the upper tier at a higher price and economy is the lowest tier where they shove people in like a tuna can.
Like Tuna can 😂😂😂
@@Slaggo My entire life’s a lie
I would argue the way airlines approached this had an overall positive effect (making air travel more accessible), but other industries bent it to make it malicious.
This is by far the best video you've uploaded within the last 6 months. I don't think people think about these things. They just pay for stuff for ease of convenience
I am at 0:10 and stopped to say. I just told my significant other youtube, google etc seem to shitify heavily. She said it is because they keep throwing people out and automating everything or replacing with foreign employees. I think it's just greed, but lets see what you say.
The darkest pattern: being forced to close ads, instead of them closing themselves. double plus dark: making it nearly impossible to close an ad instead of opening the link.
the first isnt a dark pattern, its just shitty. the second though... thats a "dark pattern"
@@riley1636 Ads used to end without user input. It was an intentional design shift when that changed. Though it may not sound like much, it's yet another change that was forced on us, despite it making the experience worse.
@@lithelily yeah but that's not trickery, it's just shitty. dark patterns aren't synonymous with shitty, they're synonymous with "tactics to get you to do things we want you to without you realizing we're forcing you to" aka tricking you.
New speak
Adblockers. Get them. The internet will be a nicer place, but it’ll feel dead.
This video really summed what's going on in the last ~5 years. Everything just slowly turn into shit: shorts, ads, fees, etc. Internet is really broken these days.
Yep, the entire economy is now based on tricking us. I’m so tired of subscriptions. I don’t do free trials anymore because they make it so hard to cancel that you put it off until the last day and they hope you give up trying to find the link to cancel and keep paying
you can thank share holder capitalism. I remember when the talks about free internet and open software technology were at the forefront, but then people went... nooo let s just give them something and it will be fine. Now that they are the only game is town you see why it was an important fight to win. Give them a finger, they ll take the balls next.
Ikr it just all feels so bad compared to pre-2020 imo
I feel like RUclips and Google are making the occasional effort to go in the right direction though, like YT recently asking users to choose the content they actually would like to see more of
@@pigimiceli i think its more about large monopoly companies in tech (e.g. Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Netfilix) that can base their whole business strategies on enshittification. There is no viable alternatives for the users to seek higher quality services.
In the non-internet world, we don't have this problem. With cars, restaurant etc we can always choose to go for competitor if we are not satisfied with the product we get.
@@guillaumelane3374 Honestly RUclips are one of the worst ones. They keep locking existing features behind the paywall and increasing the number of ads.
Not to mention the fact that every service is asking for a tip nowadays. Like what am I even giving a tip for!?!?
Don't forget to tip your landlord!
That they ask for a tip before the service is even received is my biggest annoyance.
It is to shift costs from the employer to the customer.
yes this is stupid, im in the uk where tipping isnt common because the uk pay the staff an ok wage, but they still want tips, f that ill go out my self to go get the damn thing. aint tipping when the pricing on everything is higher than instore, ontop of that they add a service charge and a delivery fee, why do i need to tip when everything is already higher than it needs to be, its just pure greed.
Heh. That's certainly a very American problem.
I think I've learnt more about marketing from Arun than I have from an expensive marketing course . Keep up the god work sir . much love from Kenya
Adobe has reached peak enshitification. I'm surprised they were not mentioned.
+1
Has?! It always was. They sphear headed the subscription service for software. But they never fixed their products, with subscription their products became worse
you have to cancel it from time to time and take the black friday offer with 40% discount. last december i canceled it and they gave me 2 months for free. but its still f expensive
So glad there are decent one time purchase or free alternatives to all their software.
@@Kool212 Yep, I've started using Resolve and Affintiy Photo and they're pretty good. Adobe can do one.
Glad a big channel like you is shinning a light on these shady subscription services
yet he shills a subscription service at the end
My favorite is a website being "on sale" for only 12 hours left. But they're ALWAYS on sale, so that 50% was always their intended price, preying on FOMO of having a deal.
On the opposite spectrum is website that put a higher price the second time you open it, to punish you for browse around for similar products. 🤬
Because it works - it's proven to turn on panic responses to make you more likely to panic-buy. (Unless you know what's actually going on, that is)
Udemy increases price after multiple visits.
