Asmongold TV - Why The Internet Is Starting To Break | Asmongold Reacts | Asmongold

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

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I feel like this is definitely like really relevant considering the video we just looked at with those guys, you know. Amazon sucks right now. Uber sucks right now. Netflix sucks, Facebook sucks, Instagram sucks. Every big tech company is changing in front of our very eyes. And I know I usually try and see the bright side of tech, but for this video, I just want to be very brutally honest. I think most of these services we use are worse than you think. And I want people to do some of that. The first thing to understand is basically every big tech company follows the exact. same pattern. Something that a guy called Corey Doctoros summarized really well with the term enchittification. Enshittification. I see. I remember watching videos about video games that have inshittification. See, when any of these companies first starts, their only chance of succeeding

is to go above and beyond for their users by solving a key problem. Let's take Uber, for example. It's the bait and switch. Uber came in in 2009, and I remember first using it around that time and thinking, this is the end for traditional taxis. This is far more convenient. The taxis, the Taxis find me instead of the other way around. The drivers are friendlier, the cars are cleaner, and it did all of that while being so much cheaper. That's the real reason why Uber was popular. It's because it was really cheaper and easier to use. Uber at the start was 50%, sometimes 30% of the price of a traditional taxi.

And so it's not surprising just how quickly people flooded onto Uber. I remember that within just about a year of it becoming operational... It's crazy to think, like, if you go back and you watch trading places with a... Is that Eddie Murphy in the movie? How many taxis there were everywhere. Taxis everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And like you go look at a new movie, there's no taxis. It's like one of those things where it like kind of dates a movie.

Went all the way from party trick to an essential app that everyone should have. But then things changed. As soon as Uber felt like they had the user side of the market cornered, completely locked into the app, they switched focus to the other side, the drivers. Because the users aren't going anywhere at this point. And so if Uber can manage to control them and also the drivers, Uber owns the market. It means the users will have to stay where the drivers are and the drivers will have to stay where the users are. So they sweeten the deal for them.

Uber started handing out sign-on bonuses for new joining. And this is what a lot of companies do is that they will actually like basically sell at a loss in order to break into a market. And then after they've established market dominance, then they raise the prices. It's an extremely common business practice, and it happens everywhere, not just in tech. There's actually a lot of, there's a lot of, like, laws against it. Loss leaders, like, it's something that's much greater than not. Like, a loss leader is something that gets you going to store. They started giving cash back on fuel and discounts on car maintenance.

They paid their drivers 80% of what the app made, and the best part of it was surge pricing. Anytime there was a pickup in demand, drivers could well earn two times, three times, sometimes more. I remember coming out of a music festival once thinking, I don't need to, book my car Uber will sort me out. Only to realize that because I was coming out with crowds of other people, my only way to guarantee that I got an Uber was to outpay all of them. That's right. Five times surge pricing.

I paid £100 for a 15-minute cab ride. Yep. But there is a third stage to this master plan. Because what does Uber do when they have the users, when they know they're by far the most convenient way to hail a cab, and they have the suppliers, the ex-taxie drivers, the restaurant takeaway drivers, the package delivery drivers. Well, that is when true endification occurs.

They gave users a surplus at the start to make their app essential, then shifted to giving suppliers that surplus to get them all on it, to build monopoly power and make it much harder to get a car outside of Uber. But this is the point where Uber and every other big tech company in this position will take one of that surplus for themselves.

Because A, well, they can. But also, B... Yeah, you can't stop them at that point. Like, there's nothing else that's going to come and like, uh, change the market. And this is kind of like what I was saying before about how like free, the first thing a free market does is stop being free. Because like, this is a free market, really. Uber came in and they weren't breaking any rules. They just beat the competition. And then after you beat the competition, then you change the rules. Because by the time a company reaches

this stage, more than likely they are a public company, which means that the decisions aren't being made by one potentially passionate founder, but instead just many, many, many, shareholders. Because shareholders aren't usually as invested in the long-term health of the business, they just want the business to burn quick money so that they can cash out. Their objectives often boil down to how do we make the users pay up until the absolute limit of what they're willing to, but just not past it? And then how do we pay the suppliers the absolute least that they're willing to take, but just not less than it? I think that with a lot of shareholders in publicly held companies, it doesn't even go that far. They want the line to go up. And if the line isn't going up,

then they get rid of the people that are making the line not go up and they get people that make the line go up because a lot of like shareholders and companies don't really have intimate knowledge in the businesses that they're investing into right like they have like general knowledge like to an extent but they're not like voting like they don't really have any vested interest that's bobby yeah exactly that's where bobby comes in and it all starts with tiering Splitting the base service up into multiple tiers all at different price. And on the face of it, that sounds great. Like on Uber, for example, it means that you can now get priority if you want faster.

