Netflix : Entertainment or Really Good Spying?
The computer market right now is at an all time enshitification period with the prices of most regular components going sky high. It is a real shame that the building or owning a decent computer is inching away from regular working class people every day.
Good news for you, if you are reading this on a computer, you are in luck to break from this subscription hell.
What is "Netflix at home" and Why?
What is Self-Hosting and reasons you might want to consider owning your media.
If you are not aware of self-hosting, let me give you an background. Everything you access from the internet is not in the "cloud", it is just a computer in a big building. You may have seen these pictures of like this.
They are really big because they are serving thousands of people at the same time, but if it is just one person, the computer required could be that dusty laptop collecting dust in your cupboard.
Even a 10 year old computer with a wired connection can do a lot more than you think. This website you are reading right now, it is running on a old office computer from the dump.
One of the most popular application you run at home is a home media server. you can watch all the DVDs and Blue-Rays on any device anywhere like you would watch your movies on the Netflix app.
"Netflix works fine, I don't understand this stuff anyway"
If you are thinking this, I ask you to think a little more. How many times Netflix has upped its price overnight, WHILE not having the movies you want at a given time. Not to mention all the movies that gets altered and removed from time to time all while giving low quality streams even when you pay for 4K!!!! (Unless you do everything like they say in their fine print you won't get the full quality to save their bandwidth cost)
I DO NOT CONDONE PIRACY as the title says, but Louis makes a point about how you get screwed EVEN when you pay a premium.
Not to mention some services ALTERING historical movies to protect their brand. Amazon has been caught messing with their movies so many times, latest was changing the poster for Kubrick classic Full Metal Jacket. They removed the "BORN TO KiLL" on the helmet, because I don't know it offends people. They missed the point of the movie and the phrase. These actions completely negate the artistic intentions of the filmmakers. There is a big concern about new generations of kids not knowing what the "original" cut of a movie vs the politically correct cut for the present times.
Allan Ford
I don't want to be a hostile relationship with a tech company to enjoy a TV show on my past time.
More Sinister Risks..
Privacy is a right that is fought for, not granted
This is not targeted at any specific company and most of what I am going to talk about is common on any subscription based service. What you need to realize is most subscription companies have been or are still are unprofitable. The goal is to offer cheap service till they get critical mass and increase the price and most of them make the money from the Ads and data harvesting.
Nothing against VIZIO , I have an old VIZIO (non-smart) TV still working in my living. But I want to show in this case, there was a 26% increase in Advertising revenue from collecting data on the smart TV OS, while the devices revenue declined by 8%. You do not need to be an economist to see where any company would focus there efforts to increase shareholder value. TV business is dying and the low prices at Walmart exists knowing your data is worth more.
So what they know what shows I watch, who cares?
What can be assumed just by monitoring your TV habbits
These manufactures monitors every second of what you do to determine your behavior to show relevant ads. In this plan, the more data they have the more they can charge advertisers. It has been a internet conspiracy that your phone is listening to what you are talking about and serving ads based on that (probably not). It just so happens when all these companies track what you do on the internet and know your info(which you give them voluntarily), it is not hard to determine what you are going to do. This technology is so good to the point it feels like someone is watching you 24/7 recording you to serve theses ads.
In my opinion, that is EXACTLY how you should treat invasive data collection as, someone watching what you do for their monetary benefit.
I will be sharing how I watch my movies and TV shows, I will write more in depth about it in a separate post. If you are in a hurry, check Jellyfin and install to see how you can turn your computer in to a streaming service.