It initially fooled me into buying courses in haste (they were good Cs related courses but i could've bought them as per need hadn't i thought prices don't actually increase using discount coupons etc)
Anyone who puts a time limit on the availability of their product is trying to make you panic buy. Legitimate salesmen have always done this, but the ploy is mostly used by scammers nowadays.
@@boulderbash19700209COUGH COUGH LOWES
22:39 Or, Watch it "legally" on other sites
I love when people dare to speak out about the shitty things, instead of just quietly accepting and staying quiet
Like virtually every mainstream corporatist narrative and structure?
Don't forget to vote on the next free, democratic, transparent, and fair elections (conveniently prepared for you by capitalists).
Dare? As if he takes any risks, it's just more content and not very original, just fishing for the piracy-crowd.
Yes, he "dares" to call out all these shitty things in a video he makes money from but still continues to pay for all these services. So brave.
@@KarlTheExpert don't act like these platforms are peak
One of the things that I realised with youtube specifically was, that if you ever not skip a skippable ad, there is a chance that youtube will assume that you fell asleep and will simply use your proceeding session to make them money.
I have woken up to multi hour ads running while I was asleep, or checking my history in the morning and finding content from creators that I have never seen before and have nothing to do with what I usually watch or what I had on when I fell asleep.
Lol
Adblock is free. I can't remember the last time I saw a sponsored item or ad.
@@BenjamimicRUclips does not let your do anymore
@@shadowgaming475 google a bit harder ;)
Whot mate? That sounds horrible. You can enjoy RUclips on your phone. 0 ads at $0. Can't speak for iPhone users, though.
When you cancel the subscription, Netflix still has the data of your credit card ready to be reactivated and you can never remove it unless you insert a different card info . Not being able to remove the credit card from their settings should be illegal.
Yes it should be. Find a consumer protection group in your area and do a class action.
@@Iquey problem is only people who live in developed countries think about this. Where I live most people have other problem.
Cancel the card and get a new card.
@bills6093 cards are expensive. In some countries, banks sell them
@bills6093 CC companies like Visa and Mastercard both have a service called “Automatic Billing Updater” - it essentially updates the companies with new card info without your manual intervention so your subscriptions can keep going. This is also why you see your new card getting charged when you clearly remember you had originally subscribed using a card that has since expired, for example.
so nice to have the big guys called out, including the shareholders, that dont have the best interests in mind of who they serve, just greed, not service.
Worst thing is Google imo. You often cant even find useful information anymore, you'll only find companies who want to sell you something for your problem.
And I'm not only talking about ads. Its about SEO....
This is true
I'm a 20 year advertiser. Google wants to make sure that it's mostly paid clicks that I get, and at the same time their customer service is horrid. I spend $6000 a month with them, yet the 2 or 3 times a year that I call with a problem I get a call center with script readers who don't help at all. It used to be that interns from Stanford or Berkeley would man the phones, but that ended 10 years ago or so.
@@sirlawrencet I think they're just literally "too big to fail" at this point. They know you need them if you want to advertise online these days... so they don't give a shit :/
Edit: I remember it used to be pretty solid customer service too (at least on the business side of things anyway)
Google search + reddit.
Like redditors opinions aren't perfect but at least you get a diverse group of people with differing opinions talking about the topic you're interested in and then maybe u can form an opinion based off of that
🦆🦆🐐 DuckDuckGo instead
I think one of the worst parts is being unable to cancel your subscription within the app on your phone and having to go through their website to cancel and then having to jump through the hurdles as well it's just become predatory and we are all just accepting it as a society so nothing will change anytime soon
Its your country, most likely the USA
In Europe its illegal and you have to have a easy cancel button BY LAW
@Scresho202 it's Australia lol I'm from NZ and we have to go through their services to access some services because they're not available here
@@rhanhurst8002
Interesting!
Sorry for the wrong assumption!
@@Scresho202 I’m in Germany and I cannot change anything relevant about Spotify or Amazon Prime from within the app. I have to use a desktop version.