Comfort, which is newer cars with more legroom, exec, which is high-end cars with top-rate to drivers, and then Lux, which is the very, very top end. Think about it. Now that they offer all of these options, I didn't even know they have the luxury one. What happens when you're just getting a normal Uber now? You get extremely long wait times because no driver who can charge exec prices is going to take a ride, for normal prices. You get all the drivers

who don't qualify for high rated service and all the cars that don't count as new enough for comfort. I'm going to be honest. Like, whenever my car was fucked, I had to use Uber. I have never had a bad experience with Uber once. And I've never used anything

except for the base Uber. Every person that I've had has been, like, within like 10 minutes. The quality has been great. Like, one time, like, I had a really, really bad thing happened. I lost my phone in in Uber. And I remember the guy drove all the way from North Austin

back down to give me my fucking phone. I gave the dude 200 bucks, right? I was like, I cannot express how much this means, right? I was like, thank you so much. But like, yeah, I remember that? Yeah, that was a bad day for me. Very bad day. Most of the drivers are great guys. Yeah, the app is atrocious. Yeah, like, I mean, I've only had good experiences

with Uber. I think the real problem is I think it's probably regional. Like, I'm in Austin. There's a lot of people that do it here. And it's pretty normalized, so it's probably not so bad. But I bet in other places, like, his experience is probably just as valid as mine is for where he's at. Trust me when I say, the requirements for comfort are not very high. This idea of splitting things up to offer more premium services is not inherently bad.

It's just the way these companies achieve this is much less about making the experience better for the people who are paying more. but much more about just making it worse for the people who aren't. Uber isn't changing the pool of cars on the road to accommodate these tiers. They're the same cars, the same people with the same training, but it's just now they're segregated in a way that each user pays the maximum they're willing to pay, and the service provided is the bare minimum for that price. Well, take Netflix. When Netflix first started, it felt... Yeah, like, as I've said, I think that my experience with Uber has been nothing short of perfect.

I have never had a bad experience ever. With Netflix, however, I do think that my experience and quality has gone down tremendously because the breadth of shows that they're able to provide is weaker. Revolutionary, I can pay $5.99 a month, which is cheaper than an average movie ticket nowadays, and get all of this ad free. But then Netflix introduced 4K quality, which instead of just being added to the base service, became part of a separate tier. now being charged at 17 pounds 99 a month.

I will say that I agree with his overall thesis of this video. However, I do think that 4K is an acceptable upcharge because so few people use it and it costs so much more. YouTube does this as well. I think YouTube only does it actually for 8K. When as far as to introduce adverts back into your movies after the whole deal about this being the way to watch movies without adverts. And unless you upgrade to the middle.

subscription tier, which is £10.99, you're going to get those adverts. Netflix isn't even the worst offender, to be honest. At least their Amazon, I think is cheaper than the normal tier, whereas now TV and Amazon Prime, they just stuck ads into the normal tier. The point is, tiering is not being used to benefit the user. It's being used to charge you more if you're willing to pay more. And then tiering is used as a form of what's called anchoring, like price anchoring, where like you create a low value and then you scale up from that value to create a perspective difference in value. It's like a psychological trick.

Give you the minimum acceptable experience if you're not. And that brings me on to subscriptions in general. Subscriptions on their own, they can be fine. They can be a way to make services more. By the way, his argument for subscriptions, I bet, is going to be my same argument for battle passes in games, where they're not fundamentally bad, but when everything has them, they become bad. Accessible, instead of having to front load a big,

upfront cost, they can be a way to force companies to continue to provide value and updates over a period of time. But the way that these big tech companies are using subscriptions now has meant that we're often not paying those monthly subscriptions instead of the bigger upfront costs. We're paying them both. And you're actually getting a worse service now whilst paying for a subscription than you were originally for free. Like Amazon, for example, the entire purpose of Amazon Prime was unlimited one-day deliveries. So why is it that now we're also having to often pay to get the fastest delivery and for many products actually having to hit a minimum spend just to get that perk, which is how every online store has ever worked since the very beginning.

But without needing to pay a monthly fee or for... I've never really had that problem personally. Like whenever my mom and both my mom and girlfriend lived in this house, this house was an unofficial Amazon warehouse. I swear to God, we would receive at least three packages and usually, seven packages a day. That why the fuck do you think my house is a mess? Do you think it's a mess because of me?

Fuck, no. It's because of her and them. It's not my shit down there. It's their shit. I've still got her fucking TV. Uber. I'm serious. I regularly used to take Uber's to go see Dricia

early on when we were dating. She was about 120 miles away and it used to cost about 120 pounds. But over the last few years, I have seen that price not just creep, but Sora. up to 150, 200, 250, and now 300 pounds. Uber has gone from half the price of a normal taxi to... To be fair, a lot of things have gone from that price.

Like, we have had, as I said, like, we talked about this with fast food a lot, right? A lot of things have gone to that price. Like, 2.5xing? I mean, like, for fast food, yeah. I'm not saying... I'm saying this problem, like, his problem is multiplied by an existence. existing problem. So it feels like even worse.

More expensive than just calling up your local cab company and pre-booking a car. And remember, that's for the lowest tier, which because this tiering exists means that you are specifically selecting a car that's at least eight years old with the driver who's completed less than 100 trips or someone who just hasn't been able to keep a good rating. And you remember that surge pricing we talked about earlier that still exists, but now you just don't see it. Instead of Uber telling you that you're about to pay three times what you should be paying, it just doesn't. Yeah, that's smart.

Like, if I was Uber, I would have done that too. It's like, we're going to tell you that we're going to charge you more money? What fucking idiot thought that was a good idea? Just charge him more money. Losing your reference point of what the journey even should cost. And that is where the subscription service comes in to save the day. Uber one. I'm paying for it every single month.

