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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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I think people's feelings about subscriptions are warped. There's been a very popular take here on Lemmy lately towards piracy and not paying people for their work, and it's annoying to say the least (especially contrasting it with how they deserve to be paid for what they do).
Things that don't actively have operating costs, e.g. a text editor, I think it makes sense to be traditional purchases. However, things that do require ongoing expenses, be it live service games, lemmy servers, news organizations, etc, these things need money to function, and funding them with our data is not making the world a better place.
Considering advertisers expect to make money off their ads, and seem to have the data to back that up, I'm going to assume (on average) free services sure aren't saving folks money either.
I too question the overall ire against subscriptions.
I understand the hesitance regarding the proliferation of streaming services. It's hard to keep track of them and the sort of transient nature of their content makes it frustrating.
But I don't think subscriptions are inherently bad insofar as the costs related to upkeeping things I want to have access to are ongoing expenses. It follows that my access would be an ongoing expense to support that. It's why people subscribe to the newspaper or magazines. A one time fee (or not paying at all) does not keep the presses running over time.
I pirated a lot of things when I was younger. But as I've grown older it has become clearer to me that without the financial support of those with the means to provide it, many things I enjoy could not exist. I'm happy to contribute so I can keep enjoying things I enjoy.