@@glockenrein
You can use the mobile website too, can't say if inside the App works
But still it's easily available on either device and is mandatory by EU law
Don't think inside the App is mandatory
Everything you said in this video is so true, every so-called "revolutionary" product just ends up the same as what it was trying to replace.
but the irony is that he is also promoting a subscription at the end of the video
And at the middle part of it lmao@@terrabix
The same but worse. There's a reason the old model lasted so long: it worked.
@@terrabix its not that subsciptions are bad, but the shady practices are
@@terrabixNothing wrong with subscriptions. Just specific ones, especially food delivery and streaming ones. VPNs are definitely worth the price if you can get them for like $3/month or so
Thank god you mentioned the pausing membership concept. Dashpass was still going to charge me in THREE DAYS despite me pausing my membership months ago. I tried to cancel. Its all in spanish. When I tap one and proceed theirs literally NO cancel button.
As an older silicon valley tech worker, I kinda avoided participating in many of this. I stuck with taxis, picking up my food, not installing apps, rotating streaming services and limiting social media platforms. Maybe I saw how user data and privacy was coopted or the insane startup funding to capture market share would have to lead to insane commoditization in the end. I'm all for innovation, but all the surveillance capitalism and sh@#&!tification really has gone too far.
Fully agreed.
I'm an older non-silicone valley tech worker. I saw these traps coming a mile away. I never joined Facebook. I never use delivery. I was an earl Netflix subscriber... until it was flooded with garbage, and realized I essentially never found anything I liked on it and quickly cancelled it. I don't sign up for Amazon prime, and when I do, I game the crap out of them at get the "free trial" service for a week, then immediately cancel the service (which they let you do). I have almost zero apps installed on my phone. In fact, if I could get rid of my smart phone, I think I would, and just go with a dumb feature phone.
You just have to see the angle these companies are using. It's all fairly obvious. So much of tech today is a trap.
Gen X innit
okay boomer
I started with an in-company Saturday afternoon class, soldering resistors, condensers, etc. onto a 1-board base 16 "computer", and finished up (I think) working on the merger of a data center /"cloud" company with a smaller (sexier) startup in the same industry. .. And, like you, I have avoided participating in much of what is happening now: sticking with taxis, picking up the food or eating in the restaurant, not getting a smart phone =not installing apps, no wifi, limiting social media platforms, etc., but still happy to work online.
The sh@#&!tification really has gone too far, and being cynical / suspicious of all convenient free things is justified.
I'm also an older non-silicone valley tech worker. In the words of Admiral Akbar "Its a Trap!"
I'm not sure why more people don't see this stuff as a trap. I never joined Facebook, because I saw it for what it is right away. I tried Netflix early on. The first several years I had it were GREAT. It recommended things I actually liked. That it turned to garbage, and I cancelled it.
I've long though all these delivery services were a trap. It's too easy to get so adjusted to these delivery services, and then going out yourself seems like a chore. It's not... I actually prefer going to the actual restaurant and interacting with people. Isn't that just a normal part of life?
I hate apps, and essentially don't install any of them. If I could ditch my smart phone, I think I would. It's sadly become this weird expectation that you MUST have your phone on you. I've literally gone to restaurants and they didn't want to give me a menu.... just use your smart phone. No thanks.
Honestly? I think this is one of the rare cases in the world where being the "get off my lawn, you whippersnappers" is actually a GOOD thing. So much of the tech world has turned out to be a total bust.
It's funny cause the precedent before was that ordering online was cheaper than just going to the store yourself, but now it's actually the opposite. What used to be convenient is now just predatory.
Ordering online is cheaper, it only gets expensive when you buy from big companies and even then it's cheaper for them. If physical stores had better ways of jacking up prices they would and they still do some sneaky tricks.
One of capitalism's "killer apps" is pricing goods efficiently. For example, if I'm an apple farmer, how many apples do I need to sell in order to pay for the new engine on my truck?
As it turns out, for most things in general, free markets do a good job deciding the efficient point. It doesn't work for things like medicine where people can't just opt to use the product, but it does for things like delivery services.
The same people here complaining about the cost of online services that deliver to your house would also probably complain about workers not getting paid enough.
And these services LOSE money for the companies. You know why? It's never been efficient to have a single person deliver you a $10 lunch. It uses an insane amount of resources for almost no benefit. It's SUPPOSED TO cost this much, because it's ridiculously inefficient and resource hungry.