Uber one? It gives you a 5% discount on your rides. They got Robert De Niro? I'll get to that one very soon, because that is actually an even bigger problem in itself. But the point I'm trying to make here is... No wonder they ain't profitable. What the fuck you need him there for? If Uber is just inventing the price, if Uber is just deciding how much it can charge you for this particular journey, as opposed to giving you an actual breakdown of why it costs what it costs, then a 5% discount on a made-up price,

it doesn't actually mean anything. And you're still... This is actually illegal in Brazil. And I think it's also illegal. in some places in Europe, and I am not 100% sure on this, but I think it's also illegal in Australia. Paying far, far more than you used to just a few years ago for the same. Naturally, of course, it's illegal here in America, right? And now you have a monthly expense as well that further ties you into using Uber and Uber only for all your driving and delivery needs. And if you're enjoying this rather painful video, then a sub to the channel would be ironic. because we're asking you for a subscription.

But this one's free and we do try very hard. People don't have problems with subscriptions. People have problems with things that disrupt their normal flow of activity that cost money. Like going to another website or spending money. Anyway, if you're wondering why that Uber now costs 300 pounds, well, it's not because the drivers have started earning more. The biggest way that companies like Uber and Amazon, once they become the default option, start to take all of that surplus away,

simply by extracting the largest cuts that they possibly can from every transaction. Let's call this the platform fees. I love how DoorDash and Uber Eats has like, the price of the food is higher on the app. You have the service fee. You have the tip. And you have the delivery fee. What are you doing?

What are you doing with this? What's going on here, you know? That's crazy. Let me show you Uber Eats for a minute So I fancy some McDonald's chicken nuggets No, you don't You fancy some McDonald's chicken McNuggets They don't have nuggets at McDonald's

They have Mick Nuggets Right, okay, wow So the first thing you'll notice is pricing Almost every item of food on Uber Eats Is between 10 and no joke 100% more expensive than it actually is in person Like 20 chicken nuggets 6 pound 99

That Nah bro like it's a it's expensive even at the building now. Like, when was the last time he went to McDonald's? Because I feel like, I feel like it's a lot even whenever I got. Like, I went to McDonald's yesterday. And I went to McDonald's the day before that, too.

He's right. Like, I feel like the price is higher, but it's like on an app, I feel like the app price is like 20% higher, like 10 to 20. It seems like an awful lot. It's not crazy. but it's just like more.

I'll go into our basket. Oh, look at that. Add £8.01 to save with Uber 1. So again, notice, just like with Amazon Prime, Uber is trying to frame this as if I'm getting some sort of perk. When actually free delivery is something that I am actively paying a monthly subscription

just to get. And the app is denying that benefit until I hit a minimum spend. Well, you didn't read the asterisk. You see the fucking asterisk. I see that? Oh, ho. Yeah, you ever see one of these?

It means you're not getting it. Yeah, if there's an asterisk, trick like this next to some bonus, it's not really going to happen. It's an ass trick. Yeah, exactly. Which, by the way, almost always means wastage. I mean, it's encouraging people to order more than they want to order.

Besides, what can I order that's going to exactly hit eight? Based in America, they don't waste it. They eat the whole thing. Since here, I got to spend $20 at McDonald's to save $5. well if I only spend $10, it's like I'm losing $5. So I better spend $10 to save $5.

I guess I got to eat everything. If I don't eat at all, I'm wasting the money, so I feed you everything. There it is. So 600 pounds. I'm going to have to go over. But anyway, let's go to the next page. Oh, people also ordered to really try and tempt me into getting those group savings. But no, resist.

Next. Oh, that's fine. Oh, my goodness. Would you look at that. Priority delivery. Yeah. £2.49. And just to be very clear,

priority delivery isn't some sort of hyper-accelerated, personalized service that would very much be worth that price. All it means is your driver doesn't take stops on the way to you. You know, exactly how every takeaway service ever used to work. And this is a great example of tiering.

I'm not sure if that part of his argument is true because my friend works at a pizza delivery driver and he would do multiple deliveries before he went back to the pizza delivery place. Like, it depends, it depends on delivery place. Yeah, I guess it be, you know what, you're probably right. Yeah, it probably depends on a place. When Uber Eats first started, it was just an assumed thing that of course your driver is going to come straight to you to deliver your order.

Yeah. Up until normal restaurant takeaway service have been eliminated. And now, well, you want fast. You pay for fast. So, okay, fine, we're going to go priority. I don't want my food to be cold when it gets to me. And then you scroll down and, oh, how? Fees, priority delivery, tip.

Like, and then the price of the food is like, a little bit higher. Like, oh my god. You know what you feel like in these apps? You feel like, you ever see like those fucking nature documentaries where it's like some whale is like dying or like some big fish is like getting eaten by predators

and they're just taking little bites off of them and like before you know it they're just like that's basically you. Charge at £4.78 and that's because it's actually on top of an already existing base delivery fee. And then there's just fee. So if I click that, it says part of that is the small order fee for less than 10 pounds. Because orders less than 10 pounds should have an extra charge

because they're going to cost more to be delivered. What? Because the priority delivery fee is my delivery fee. So why is there a separate delivery fee? That's interesting. So it's a small delivery fee. The fact that my order is small, do you see what I'm saying? And then there's the service fee. And this is what Uber wants you to think of as their cut. But it's a lot. How it works? Yeah, no. It's taking a slice out of every single part of this pie. For an individual, it sucks.

