The article about the “subscription” HP ink made me realise something.

Subscriptions aren’t a new idea at all. You could subscribe to paper magazines. And you got to keep them.

I’m just clearing up my old house and it’s filled with tons of old tech magazines. Lots of useful knowledge here. Wanna know how Windows and Mac compared in 1993? It’s in here. All the forgotten technologies? Old games, old phones, whatever? You’ll find it.

Now, granted. You’d only get one magazine a month. Not a whole library of movies or games or comic books.

But still, the very definition of subscription has shifted. Now, the common meaning is “you only get to use these things as long as you’re paying”. Nobody even thinks it could mean anything else.

Besides, it doesn’t only apply to services that offer entire libraries. Online magazines still exist in a similar form as the paper ones. But you only get to access them while your “subscription” is active. Even the stuff you had while you were paying.

BTW I’m not throwing my old magazines away. I won’t have the space, but a friend is taking it all. If they wouldn’t, I’d give them to a library or let someone take them. The online and streaming stuff of today and tomorrow? In 30 years it’ll be gone, forgotten and inaccessible.

  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    And on YouTube subscribing means: “We’ll probably show you some videos from this channel every now and then. If you don’t click on those videos, we’ll think you don’t like that channel anymore, but forgot to unsubscribe, so we’ll just stop showing those videos. Actually, we might just stop any time if we don’t like that channel. It’s pretty random TBH.”

    • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      What you’re describing is the home page, not the subscription page. If you want to see content from your subscriptions, go to your subscription page. I prefer my home page to be a mix of things I know and things I don’t know. Found tons of interesting content that way.

      • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, the subscription page totally works. No problems there… Although some people claim that YT has removed some subcriptions without consent. Never happened to me though, so I don’t know if it’s actually true or not.

    • kbity@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Meanwhile, it will insist on showing you awful recommendations from channels you have never watched no matter how long you ignore them or how many times you click “not interested”.

    • TheEntity@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      One of the reasons I don’t even bother with a Youtube account and instead track my subscriptions with Invidious.

    • venonat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Hmm… I don’t think this has been my experience. My subscriptions page on YouTube has always shown all the new videos from all of my subscriptions. It’s recently changed to also include “shorts” which I hate, but they’re all there whether I’ve watched any of their content or not.

      Home page is a different story, but I don’t really scroll there. I always go straight to subs.

      • vegivamp@feddit.nlEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I don’t know for sure, I’m not an avid watcher, but I’ve seen several pretty big channels talk about this in their videos and ask people to check their subscription because it does apparently happen.