You all might as well complain that you can't get your food delivered by helicopter for cheap.
@@jeffreysanders7334 I can't get my food delivered by helicopters for cheap. Workers aren't getting paid enough.
@@jeffreysanders7334cheap food helicopter delivery and fairly paid workers sound really cool actually, companies should do that
@@jeffreysanders7334 cheap helicopter food delivery and fairly paid workers sound really cool tbh corps should do that
Piracy is exploding once again with the current streaming landscape.
There used to be a couple of services with everything at a good price. This almost killed off piracy.
Now there are so many services, all with ever increasing prices and shrinking offerings.
Everyone is going back downloading shows or using android boxes.
I used to be able to walk to the store and buy DVDs.
It's a distribution problem.
There is nothing entertainment related within walking distance anymore when there used to be:
arcades, book stores, comic book stores, video stores...all gone.
Cinemahd always coming in clutch
Not to mention that some things just aren't available anymore without piracy. There's albums, games, etc. that you just can't get normally anymore.
@@freedustin Big tech companies are the same as Big box retailers. They kill off small businesses and then monopolize the market. Capitalism is bad for societies doesn't matter how much ever you defend it. "For profit" is always their core.
yeah there was this russian game developer on twitter who said she doesnt even gaf if kids wanna pirate her game bc "shes been there" LOL. i think her name is nikoteenie or something @@IamTaniwha
something my partner and I have noticed recently (last 6 months) is the length and frequency of adverts on RUclips (free) have been increasing at quite an alarming rate, alongside adverts for their premium subscription, of course.....
Putting ads in Netflix, Prime and soon to also be Disney+ is absolutely insane!
Why are we even paying for it if we are still being forced to watch the ADS
just go on a pirate website with an adblock
completely free
better quality
no ads
the answer is "piracy", i used to subscribe to spotify, youtube, netflix, crunchyroll, qobuz then i canceled everything except youtube and pirate movies, series. It's ridiculous when you have to pay for 4 months subscrition just to watch 1 seri
Because you don't know how to get basically everything from those paid platforms for free and ad free.
You still pay for it? I switched back to piracy immediately when this shit started happening. Have some dignity mate
@@JanKowalski-wb8ih have never payed any subscription (except iCloud for 1€)
it just forces me to use it, cause i don't want to pay it for nothing
with piracy you can watch something, have 3 months of life in between and then watch something again without having in mind that you are constantly paying for something you rarely use
“Imagine if companies like this get in charge of your medical and emergency services!”
In America you need not imagine!
Stop reminding me of reality😢
Thank's to their politicians!
💯
Enjoy your waitlists.
Thought the same ish.
"you won't own anything and you'll be happy" starting to make sense now
Saint Klaus😊
They said it only now, but went on from like 60s, with TVs, milkmen and electricity bill... It really is, a technocracy beofeudalism, corpocracy - we are ants the those at power, they give us just specks, "gifts" to appease masses from rising up...
rhis is why piracy will be rocking unless u are in b2b
Except for the being happy bit
and ironically the right wing is in favor of it
9:41 - I used to work for 4 food delivery restaurants, and most places make stop on the way to dropping your food off. Most (not all ofc) times I took out a delivery, I was bringing 1 or more other orders with me to places that were on the way or in the same general area. This is a normal practice done by food places to make your wait time lower than if only 1 delivery went out at a time
This video needs to go viral. Either directly, or as small video shorts in TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Remember people, VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETS and always THINK TWICE before buying something.
Well it won't be recommended on RUclips and shown easily. All those apps are the exact thing he's talking about haha
I only found this because someone mentioned it on Twitter.
@@MisdrexI actually was recommended this video, but that’s most likely because I’m subscribed to his channel! Still good that I saw it, but I don’t know if I would’ve seen it if I wasn’t subbed to the channel.
Either way, THIS NEEDS TO GO VIRAL INDEED!
Calling out these predatory patterns these companies use to exploit it's customers by a person like Arun is great. It reaches a lot more people.
Appreciate the effort.
