But what if I want a faster horse?

All of the examples listed have something in common: they are services for accessing content you don't own. So it is in the provider's interest to find ways to satisfy you with less and/or cheaper content.

The Netflix changes aren't attempts to make their product better. They are attempts to save money by obscuring the amount and/or quality of available content.

By contrast, if you buy BluRays from one company and BluRay players from another company, everyones incentives are better aligned.

> It is therefore in the provider's interest to make you satisfied with less and/or cheaper content.

After getting annoyed by their interface that was showing 80% of content I have already seen, I've come to a realization:

Their incentive is not even to make me watch crap. No! Their best outcome for them is for me to watch nothing and still pay.

Showing me old shows gives me the warm feelings and make me associate them with Netflix, making me keep the subscription even

Hypnodrones are corporate dreams

> It is therefore in the provider's interest to make you satisfied with less and/or cheaper content

If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd think that all these "content companies" are colluding in a mass "Taste Removal" campaign, deliberately getting users used to bland, vanilla, generic "content" so they can one day just shove AI slop at us all day and only people who were alive in the 90s would remember when movies and TV were great. The rest happily will watch Ow, My Balls and ads for Carl's Jr.

countdown to "welcome to costco I love you"

And the Blurays show ads for the first company's other products.

Personally I wouldn't even bother with old shows on netflix since they could go away, and do, all the time. I download and put on my local plex instance, especially with bangers like The Office, there's no harm done.

Netflix et al are good for those high profile miniseries you want to watch once and then never again. The rest, download and enjoy without ads, without dark patterns, especially content that kids watch (youtube).

Nah. They didn't know about the generative AI wave that far back. It's just a happy (for the shareholders) side effect.