McDonald's chicken nuggets price. Okay, so it's $4.49 on the McDonald's app, which basically means that just for delivery, Uber is taking 70% of the value of the order. What a joke. And this is actually what I find the most insulting part of it. It's the fact that we're paying a monthly subscription for Uber 1, right? He didn't even talk about the tip.

Maybe he did. I don't know if he, I don't think he did. Just paid extra for priority delivery, which says between 10 and 20 minutes. But when you click order, Uber will only get involved and even think about refunding you anything. They're in the future. If the order actually takes 45 minutes or longer. Okay, so just to be very clear. Let me see what it would be for me right now.

Here in Merricka. Let's say I'm going to order a milkshake, okay? So large Oreo shake is $7.49. So I add item. I view cart. I'm looking at $17. Subtotal is $7.49. Delivery fee is $5.99.

Fees and estimate to estimated tax are $362, and then I'm going to continue. And then the standard delivery with a $2 tip is $19. for one large Oreo shake. And that's only a $2 tip. That's crazy. You're paying double? No, you're paying triple. Because the, like I, look, I've been there before.

It's like $5.99 or something like that, I think. And so you're actually paying triple. Special guarantee, just for me, because I'm one of your highest paying customers, is that my order will not take two and a half times longer than the upper limit of what you just guaranteed it might. Oh, well, thank you very much, Uber-One. It is mortifying how much they're exploiting the consumer here. I mean, imagine what happens if companies like this get in charge of your medical and emergency

services. He understands he has an international audience, right? And so, like, this theoretical isn't a theoretical for us? We don't have to imagine that. Yeah, who's going to tell them? Amazon is just as bad. the other day, Drisha was buying a batch of mini little hampers for some gifts she was putting together. 12 pound 99 is the absolute cheapest you could find them on Amazon.

And just before we checked out, we thought, let's just do one little checkouts. And this is the case. I had to buy an inhaler for my dad that was like $400 or something like that. Like, you think about it, how does a person pay for a $400 inhaler? How do you do that? You got to sell crack. where and within a minute of browsing outside of Amazon, we found them for four pounds.

It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking, well, I've paid my delivery fee. That's what I'm paying the subscription cost for. There's no way that this thing is going to be cheaper in another store that I'm not paying a monthly fee to have free delivery from. That's what they want you to think. But the truth is, Amazon is charging for Prime. Amazon is charging extra for delivery in some cases.

Amazon is charging sellers to sell on the platform, and then they're charging you extra to buy on the platform. And you can even notice this effect. So one really good way that you can tell that Amazon is making a lot of money is whenever they have a list of all of the richest people, Jeff Bezos is always on that list. And usually he's pretty close to the top. So it's like, how do you think he got all that money? Well, I mean, where do you? I mean, like it's obviously working, right?

With free platforms, social media, for example, even though companies like Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, even YouTube, even though they're not directly charging you, we'll still absolutely find ways to maximize their earnings from you once they know that you're in. Once Facebook had got everyone to sign up for the first time, by being this open haven where you come to keep connected with every single person you know and love, they became very aware that no individual person could just leave.

That would be social suicide. So Facebook could crank that money-making lever as much as they wanted to. How many Farmville ads do you get? Ads. They could charge companies as much. just they wanted to target those ads at you, they can curate your feed, taking the people you follow not as commands of what you want to see, but just suggestions. Suggestions that are quite quickly discarded as soon as Facebook realizes what they can show you to make more money out of you.

Now, where this all gets really deceptive is the dark patterns, basically tricks that companies employ to make you do things that you didn't mean to do. Chicken nuggets are here. I'm actually fasting, so I can't eat them. So there you go, enjoy them. They were 13 pounds 75. Last year, actually, I signed up to using an app called Piccolo. It's just a social or drinking game where it serves you prompts on your phone and then you get those people to do those things. Like, hey, Brian, from now on, you have to do the worm every single time you say something. Sorry, Brian.

The game's got a three-day free trial. Oh, great. But then it's £4.49 per week. $4.49 per week for a game that's very clearly been designed to be played once a month. for most. And I would have happily bought it for £4.49 or even £10, if that's what they charge it as as a one off thing. I should make an app like that. That's a good idea. I bet you get so many dumb, drunk people that get something like that. That's such a good idea. Holy shit. And they're going to forget about it.

You know, how it used to be before the subscription thing took over. That's smart. I went for the free trial. I played the game with my friends. We were drinking, so I didn't specifically remember to cancel it when I woke up the next day. And it took half a year. When my accountant asked, what is this £4.49 every week going to Apple? When he mentioned it, I realized I had seen it a couple of times coming up on my accounts, but because it was just a payment to Apple, I assumed, oh, it must be ICloud or something. Negligent on my end? Yes, absolutely.

But I'm human. I forgot once. And my penalty for that for playing one phone game for two hours, one night, about £110. You could have just played Honkai StarRail. There are plenty of subscription services I have that I think are fair. 100 bucks. This is a very clear example of one that is predatory. One whose entire business model clearly revolves around charging an unfair...

Oh, there's a lot of these where it's like, well, you want the free trial? Okay, well, here's the crazy thing about the free trial. You're going to get a 30-day free trial, but on the 23rd day, we're going to start charging you for the full thing. So you have to cancel before then, but the only time that you can find out that we actually charge you on the 23rd day, and we are going to need your credit card for this for the free trial. Like, one of the things that I always ask people whenever they say we're giving out free subscriptions to something is I ask them how much the free one costs whenever I'm at a store somewhere.

