I remember when I had Amazon Prime ad-free tier. Then they added ads to the ad-free tier, and then I found out to get what I was already paying for, they now want $36 more per year. I mean, that's just blatant bait and switch.

It's some criminal gangster saying "hey that's a nice free ad-tier, shame if something happened to it. Listen, you pay me $36/year for protection, and all this goes away. Capice?"

Remember when the appeal was that streaming was cheaper than cable? So, yeah. Shareholders were not going to just take that lying down when they know what can squeeze their consumers far harder than they anticipated.

Plus, they are now removing movies that you have "bought" or "purchased" while offering NO refunds.

"If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing" -Cory Doctorow

I get disney+ with ads via my bank. We use it for my daughter and just blocking *disneyadvertising.com at a DNS level has meant not a single ad is shown.

I'll put up with many things, but paying for the pleasure of viewing ads feels like a moral violation. It's so disturbingly greedy I cannot fully wrap my mind around it.

And I wish I was being dramatic here, but truly anytime I feel I've wrapped my head around the depravity of man I just remember that we have "paid" tiers of TV that show ads and I sleep soundly knowing the bottom remains unfathomed.