The new Hulu Subscriber agreement just dropped

If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't theft. ;-)

Streaming is akin to renting not buying
- you're ruining the catchy slogan, it's like you don't even want this to be Reddit
- That's the point of what they're saying. If you're only buying a subscription to the content then it's not theft to get access to that content by other means.
- Even with renting we didn't had ads in between.
Remove the "if buying isnt owning" part

You are stealing potential profits
- If I'm stealing potential profits, then there wasn't much potential. My bank account is still near empty

Yarr, matey.

I've been using RD + Stremio for 2 years now, has worked great (except when RD shut down, then switched to Debrid-Link, which was as easy as RD). It costs about 3€ per month, though I think it has been worth it.

"No ads" don't mean we don't show ads....duh

"No, ads!"
- "No capes!"
They seem to be a bit stupid about punctuation. It should read "No, ads!"
- Whoops, shouldn't have that bar assocation logo here either.

"circumstances may require"

No, you just want to do that.

"Our financial circumstances (our shareholders want more money) require..."
Numbers aren't going up fast enough.
REQUIRE Line go up!

If people would just drop their service en masse they would stop doing this shit. Everyone acts like they can be without a streaming service for a month or two so they'll just complain as they continue to hand them money.

In other areas, yeah, probably.

But with music, movies, and TV, they'll just blame piracy, crank up the DRM and bullshit on their own platforms, pat themselves on the back, and raise prices.
- crank up the DRM
  
  Which is why so many people pirate. Non-conforming browser, OS, TV, some other missing magic? Too bad. Paid for quality 4K? Here's some low bitrate 720p.
The reality is there aren't enough people that care about ads to do that.

You either grew up with TV commercials or you grew up with ads, the conditioning is already there. There is a narrow band of people who don't watch much or any TV and got on the internet for most content that remember when ads weren't a thing. They have done studies and reviewed user data to determine how much ads they can play.

They might push users to leave by tickling the ad tolerance while increasing subscription fees, but that is unlikely to happen as the frog is already boiled.
- I grew up with ads but I still don't tolerate them, I'm practically allergic to ads.
  
  Even back then I would just switch the Chanel when ads would start and then so many times just forget what I was watching and watch something else. And even as a kid I already would preference shows running on the public television in Germany because they didn't have ads, they were played in a different way.
- People who grew up with ads were okay with it because the shows and movies were free.
I cancelled everything but paramount recently. Just cant quit star trek. Until I fix my DNS server at least
- Have you tried ejecting your DNS server’s warp core?
- Eh, they just don't want my money. I had a Netflix account back in the day. Ad-free and most everything was there. They've all fallen so far. Storage is pretty damn cheap these days, and torrents are a-plenty.
- Yarrr, matey!
I’m interested to know if Hulu is under pressure from content owners here. The way this is worded makes it sound like ads are a negotiated part of some of their content licensing deals that they cannot avoid. I’m just curious if that’s in part because of the content owners. Maybe those owners don’t want to give content for a flat fee and instead want a % cut of the business, or something?

If the no ads and ads free version contains adds then pirating is also not immoral anymore.

I don't consider it immoral regardless tbh
Arrr matey, t’was never immoral! Subscriptions only be for landlubbers!

Prepare to make sail! Ahoy!
Call it what it is - copyright infringement. Piracy is the act of robbery on the high seas, but we've allowed media companies to take a shit in our vocabularies so we can't call things by their proper names.
- Yeah, but pirates are cool.
What words mean?
- Grog no like ad. Grog want buy thing? Grog make up own mind. Grog not want ad tell grog what buy, what like. Grog know what grog like.
- Writing on the phone ... sometimes I should proof read it. What i wanted to write was something like
  
  If the "no ads" and "ads free" version contains ads, then pirating the TV shows/movies is not immoral either.

This what we would call false advertising in my country.

You can't write: "NO ADS!*"

"*actually, maybe some ads, as a treat"

That's just completely negating the headline claim

Reminder that whatever your feelings on copyright law are, stealing from Disney is fucking cool

You can't steal a TV show
- Bet

What a wonderful world we live in - boneless chicken with bones, ad-free streaming with ads, unlimited plans with limits... What's next, Nestle releasing microplastics and cadmium free water (guess what's in it!)?

Ad free with ads isn't new to me. Paramount Plus will sometimes show pre-roll ads. They're usually ads for other shows on Paramount and you can skip it right away, but it's an ad nonetheless.

I could go without the unskippable 5 second branding bumper though.
- HBO does this too, I've been told they get away with it because it's a trailer not an ad, as though there's a difference, but mate, I'm already watching Star Trek, you don't need to suggest I watch Star Trek.
- This drink cooler will open and allow you to purchase a cool refreshing micro-plastic free water after a brief ad by nestle. Please stare directly at the screen for 30 seconds to unlock the case.

