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Comment by Tabular-Iceberg | Hacker News Reader

The greater the market share of subscription streaming gets, the greater the temptation to add ads to them will become.

It’s already happening, a while back I got a subscription to the Discovery streaming platform and occasionally it would interrupt the show with an ad. I refuse to pay for that, so I unsubscribed. But sooner or later I will have no choice anymore.

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You're completely right. People thought paying money would stop ads from permeating cable TV originally [1], and look what happened there.

History is repeating itself and yet you still have people in this very thread carting out the tired old bromide: "the market will take care of it, vote with your wallet". Well, it clearly won't in this case.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

I think its too early to say if history is repeating, certainly a possibility. Things have changed a lot since 1981, consumers have a wider range of choice for entertainment, and swapping providers is super easy now.

One negative change though is Public Broadcasting Services are being encouraged to be self funding, which may reduce the options for free and ad-free content!

I certainly can see that behavior from the media companies with a linear TV background, and potentially Amazon with their growing Ad business. As long as Netflix stays clear that should keep competition in check, once they start doing ads, I think that would signal the good times are over (squeezing the consumer).

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