Health insurance companies in the US have been doing this and worse forever. Imagine you try to watch a movie on Netflix and it tells you “We will review your request and let you know our decision in 30 days.” A month later you get a letter saying your request to watch that movie is denied because their entertainment expert decided you don’t need to watch it. But you can appeal. “Deny, delay, defend.”
people pay medical bills? why? illegals dont have to, so neither should you. say no to hospital bills! it's easy. in NY, there are laws that protect patients from being ripped off by hospitals. no need to pay. the law also protects your credit.
@@BobRooney290 The fact that all you got from his comment is that 'illegals' are the problem in this thing, is so sad. Even if all the illegals will be gone, insurance companies will still be the same problem. And at this point, I believe republicans will just blame legal immigrants for all the problem after they one day might have fixed illegal migration. Newsflash, the big coroporations and the tax system helping the rich and powerfull are a way larger problem than Miguel illegaly comming to pick your corps every spring by illegaly crossing the border.
Such idealism in this video, only makes sense a minority of people have the money and power in the world, survival of the fittest, the world and humans aren't made to be solidaric and strive for equality, it's not in our nature, why it'll never change.
@@BobRooney290 Which law?
"Please enter your parole number.... ***##*#* Sorry this movie contains themes of misogyny which your social credit score is not adequate to unlock"
Doordash and Uber eats really make you appreciate normal prices and even grocery shopping. A Panera bread bowl is about $17 and room temperature with delivery, $9 in person, or $5 if I buy the soup and bread at a grocery store
Internet should be a tool you use, not a tool that uses you.
Capitalism
Should. I admire your idealism. But greed trumps ideals 11/10
why is everyone putting master oogway level quotes (not the ytber) down here?
Remember when youtube had a single 5 second skippable ad? It's crazy how fast they went from that to their current state
I'm old enough to remember when RUclips didn't have any ads.
Same, Aaron, same lol
RUclips will literally make you watch a 15 second ad on a 3 second video these days.
Idk about phone and pc cause I watch most of my RUclips on tv but sometimes RUclips will give FOUR UNSKIPPABLE ADS
Also now they pump more adds than tv, and pay the creators less and less. In fact many large channels can't even support themselves now without sponsor adds. Time for some competition.
i think amazon do this where they default pick the slowest is to stop their infrastructure from imploding but how would that make any sense since automatically most would notice and change it?
My personal "favorite..." when hulu charges you for an ad free tier, and still give you ads and only say some of their products are ad free, despite being advertised otherwise
I started watching Hulu when it came out. I haven't used it since they started adding ads.
Ya, that's why I never subscribed. I like to fast forward through the commercials.
I dumped Hulu when it seemed everything I wanted to watch required an additional subscription on top of what I was already paying.
One friend told me that RUclips premium does NOT REMOVE ALL ADS, it leaves the SPONSORED ONES, AND I AM NOT MEANING THE CONTENT CREATORS ONES, I MEAN THINGS LIKE PAID ADS
Companies changing their TOS is also something that irks me, especially when I've already paid for it. Where else in the world can you change a contract without having to pay some kind of penalty?
The fact that they can change it without your consent is the issue. A contract is a binding agreement between two parties, changing any of it will require the consent of both parties. Now legally, you probably already agree to consent to their TOS (and any changes made to it later on) when you pay for a subscription. This might be legally right, but ethically and morally it is wrong. I would prefer the law to have more consumer protections built in, but sadly we are not living in that world just yet.
For this reason alone, one should never buy a subscription to any service that can change their TOS after the fact. This is the only guaranteed way to prevent this kind of misuse.
Thats a USA Problem mostly. In the EU this is highly illegal
@@pinobluevogel6458 But it also makes sense that companies make you agree to an agreement that they can change without prior notice because otherwise they will forever be stuck with a loss making business that they can't change since they will need to ask every single individual that has agreed to it which is outright ridiculous. However, what they CAN do is update the agreement and then make new users agree to that and the old users can have the old agreement upto their agreement expiration date.
@@iriswaldenburger2315 It's not illegal, you get updated ToS in the EU all the time. But they have to offer you the option to not agree and cancel your contract immediately.
And don't forget that the change will be some small part not highlighted at all in about a 100 pages of other corporate legalise rubbish. I think it's time that consumers make there own standardised TOS and simply don't use companies that don't use that standard.
A very needed video!