Pirate your shows. Not just as a defense against ads, but as a defense against Disney throwing plotlines down the Memory Hole

This is what I do:

Buy a perpetual license to the content I want (usually on Prime or Microsoft Store)

Pirate it and load it onto my PLEX server.

This is the only way I can actually have control over the content that I fucking paid for. If that makes me a thief, then so be it.

Of course, this only works for PPV content. I generally just don't watch content that's available via streaming subscriptions only. I never paid for cable and I'm not paying for cable 2.0.

Ads free but with ads ! So words included in a contract don't carry the same meaning as in the dictionary ?

This update brought to you by the letter ARRRR

Hulu has always had a clause like that. Their ad-free tier has always had a handful of shows that have an ad at the beginning and end, which is why I don't pay for the ad-free tier and just use NextDNS.

Those were initially limited to shows that had contracts in place before hulu existed and was limited to like 3 shows.

I’d say “sounds like a lawsuit”. After all, you can’t advertise something as no ads, and then show ads.

But then I remember who is in charge for the next four years and realize they’ll just get away with it.

According to a US judge last year, "boneless chicken wings" does not mean the chicken wings don't have bones in them.
Sir this is 2025 america lol
- Our Deep Depression
- Gestures broadly
They get away with it with that damned asterisk. So long as you put an asterisk, you could say this comment does not contain English words*

* comment may contain some or all English and / or any other language words
Another one that shouldn’t be allowed but is are the unlimited* plans where the * indicates that it’s not really unlimited.
- Anything where the clear statement with such a marker indicating it is not true should be illegal. 'Up to' claims should also be illegal unless they are true for 99%+ of users/customers.
They've literally been doing this for over a decade, at least. There were always some shows on Hulu that the "ad-free" plan didn't include as ad-free, though they usually only showed ads at the beginning and the end of the show.
Look being real they would get away with it no matter which decrepit old man was in office or what their politics are. America is a corporatocracy wearing the skin of democracy. When the IRS audited Microsoft for tax evasion, the IRS got sued and defunded through lobbying to the point of being forced to back off. Fucking Microsoft took down the IRS. The world has changed and our old institutions of power are waning.

I first time I see an ad on my ad-free subscription, I will cancel like I did with Prime Video.

It’s like they want us to become pirates.

Just a numbers game. More people will absorb the costs than cancel their subscriptions. So these streaming services can keep ratcheting until they hit a breaking point. There's no disincentive to these behaviors, as long as net revenue increases quarter to quarter.

Piracy requires a certain degree of technical competence and internet savvy that the vast majority of end users don't have.

That's why I pay for hulu+++×+

It's guaranteed you'll never see an ad*

*unless Hulu determines it is justified

Well, it's ad-free as long as you consume at least one verification can every 10 minutes
- You must shout "burger king" loud enough that it's detected on 3 neighbors microphones

🏴‍☠️

There's no way that they should be allowed to advertise "no ads" when there are in fact ads. This is consumer protection so basic and obvious that it should be a slam dunk even with the current government... right?

There's no way this should be a profitable course of action. If I was paying for no Ads and started getting Ads I would immediately cancel my subscription and go somewhere else.

Unfortunately too many people are good little consumers who just don't care and it doesn't even occur to them to stop paying and demand better.

Ok. But the first one i see and im canceling

Welp, just canceled that subscription. They can fuck right off.

Good thing I pirate all their shit already if I want it.

I stopped paying for Amazon Prime over a year ago once they announced similar bullshit with their video service.

Once Disney dropped subscription sharing.... I started downloading their shit too.

Now i'm left with Netflix and Crunchyroll. I'm this close to axing netflix. Crunchyroll is kinda shit but at least it's cheap.

Product placement is advertising, and as such saying "no ads" while not blurring out product placement would be misselling the service

Sometimes it's important to the plot to let the viewer know about the cool refreshing taste of Pißwasser German lager.
- There's several shows where it was important to production that they had those as they would have been cancelled without it. Community and Chuck were both basically saved by Subway.
- Or Cervesa Cristal

https://fmhy.pages.dev/

Yo ho yo ho

To be fair, it most likely refers to live streams, considering more steamers are offering them.

That being said, I cancelled in favour of the high seas and never looked back

It's not just live streams. On-demand of Comcast networks will have ads because it's fucking Comcast and they are gonna force you to watch them as much as possible. At least you can use the live tv dvr feature to record the things you want and skip commercials then.

Comcast continues providing ample evidence as to why they are one of the most hated companies in the US. They used to be THE most hated company, but the founder of an extremely popular battery company, that also makes cars, recently outed himself as a mask-off nazi, so Comcast is gonna have to step it up to keep their hold on #1. I imagine it's only a matter of time before all ICE vehicles have vinyl wraps on them that boast "Powered by Comcast", and ~~concentration camps~~ detention centers acting as free (fully tracked and monitored) wifi hotspots.