And like, I don't do this anymore because I value my time and I don't want to have some sort of like fucking Reddit moment against like some person who works at AT&T. But whenever I was younger, I did do this. And I would ask them like, how much does the free one cost? and they would be confused and I would be like, well, what do I have to do to get it? And they're like, well, you have to put any information. It's, okay, so it costs my phone number. Yeah, no, thank you.

Because there is always a cost. There is. Price and hoping that people will forget. And they'll sell your information too. Nowadays is the manipulation of the default option. Like, yeah, I shop a lot on Amazon, right? And the reason for that is that even though I know they're often no longer the cheapest,

is that they're basically the only company whose delivery infrastructure I can mostly rely on. The only company for who, when they say next day, it really does mean that it will come next day. I've had really great experiences with Amazon that I've never really had a bad experience. Amazon's great. The key problem that Amazon first solved for its users, it's what got us also invested in the platform and well got me and millions of others to start paying monthly subscriptions to Prime. But now Amazon, as well as oftentimes introducing minimum order quantity to get that free delivery, also often pre-select. Also, often pre-select.

the slower delivery option with and I've looked into this no way to stop it doing that. So let me just get this straight. You're charging me a monthly subscription for unlimited next day delivery, but then assuming that and re-select you for not next day delivery. That's, you know what, like going back to that first term at the beginning of the video, the inshittification. Yeah pretty much. That's just about right. Yes, I specify otherwise I'd rather get the slower delivery that I didn't have to pay for. And this is absolutely an example of a dark pattern because we've had at least three or four occasions where we're about see if that happens for me give me a minute i want to see if it happens for me right now

so i ordered some cords and i'm going to go ahead and just act like i'm going to order a new cord i'm going to add this to cart and then proceed the checkout and it does not do that for me uh the tomorrow next day delivery is what is pre-selected and the, like, the later date is not pre-selected. And there is a today delivery that is $3. That is also not pre-selected. So maybe that's true for some and not others. I think this is an instance where, and this is what a lot of companies do, is they have a lot of A-B testing with these things to where like sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't happen. That way people can't get mad about it because like it will happen once and then it won't

happen again. And then like you'll ask yourself, oh, maybe this is like, oh, maybe like this didn't really happen or whatever, right? So it could be like an RNG thing too. There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of ways that this experience that he had probably could have happened, but it just didn't happen with me. And then we realize some of the stuff that we've ordered for that video hasn't actually arrived. We go back and we realize it's because when checking out in a hurry, we didn't realize

that Amazon didn't select the fastest option that was advertised to us as the delivery window on the product page. Honestly, at this point, there is an intricate web of dark patterns. I do feel like that is, that's a scam. Like, you're not, and it's not a hard scam, but it's a soft scam, but a soft scam is still a scam. These companies are using, and you'll absolutely have experience. It's intentionally misleading. Deliberately confusing website design intended to fool or confuse the customer into not or like opening up your battle pass and then accidentally redeeming it with no confirmation

box. I wonder who would do that. That would be awful. For example, it's quite common to have multiple pages you have to go through to cancel, but then what some companies have started doing is flipping the continue and the back buttons between each page. So as you're trying to mash your mouse as quickly as possible to unsubscribe, you're actually being taken around and around the company's pages in a loop so that you end up reading their entire spiel.

I love this. I think that's so like, and it's like I love it in like a dystopian way, right? I don't think it's obviously good. But it's crazy how shameless it is. Sivably offering you discounts and only offering those discounts right before you decide you want to cancel. Which always makes you realize how much you were overpaying in the first place. This is something that, like, my dad does. He says about every six months or so, he has to call up the internet people and tell him that he's going to go over to AT&T.

He's like, guys, I'm leaving. And they're like, no, you're not. He's like, okay, well, I'm leaving now. They say, okay, we're going to put you on with somebody else. And they're like, all right, we're going to process your request. but we're going to put you on with somebody else and they're like okay will you take a lower rate he says yes I'll take a lower rate and then they lower his rate and then that is just the process yep retention exactly encouraging you to pause your subscription so that it automatically resumes after a set period of time

right as opposed to you being a functioning adult who can just cancel and then rejoin later if you decide you want to and trying every single thing they can to guilt you with the fear of missing out with things like continue your deactivation only if you are a boring person who never likes to have fun again. There was a big study. Which is, at least in the US, I remember looking at the dark pattern stuff, is explicitly stated as being a dark pattern. Like emotional and mental manipulation? Email tool tester who found that the average consumer encounters over six dark patterns when trying to cancel any subscription service nowadays. I mean, imagine talking to a person and they try to mislead you six times in the span of a few minutes.

I'm sorry, but I've been on tech support before and I'd say that's just about average. That's so bad. I went to a, I told a story like maybe like two weeks ago. I went to a call center interview and I failed the call center interview test because I didn't upsell the customer enough times on like hire services. Like the customer called them with a problem and what I did is I fixed their problem and so they fired me.

They told me that, well, they didn't fire me. They wouldn't hire me. I failed. They're like, you're not here to fix problems. Fake story. It's not a fake story. It was the AT&T off of Ben White in Austin 10 years ago. I think it was off Ben White.