One more point should be added to the video where Google Play Store apps advertise subscriptions of X $ / month, yet whenever you click subscribe and pay, you realize that you were charged for the entire 12 months of the year with no refund possibility. It happened to me several times.
All the VPN services for instance do this.
If your country has consumer protections like this, always pay for everything online with a credit card so you can reverse the payment if they do these shady things. Else, don't buy any subscriptions - I don't (besides the Amazon prime I share and spotify)
this is clearly THEFT!
Yeah, and I totally get the social media part. I just want to scroll down and see my friends from way back in elementary school doing stuff but all I see are ads.
That dark pattern thing is no joke. As someone who has worked for one of these companies, there are literal back and forth meetings for a week+ over things as minor as a line of text to try and deceive/shakedown a consumer while still not breeching consumer rights (mostly using loopholes/technicalities). Whenever these companies enter new countries they treat consumers like kings till they have a monopoly and websites will have dark pattern marketing stuff turned off.
Amazon for example has very few of these shady features enabled in countries they're still building a userbase in like Australia(for now)
I have actually tried to pay for Amazon Prime Video twice. It suspends my account after the free period and tells me to contact customer support. They don't have one though. After 30 minutes of googling, I found a phone number. That phone number had no country code. Tried to call it and it went to the national guard. Googled for another hour, and found nothing.
They ask you to contact a support that does not exist!
Now they have updated it, so I had to send in a picture of my credit card and an ID. So my social security number and my bank account info needs to be sendt in a picture, where it said real people were going to look through it. And if you refuse, you have to contact the costumer support, that does not exist!
It is an extremely shitty system all around
The big missing part is in this video is their is no mention of the words: start-up, VC-funding and disruption or disruptive innovation (and possibly silicon valley).
Because when these (especially VC) companies say: disruption, they mean: destroy the market and competition through VC funding a non-sustainable business model and so they can cash in later by creating a higher prices.
Yeah as soon as amazon make any significant moves to fuck over their australian customers, i'll cancel my amazon account, fortunately it's quite hard to screw over consumers here as we have some of the best consumer protection laws, assuming the ACCC can be bothered.
@@fenix849 be aware, amazon comes to your country to destroy the competition, so by giving them money instead of local companies you are destroying companies in your own country (or maybe weakening European companies).
@@autohmae bto it's too late, even if he mentioned that, pricing will not change nor drop.
We, below the poverty line, will be on hunger games for a bag of rice wheat or something, while the rich will laugh at us or bet at us.
Imagine if all running subscriptions were automatically cancelled (by law) when the company changes their subscriptions features (e.g. removing features to add them to a higher tier)
Now this is a GREAT idea
Imagine you actually made your own purchase choices without relying on daddy government to hold your hand for you
Symmetrical cancellation, it should take you the same amount of time to cancel than it took you to subscribe and or get money back.
@@mszualawhich will never happen unfortunately
@@nickstiltson1180 It will if we start getting representatives that actually pass such laws.
In their newest bid to scam consumers, companies are not even letting your subscription run out if you cancel it, and not offering a refund for the time.
I had this happen twice recently, once with Fi Collar subscription, and also with AT&T prepaid service.
In both cases if you cancel your service with time left, your service is immediately ended the day of cancellation.
Yeah that is so annoying. Adobe does this and their sub is very exponsive. I had to set like 5 alarms for 5 days before to be really sure I cancel it.
They are optimized in seemingly every country they operate in. In Germany for example, Adobe must grant you a 14 day window to cancel a new subscription.
They tell you to save huge amounts of money by subscribing for 12 months as they probably know - most new users dont use it for that long.
If you forget to cancel the subscription, it gets renewed for 12 months, but you can cancel any month, right? - Yea, but they want 50% of the total expense of 12 months as a fee for you getting out of the contract. The only way to still bamboozle them is by "upgrading" or downgrading the subscription, causing a new contract - which you then can cancel in the 14 day window, causing them to instantly nullify the contract. Best thing is, the down- or upgrade will refund you any remaining time you had.
But oh boy do they try to fish for those not realizing and paying the 6 months for basically nothing.
