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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

People should be responsible enough to be able to tap a few buttons to cancel while they are taking a shit instead of watching TikTok.

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Why should we waste any of our time doing that when they could just charge for minutes watched, like the gas/electric company. They're already tracking that data.

Unless you are in the business of making and selling media, I don’t see how you could claim that. The cost structures of utilities as well as demand curves seem like they would so different that the comparison is nonsensical.

Instead of telling other people how to run their business, perhaps people should be putting their money where their mouth is and create the media and try selling it by the minute, and see how successful they are.

Gas and electric charge for “delivery” as a flat fee, then actual usage on top of that.

If streaming services did similar, you likely wouldn’t be that much better off

Plus, but not unsubscribing, you’re reinforcing their current business model.

I am sure you are suggesting this in good faith, but I think that pay per minute would actually make things even worse.

That depends on how much you watch. It would at least incentivize them to produce content worth your time. On the other hand, it could lead to a lot of content being stretched out and padded to increase minutes spent...

Exactly. I think we've grown spoiled. I've actually gone back to mostly books from the public library for entertainment in the evenings. When I get that desire for visual entertainment, I'll go catch a movie. It's the same laziness I think that results in people not voting and not spending a couple of hours helping out with charities instead of not doom-scrolling for a while.

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