this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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Okay, fine, I am ready to come out of the closet: I've been a YouTube Premium subscriber for two years. Lynch me if you like. I thought it hypocritical to crucify YouTube and have a Spotify or Netflix or Hulu subscription, and I found the cost acceptable.
Three price increases and a worsening of service later, I cancelled my subscription as soon as I received the email about a price increase.
Incidentally, I think that's the thing to do: you get a price increase, there is no tangible benefit to the increase, you immediately drop the service. None of that "Whatchagonnado?" stuff. The only thing these services react to is an instant drop of revenue. You can live for a month without Spotify (or YouTube Premium), they can't live for a quarter without subscribers.
We always have to remember that the short-term focus of modern capitalism is their weakness: a stupid mistake, a sudden drop in revenue, and the CEOs are flying out the window faster than Putin's generals.
People don’t know how to vote with wallet anymore.
It’s the reason these services get away with nickel and diming. Look at food delivery. For whatever reason people keep using it even though the fees add up to more than the meal itself. Let alone the markup the restaurant does to cover the costs.
Uber Eats motto should be “For when you want to pay $80 for a $5 meal”
Same thing with like Starbucks. People paying $17 for burnt coffee that needs 45 cups of milk and sugar to salvage.
The services will never change because consumers are lazy. It’s easy to just give their money away. People mock the “stop buying avocado toast” saying. But I think they just misunderstood it. I think the deeper meaning of it was meant to convey to vote with your wallet. You can buy avocados and bread at the grocery store and make an avocado toast yourself for under $1. But instead people go and buy it at a fancy pop-up and pay $18 plus tip for some mustachioed hipster with an artisan apron to make it for them.
/rant
My boss claims it has "no effect" to choose where to spend your money.
I remind him, voting with our wallets is literally the only mechanism Capitalism provides for consumer ethics.
It's Prisoner's dilemma. When we think 5m people are going to take the action either way, we don't think our singular efforts matter. But as there are 5m of us taking the action, there are 5m singular efforts that DO matter. If people just don't give up on the idea.
Says the guy who still has an Amazon account :/
In some cases it doesn't have an effect. Some things are just so big and have so many revenue streams that avoiding the products means removing approximately 4 cents from their revenue stream per person. Millions of people would have to do it all at the same time and that is difficult to organize and maintain.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't stick to your guns and not support things you have objections to. Something something integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking something something.
I mean, I still have an Amazon account. I even used it, less than two weeks ago. But that was the first time I actually used it to buy anything for nearly a decade.
People shouldn't hold themselves too strictly to any sort of puritanism. Avoid the worst options as much as you can, but when it becomes infeasible for you, make an exception. That's much better than just always going with the bad option.
I think the key here is to get used to react immediately, because the immediate reaction causes a reversal of the action. We don't have to live with the increased cost and decreased service forever, because an immediate negative reaction means the service is restored to what it was before, with any luck. So everybody skips a downgrade or price increase at the same time, and until CEOs figure out the trick, it's bye bye enshittification.