By Lemmy Social Contract that You've implicitly agreed to, you must now sail the high seas [email protected] (blocked by lemmy.world instance btw)

Live Free on the High Seas! 🏴‍☠️

By "high seas", you're referring to torrenting, right? Not ripping DVDs and Blu-Rays?

Hulu did this shit in 2014. Never used them again. Hulu is crap, you are kinda getting what you deserve.

I would argue all streaming services have gone to shit. I'm not saying I encourage anyone to pirate that doesn't want to. But I am saying i don't blame a single soul that does.

As far as I'm concerned all those companies can go fuck themselves. They know that the less technical people will willingly keep paying so the ones they lose won't matter.

The biggest enabler of these are those bundles you get with cable / Internet providers. Do yourself a favor and buy these individually if at all so you can stop the subscriptions at any time without worries.

in Greece at least nobody gives you the option - unless it's a very pricey service that you can pay as a package

Private Torrents

And I am clarifying that as I continue to subscribe to this service, circumstances may require that my payments will exclude currency, and include regular visits to The Pir[REDACTED]te Bay.

Edit: sorry, Rule 2.

Damn today sucks eztv gotta work a little harder removing those ads for me now

Even if you do get a copy with ads, it's trivial to remove it yourself. You can use Handbrake and specify chapter times. Chapter start at open credits. Chapter end just before the ad roll. Chapter start after ad roll. Chapter end at the end of the video.

some titles always have had ads on hulu, regardless of a viewer's plan. they frame it as being 'required' by the content provider.. which, iirc, is usually them--a disney-owned entity for these titles.

Vertical integration!

Looks at UTorrent happily leeching away

Looks at camera

Jesus fucking christ.

If those titles require ads, don't include them in my feed. I don't want to know they exist.

what the fuck are people actually paying for at this point

Paramount Plus is the same way.

I assume they mean the live TV offerings, and technically the Hulu splash at the start of every episode is marked as an ad.

But it’s still scummy.

They're modifying a legal document, one of the most detail-focused creations *ever. If they only wanted it to apply to live TV programs, they absolutely could have. When people (or corporations) show you who they are, believe them.

edit: autocorrect
- This is the TL;DR of what was updated. This is not the actual ToS.
  
  Not defending, just pointing that out.
They've been showing ads on content from certain sources on supposedly "ad-free" tiers for years.
The Hulu logo preroll/interstitial isnt an ad but it uses the same system. I imagine they only mean ads in live TV offerings.

"No ads" and "ad-free" apparently mean whatever they want it to! Man, I'm so tired of these giant, greedy corporations and modern enshittification...

So happy I can exist with no subscriptions!

Hulu was my Netflix alternative. If they start showing me ads I'm done with them too. Hopefully this was added for live events, sports, etc, but I don't know if they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I just assumed this disclaimer was for live sports, which include ads whether you want them to or not. It’s not like you can just leave out the commercial breaks in a live broadcast.

Show us the challenge review, show us the mascot relay race, show us the kiss cam.
yes, you can, and I would expect an "ad-free" service to do so, at minimum replace it with a "commercial break" sign and preferably adding extra commentary.

Yet another example of how paying for something doesn't prevent enshitification.

I just cancelled my subscription and got a refund too. Good riddance.

Beating will continue until morale improves

This isn’t new. They’ve been doing that since Agents of SHIELD was on the air. They would start with “this is not included in the no ads plan.”

Yep. Worked there for a bit. They're contractually obligated to show ads on certain content. Doesn't matter what tier you're on. As a paying customer (a rather long time ago), my partner became so incensed at the ads that played even though he paid for ad-free that he rage-cancelled his membership.

Hasn't Hulu had ads on their paid tiers for a long time now? I remember that being a big deal way back, so I never bothered with a subscription.

Yes! Hulu originally was 100% free because it had ads. The it became a monthly sub but never removed the ads. Then it split into what it is today with an ad option and an ad free option.

LMAO I’m glad I stopped using Hulu’s service as they are a corpo dumpster fire; streaming was always doomed to become shitty because corporations can’t help but screw up good things. They intentionally waited for the shift in Administration to be as bullshit as possible.

Someone get Louis on the phone. There is another article for the Consumer Action Taskforce database waiting to be written.

Surely the FTC will have some to say about this oh wait

But the CEO of proton assures me that this administration will stand up for the little guy and nominate someone who will do good antitrust work!

I want to believe that all this is really saying is that if Hulu ever does a live event there will be ads but only time will tell

If you can prove a contradiction then you can prove anything, and here we have ¬ads = ads. BRB there's some stuff I want to prove that I have.

let p = ads, thus p = np. Where is my prize money?
- Sorry bro, but you're too late. I already proved p ~= np in the same manner.

Often times the ads are included in live streamed content like sports. Sports that don’t have ads like older MLB streams just show a weird “we will be back soon” title card because they are just simulcasting the cable broadcast.