I'm pretty sure. It was near to the target. It's hard to wrap your head around. I actually experienced one of the worst examples of this just last week when I found myself with a little bit of spare time and I thought, I'd love to get just one month's worth of PlayStation online play. That should be simple, right?

So I opened up the purchase page for online and no, I don't want premium. No, I don't want extra. I just want to play online. But wait, there's no option to just buy one month. There used to be. Does it just assume now that when I subscribe, I want to stay subscribed forever.

But okay, fine. So I'll just buy the essential package and then I'll cancel straight away so that I don't get charged in any subsequent months. So I do that. But then, where's the cancel button? You'd think you'd be able to go

to the same place you bought it from. This feels like a fucking... This feels like a movie directed by like Tim Burton. You know, it's like somebody gets lost in a house and they keep opening up doors and every door leads them back into the kitchen. You know, or some fucking bullshit like that, yeah, like some house of mirrors bullshit.

But no, the only thing you can do on that page is to upgrade. The cancel is actually hidden in your console's settings. But where in the settings? I spent so long looking, I gave up, and I actually had to Google to find that you have to go into users and accounts. Then you go into account, then payment and subscriptions, then click PlayStation Plus. Okay, so then surely you just click cancel and you're good, right? Oh, no.

because then it asks you if you'd rather change your plan after I've specifically chosen to click the cancel button instead of the change button. Okay, so click cancel. Are you sure you're about to lose these benefits and more than when you confirm yet another window asking you for your reasons before it will actually let you cut? But it's not even just about what any one company does in isolation.

It's just the fact that every big tech company is doing a subscription is in itself part of the problem. Because... That's the issue. It's just too many of them. In most cases, the more subscription services there are. Yeah. The worse each one gets.

And the more that you end up having to pay just to be able to still do the things you want to do. See, you have a limited amount of time, right? Let's say you have enough spare time to watch two movies a week. Wow. In an era we're subscribing to Netflix at its original £5.99 price lets you watch all the big blockbuster movies people were talking about. That's a cracking deal. You're basically paying 75p per movie. But then Disney Plus comes along and takes Disney-owned shows onto their own platform.

Apple TV Plus comes along, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus, Peacock, and every single one takes the rights for one or two of the big exclusive. And they get shifted around too. Must-watch shows. And before you know, you're paying like six different subscription services. Combine that with the tiering, which means that if you want the perks and the ad-free experience that you initially signed up for, along with that high quality, you'll be paying mostly between £10 and £20 per month to each one.

Remember, your time hasn't increased. The amount of content you consume hasn't changed. You're just paying movie rent to more different companies and using each service much less. Amounting two. Well, you're paying more money. And oftentimes even it's worse. Because, like, you know, you're paying the low value one and so you're getting ads now. So before where you were able to get an ad-free experience on two apps or one app,

now you're paying for six apps and there's ads on all of them. or maybe five out of six of them. 11 pound per movie you watch now, which is about what you would have paid for a DVD in the first place. Right. It feels like we've looped all the way around and now we're back in the same place we were. Except now you don't own anything. And services like Netflix are constantly culling their libraries just to keep their cost down.

I was counting up the number of my own paid subscriptions I had a few days ago while planning out this video. It's only when I tossed it all up that I realized just how ridiculous. this has become. Like just for work, I subscribe to Epidemic Sounds, Slack, Trello, the entire Adobe Creative Suite, Frame I.O, SurfShark, Twitter Blue, Google Drive, Uber One, a whole load of different plugins. And then personally, Netflix, Spotify, Vodafone, Tidal, Apple TV Plus, Apple ICloud, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium, Delivery Plus, PlayStation Plus, Xbox Live, Nintendo Switch Online. Oh my God. So the total I spend on subscriptions in a month is $1,200 per month. Oh my God.

That's too much. Now, the truth is, subscriptions and the dark patterns that often come with them, they're not going anywhere. It's not surprising that every single company wants them. And to be fair, guys, a lot of those, like the Adobe suite is like where a lot of the money is coming from, right? And like these are like things that he's doing for work, right? And so it's not the same as like just an average person. give predictable regular revenue, which is basically the holy grail for businesses. I mean, it's a lot more encouraging to say to investors, we have 1,000 users and you can expect

950 of them to pay again next month than to say a thousand people of auto products will try and get more next time. It's way easier to get people in with a cheap subscription and then upsell them later on with add-ons and more expensive to years, as opposed to having to go all in with the big up front. And this happened with Twitch too. You remember back in a day when there were no ads really on Twitch, and then they added a lot of ads, but you had Twitch Prime. And so you could put Twitch Prime,

and then you wouldn't have ads. And then after that, they removed the ad-free experience in Twitch Prime. And then they added an incentive for streamers to play more ads. And they even made a lot of streamers play more ads. So now the quality is worse. You're getting more ads, and you have to see them every single time.

You think about the quality. Still got the turbo sub. That's what people should do. People should buy turbo. Yeah. And hard sell on a big purchase. And also subscriptions create lock-in. So the people who are subscribed,

they're not just paying you for the subscription, but they're also likely to keep paying you more while trying to make the most out of that subscription. And then finally, lots and lots of money. I mean, here's what a company's revenue looks like if they sell 100 products each month for 10 pounds. And here's what that same company's revenue looks like if they sell 100 subscriptions for $10.

for $2 a month. It overtakes the individual purchases very quickly, and it just keeps accelerating. Yeah, but that's not the way the graph ends. That's the problem. And I think that's what's happened with a lot of these services, is that that graph has stopped doing that. What do we do about it?