Amazon does this now just had it happen
@@nimmero imagine if adobe had a one time fee for any one of their like 20 services
Like Shopify, I paid 50 dollars for the whole month but canceled it and they shut down everything😂. Frauds
Thank you, Arun! This is so useful. A well balanced consumer information while being entertaining 👏
Ordering food online for delivery is completely insane with the taxes, fees, unhealthy choices and you don't really know what happens to your order between the restaurant and your house.
I am a driver for Uber and DoorDash. I can tell you that in 99% cases nothing happens to your food between the restaurants and it is dropped at your door. Almost all of us just put it in a thermal back or if it’s cold in a cold Right away I’m driving to your house. We just wanna keep our job. We have no interest in messing with your food for those who mess with the food there are serious consequences and honestly we don’t wanna dot that. we get seriously abused by these companies and I guess, if driver is at their breaking point and see no hope in going on then might do something like not deliver the food because they’re just about to have the app turned off on them and lose their job in a second and really don’t care what happens to them or your food. The better you tip the driver the batter driver you’re gonna get. We only get two dollar base pay for every delivery from these companies. They really want to extract as much money as they can from all parties involved, which is the driver, the customer, and the restaurant, it really makes nobody happy, but they keep trying to pitch all of these three parties against each other while they hide between a very opaque wall.
People have been ordering food online for decades... It's fine
Yeah, I'm more than happy to pick up my own food. What really gets me is what's happened at my Youngest's university. They have a Student Center with a fairly large food court. Only, you can't order food from most of the restaurants, you have to place an order on an Apple iPad-like kiosk. Take a guess who owns the kiosk? Grubhub. You literally cannot order food from the restaurants directly--you have to order through a third-party company which or course, tacks on a service fee for using their stupid kiosk. And I doubt many of the students have noticed this.
Exactly. I've shut down a lot of consumption due to getting ripped off. I basically cook nice things organic and local at home. And Uber? I'm willing to walk 5+ miles or wait to get away from surge, I also open Lyft and Uber and makre sure to use the cheapest option.
You lost me at the last point haha, but the rest is true
Thanks for speaking out about this. Having famous people like yourself shining a light on injustices like this makes me feel like WE are being heard!
The OP is part of us, so"being heard"... by whom?
And yet he's promoting such dark pattern subscription platforms in the same video
which drives the illusion that something is going to change for the better
Injustices lol. It's not exactly human rights, it's just consumerist shite.
@@jishnuraj1670explain
One of the worst instances I've seen is a service where if you try to cancel the service early to avoid paying again next month, they end your access to the service immediately, then only /if/ you're in the first 3 days of that service, they refund the month's subscription cost within 1-2 business weeks. This means you have to cancel the service on the very last day you intend to use it, any earlier and you're being robbed of the service you paid for, and any later and they're basically holding your money hostage for two weeks so they can profit off of investments using customer funds. They'll take your payment in 10 seconds, but despite it being possible to return it in 30 minutes, worst case 2-3 days, they make you wait two whole weeks. It's absurd.
and that, is what credit card chargeback is for, no money for them!
good thing i have the reminder app to remind me to cancel on time
Isn't 21st century capitalism wonderful?
@@misakamikoto8785 except now credit cards don't hand out chargebacks so willynilly now that American's espically abuse them
They should be required by law to prorate it. But our politicians don't give a crap about us so why would they actually put decent laws in? 😝
Thank you for not just flogging products, I really appreciate your efforts on these types of subjects as people are being eaten alive financially.
One helpful tip is to go to your local library. Ours actually has a lot of pretty recent movies in the dvd section. We can pick out a few movies we want to watch, watch them, and then take them back. Kind of reminds me of how Netflix started out haha
Or just not waste your time at all and skip it
I don't think I've bought a DVD since 2007 or so. I have also never known anyone to suffer negative consequences from torrenting.
like how Netflix was sort of an offshoot from torrenting / piracy... (Napster/ Limewire/etc) the old days..
@@tjones44236 Gave a thrift store a few hundred dvds not long ago. We have not bought a new dvd in 15 plus years. I did buy a couple rare films that I could not find online maybe 10 plus years ago. Other than that we stream them or don't watch them.
@@tjones44236 No reason not to buy the discs. Most can be had quite cheaply. And yeah, you haven't suffered negative consequences... yet. You never do until you do, and then of course, it's too late.