this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Corporate consolidation is ALWAYS bad in the long run. There will be more rent seeking behavior as a result of this. The product will get worse and you will be asked to pay more for it.
Personally, it feels like video streaming going the way of audio streaming with more content for the price. Just this merge would greatly increase Netflix's catalog size. I'm okay with it, personally.
I'm not sure I have time to go into this completely but what you are describing as good has objectively been a death sentence to tons of musicians.
Spotify is the biggest music streaming platform right? Did you know that they actually charge artists to be on their radios (you know the things they use dark patterns in their apps to drive you to)? You literally can't be in the prime spots for visibility on the app without paying a tax to the company. Did you know that the music industry basically coerces artists into a system of indentured servitude where they are stuck in a debt trap with the large mega studios that got their album made (they also retain no rights to the master and essentially do not own their own work)?
That price comes from companies squeezing out the variety in the music we hear to be just the shit that bangs the hardest in the most inoffensive and generic way to the most people. Depressing for that to be how art is made no? This is what Netflix is ALREADY doing.
Rest assured your "value" will be realized in more ads and membership tiers they can stick on top of content they previous had to pay exorbitant licensing costs on. Rest assure it will be more middle of the road slop that Netflix is already famous for because its just good enough people will watch it even though it is devoid of all kind of unique character.
This merger will hurt the artists who pump out your favorite shows today. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind.
I guess I personally don't really see enshitification happening to things with a producer-distribution model. Besides music, there are podcasts, app/play store, and video games which never really went through enshitification where I'm like forced to watch more ads, so it isn't likely video will either, at least in my opinion.
Amazon prime tried it with adding a lot of ads and people just stopped watching Amazon shows, entirely. Like music, there's just too much content to watch out there.
Apps and video games have been thoroughly enshittified, at least on mobile, but also partially on desktop. Amazon Prime is also still very successful and people have not stopped watching Amazon shows entirely.
I mean maybe like a year ago, for a short time, Amazon suddenly had multiple 4 minute ads in a video. It was unwatchable so I just dropped the platform entirely. I was in the middle of watching Vox Machina. When I came back a few months later, even though the ads were gone, the damage was already done. I forgot what was going on and lost interest in the show.
Sure, that's fair, but 1) you're just one user out of many thousands, and 2) stuff like "multiple 4 minute ads in a video" is usually rolled out through A/B testing, so many users probably never saw it.
Oh for sure, I don't have the data personally to prove or disprove enshitification of video media consumption. So I'm going on personal experiences and opinion, here. As a personal anecdote, attempts to enshitify video streaming was just met with me leaving the platform. So I'm admittedly projecting my own view onto other people, here. Unlike social media where there is a network effect that keeps people there, video media doesn't have that effect. If a provider makes video streaming worse, consumers will just leave and they can do one any another million of things there is to do on a tablet.
That's why I'm not really concerned with the Netflix buyout of WB discovery. It will likely make more content available on more services.
The podcast industry is dominated by iHeartRadio. There are plenty of independent platforms but they have an outsized influence on the market which determines what kind of content wins and loses. Also fuck loads of ads which sucks ass. As an aside they have also ruined a lot of radio by buying up local stations and cramming them with ads too.
Apps on iPhone are literally distributed by a single store with no options for side loading where they get to decide if you're allowed to publish content and if you're allowed to install it. Android is slightly less bad but they are moving in this direction currently and functionally a very small percentage of people ever leaves the Play store ecosystem anyway.
Video games and micro transactions that plague so many games? Loot boxes and gambling? DLC for things that used to be free updates? You must be young and don't remember how things used to be.
For enshitification, I mean that it's the same thing but it got worse. Like how Reddit used to have an open API. And how X was balanced in the past didn't promote certain viewpoints. It's the same product as before that just got worse. It's something that happens a lot with social media.
Releasing new content with ads, DLC, or gambling isn't enshitifying something. It's releasing something new which is shitty. It's new content which is in addition to the previously released content. Those older games, podcasts, videos, music, and apps are still available. And they are likely cheaper, have less ads, and are easier to access than before.
Olympic levels of mental gymnastics here if I'm being honest.
You're just wrong. Enshittification is about corporations putting more and more increasingly invasive forms of monetization on things we use in our lives. Often it is driven by market monopolization.
That old content you want to view is often not available anymore OR is available behind additional paywalls (looking at you Nintendo and Sony). Its not about that old content becoming shitty necessarily but the overall state of the platforms we use being rather antagonistic towards their users to generate some more sweet profits.
You should go read how Cory Doctrow talks about it. He invented the word. I'm using his definition not whatever you've decided it means to you to frame your argument.
Any innovation that these companies deliver is a happy accident on the way to trying to squeeze you for more money. And when that fails they will just try to consolidate their monopoly further so next time you'll have even less choice.
Do you see the major difference? In audio streaming, most providers have most content. In video streaming, single providers have most content. That means video streaming will get enshittified much more quickly.
This is a solid point I didnt expand on in my comment. Nail on head.