Well, just me to you. What I would do is when you sign up to a subscription that you know you only want to use for a month, just cancel it straight away. You'll get that first month, then you can make sure it's nothing past that. If you're stuck subscribing to every single one of the TV services because you don't want to miss out and you do want to watch them all, you could just try rotating. Subscribing to one at a time, binging the thing that you most want to watch on that one for one month and then moving on to the next.

But then part of it also has to be policy. We should be pushing for governments to enforce smoother switching between platforms, like still being able to contact your Facebook friends without having to be an active Facebook user. And focusing on making platforms continue to do that. I don't think they could do that. I don't know if they could or not, but I feel like they probably couldn't because if they did, then you'd have a lot of scams and, like, spam and shit like that.

But I think that really, like, something that should happen is making canceling your service easy. That's the one that I feel like, if you make canceling the service a house of mirrors, you're scamming people. You're clearly scamming people. Because if you weren't scamming people, why would you do it?

And if it wasn't working, you wouldn't do it. So the fact that it exists proves that it works. On their initial promises, beyond that initial honeymoon phase. So a social media platform, for example, should first show you what you signed up to see, as opposed to what will drive the most retention. Amazon should first show you the product it genuinely thinks is best matched to your search, as opposed to who's paid the most to advertise. And Google Search should.

should first show you the reviews that it thinks best answer your question. I'm not sure if, like, I'm not sure if that needs to be, like, they need to be held accountable to do that. Like, because, like, putting an advertisement on the top, I think as long as it's marked as a sponsor, it's okay. The only problem is if it's not marked that way. They disclose it. Yeah, they do disclose it.

As opposed to just assuming that Google's own reviews should always be on top. And then also just keeping the consumer. in mind when it comes to companies fragmenting. A lot of attention has given to companies get too big. And rightly so, that's a big issue. Yeah. It's also bad for the consumer, especially in this subscription era when they get split up in ways that make each one a worse proposition in their own right.

Now, one of the few subscriptions that I have that I genuinely think flies in the face of most of this is SurfShark VPN for a few reasons. It actually fixes the mess created by some other subscription services like Netflix who don't buy the licenses to all their shows in all the countries. So every country has a different library, which this lets you access by just flicking your location. It doesn't have any of those weird catches, like this subscription only works for people so long as they stay in the same household. No, this subscription works for you and every single person you know. They didn't price themselves at $20 or $15 or $10.

It's less than $3 a month when you use the code boss with three months for free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. And most importantly, instead of inchfying themselves, Surf Shark has actually gotten better. I've been using it for years now, and the app has got cleaner. There are no ads baked in. There's been no price creep. And the number of features included for this one price, it keeps going up, not down. Big thanks to Corey Doctro, by the way. I've been reading a lot of his stuff while planning out this video.

And I'll pop his main articles below if you want to have a read. Catch you in the next one. I'm going to be real, guys. Like, I feel like this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. And I'm actually surprised that it's taking. in this long for for people to realize it. VPNs get bought and sold by owners.

You don't know what 100% I sell your info. I'm not sure, right? I don't know what the details are. I think that really also, like at a certain point, I think that there does need to be like a certain level of accountability that the user has. Because right now I feel like there's such a focus on making these companies do things. And I think that really the one part of what he was saying that I completely agree with,

is the idea that if it's hard to cancel your service, then that's a scam. Because like everything else is easy. So why is canceling hard? Logically, the only reason why canceling would be hard is so less people will cancel. And if making canceling harder makes less people cancel, what you are effectively doing is locking people into a payment because they can't use your system to get out of payments, which is effectively a fucking same.

scam. So, like, if you follow the line of logic, it's a fucking scam and there's no way to go there's no way you can go around it. That's the one thing I do think should be illegal. Like, in terms of, like, placement for products and, like, you know, sponsored things and like, which services you use, I think a lot of that probably should just be decided by the market. But I also think that people need to exercise more self-control and not sign up for a bunch of of services and spend hundreds of dollars just because they're worried about missing out on seeing the latest TV show. And it's weird because like a lot of conversations around this, you know, go into the idea

of regulation. And in some cases, I agree with that even. I'm not even saying that's a bad idea. But at the same time, I also think that there needs to be a certain level of accountability that users have where it's like you don't really need to be spending this much money. They would argue cancel is easy with a call to their live support. Yeah, but canceling isn't easy with a call to the live support. It's not.

And also, why is canceling easier with live support, but not signing on? Because that's obviously asymmetrical, right? So signing up is just as easy on the phone as it is on the website, but signing off isn't? I think the reason is obvious. It's because less people would want to do a phone call. Yeah, why is it? Like, yeah, that doesn't even make any sense. Back to mental health?

Well, I think it's also, like, it's not just mental health. It's just, this is, by the way, is a great video. Give it a like. That was so good. Yeah, people recommended me to look at this, and I'm glad I did. Let's say, lose your number, you're screwed? Well, it's harder to do. Yeah, definitely.

I have support is overseas to put you in loops. Yeah, exactly. And I think also, like, if you can, if you can sign up online, you should be able to unsign up online, to unsubscribe, or to, you know, like cancel or whatever the service is. So like, it's common sense. And again, like any logic for it is immediately disproven by it's like, why is this exist?

Why is it harder to do? I'll tell you why it's hard to do because it gets people to spend more money. That's the reason. You should be able to block recurring payments on your bank app. No more dark pattern. Just stop paying. I think that that probably is like a good idea, but also it just like requires more work from the user.

I think also like hoping that your bank picks up the slack for like companies that are doing something that's effectively fraudulent. Like I think that's really great that banks do that. But at the same time like I'm not like super happy about that. Like who gives a fuck about that? Why would I care about that? Like it should be the company that's doing it themselves, I would say. Imagine a platform like Steam but for movies, TV shows, music? Yeah. And when works in a call center gets a bonus commission for their performance,

for example, how many cancellations they prevent. Those student workers are going to run around in circles with your grandparents so that they can afford to exist. Exactly. And like, that's the problem is that they're incentivized to do that. Now, maybe not every single place is incentivized to do that, but enough of them are to where the experience is bad. What do you mean, Slack? You should just be able to stay. Stop making payments. Well, what I'm saying is that your bank being able to do it doesn't excuse the companies not letting you do it or making it harder for you to do it. Does that make more sense? So like I totally agree with your point, but I think that your point does not, it doesn't solve the greater problem. I had a membership to a massage place, $70 a month, can't cancel

online, can't cancel over the phone. Yeah, doesn't Planet Fitness do something stupid like that? Yeah, what about gyms that makes you cancel in person? If a gym makes you cancel in person, well, I think that if you have to sign up in person, it's fine. Like, basically, if you can sign up online, but you have to cancel in person, then it's a scam. But if you can only sign up in person and you can only cancel in person, that's fair. Because some places might not be able to afford phone lines for whatever reason. You know, they might not have to service for that. But like, if you can get the money online or you can get the money over the phone, but you can't get rid of it, that's a problem.

You have to cancel in person and planet fitness? Yeah, exactly. Like, that's outrageous. Yeah, you can cancel through the bank. Yeah, exactly. That's what I would do. They'll keep racking up overdue payments and then even go to collections. Yeah, like for me, I have never bought anything on credit.

So I don't have any credit rating, really? And if I do at zero. Anything that I, like, have I had things go to collections before? Yeah, I've had things go to collections and I just never paid them. because a lot of times collections don't actually have any ability to like garnish your your payments or take money out of your account. So like I remember there were a few things that I didn't pay. And then it went to collections and I remember I got the bill from like, you know,

some collections agency. And I was like, thank God, right? Because now it's like they're not going to be able to get the money from me. You know, they can't sue me. And so, yeah, could easily get credit over time. Yeah, you should always always do that. Like all if they're trying to escape. Remember, if you're.

if they're trying to scam you, then you should scam them. That's it. Yeah, if you fuck around with that, I had an ER bill, uh, and Verizon bill go to collection. Yeah,

yeah, I, I remember my mom had a few of those bills go to collection and she just ignored it. Credit scores a scam. Um, I've gone back and forth on thinking that. I'm not sure how I feel about that right now.

Doesn't that fuck your credit in the U.S.? Yeah, but why would I care about my credit? So like, if you don't care about your credit, and you're buying everything cash, just like I always have. Like, it's hard to buy. Well, it's not hard to buy, like, even a car.

It's not hard to buy cash, but you're buying shit cars. Like, that's what I did back in a day. Like, the car that I had before the Mustang was a $750 car. And the car that I had before that was a $3,000 car or $2,000 car, something like that. So, like, I'm not talking about things that I buy nowadays whenever I have, like, you know, no, no, like, I'm not talking about it as a streamer, right? that's a totally different dynamic. I'm talking about like as a person who was like, you know, just like I didn't really have a lot of money at all.

So yeah. Do debt maxing? Yeah, yeah. And I try to like now I pay everything and it's not a big deal. And I don't really care. But yeah, I would try to as much as I can whenever I was younger, I would try to scam as many people as I could because I didn't like the fact that they tried to charge me money. and it's like if I can scam them and I don't have to pay the money, then I can spend that money on jack in the box.

So if I just don't pay this bill and they can't sue me for it, it's not worth it for them to sue me, well, then I'm going to do it. I mean, like, it's not even a question. It's a huge problem even in Asia when EMI debt is huge? Yeah, exactly. A poor person can save for a trailer? Yeah, I don't know.

Why not scam jack in the box instead? because you have to pay the money right there. Like, if I could, I would. Don't take this advice. Oh, yeah, no, my financial advice is like the worst financial advice that you can possibly give. Yeah, yeah, it's actually talking about more out of, yeah, yeah, you steal everything that you can, get as much money as you possibly can, you know, do anything that you possibly can to get. Like, if there's a way that you can get a sign up on something like it, it's like you get it for free, anything like that, do it. Seal or always steal often.

Yeah, there you go. it's actually not advice at all yeah it shouldn't be you can definitely scam credit companies it takes a ton of effort knowledge and it's risky yeah i remember my mom uh she got like i remember i she had over a hundred thousand dollars in debt and i told her like let's just not pay it and she's like well won't they get mad i was like yeah of course they will and she's like you think we can just not pay it i said yeah what are they going to do are they going to shoot you well then you're definitely not going to pay it so why would they go shoot you so you know like she died never paid any of the money the companies all wrote it off problem fucking solved