'Subscription Captivity': When Things You Buy Own You (motherjones.com)
- Reference: 0180428313
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/20/0754203/subscription-captivity-when-things-you-buy-own-you
- Source link: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/monster-of-2025-endless-subscriptions/
" [1]Welcome to the age of subscription captivity , where an increasing share of the things you pay for actually own you."
> What vexes me are the companies that sell physical products for a hefty, upfront fee and subsequently demand more money to keep using items already in your possession. This encompasses those glorified alarm clocks, but also: computer printers, wearable wellness devices, and some features on pricey new cars.
>
> Subscription-based business models are great for businesses because they amount to consistent revenue streams. They're often bad for consumers for the same reason: You have to pay companies, consistently. We're effectively being $5 per month-ed (or more) to death, and it's only going to get worse. Industry research suggests the average customer spent [2]$219 per month on subscriptions in 2023. In 2024, the global subscription market was an [3]estimated $492 billion . By 2033, that figure is expected to triple.
>
> Companies would argue these models benefit consumers, not just their bottom lines. For example, HP's Instant Ink program suggests you will never again find your device out of ink when you need it most. The printer apparently knows when it's running low, spurring automatic deliveries of ink to your home for $7.99 per month if you select the company-recommended plan. But if you cancel the subscription, the printer will literally hold hostage the half-full cartridges already sitting in your printer. The ransom to use it? Re-enroll ... The company has added firmware to its technology that deliberately blocks cheaper, off-brand cartridges from working at all...
>
> "There's even a subscription service that enables you to track and cancel your piling subscriptions — for just $6 to $12 per month."
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/monster-of-2025-endless-subscriptions/
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/experts-suggest-taking-stock-of-how-much-your-monthly-subscriptions-really-cost-before-the-end-of-the-year/
[3] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/subscription-economy-market-report
Re: (Score:2)
It's not even about the subscription fees for me. This produce (like virtually all internet connected appliances) simply does not do anything I want done. What the hell is wrong with people who want "special effects" on a fucking alarm clock ?
special effects on an alarm clock (Score:1)
> What the hell is wrong with people who want "special effects" on a fucking alarm clock?
I have an alarm clock that lets you set multiple alarms and choose the special effect you want when it goes off. The choices are 1) blaring noise, 2) play what's connected to the audio-input jack (designed for CD-in), 3) play one of the many available AM or FM broadcast radio stations. You may know it by its common name, "radio alarm clock."
But it doesn't have a network connection. It doesn't need one. I wouldn't use it if it had one. If I was forced to use it, I would get a different alarm clock.
Oh, i
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So you will never plan to 'buy' a house? Those subscriptions/protection racket/er I mean property taxes never stop! Even after the mortgage is long gone you have to keep paying to play house.
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Well, in theory, your town/county/state/etc is providing services in exchange for those property taxes. If you feel like you're not getting value from paying those taxes, you always have the option to either: 1. vote for people who promise to lower/remove them or 2. move somewhere with lower taxes or 3. rent your dwelling and pay the taxes indirectly by passing the funds through a landlord.
Is capitalism efficient, really? (Score:2)
Is it most efficient (in a common-sense way) for me to have a CD player in a new car, but is it more economically efficient for car companies to eliminate the CD player (and make it so you have to resort to using an antenna to send a radio wave if you want to use the car's built-in speakers) so I have to subscribe to Sirius XM to get any kind of swing jazz, which doesn't even play the best stuff like Lunceford and Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong?
Why is economic efficiency so often at odds with enginee
Re: (Score:2)
> Why is economic efficiency so often at odds with engineering efficiency?
I'm not sure that they are at odds in your example. What you're asking for is not efficient by either measure, if most people want (or are willing to accept) streaming. It's not efficient for anybody to cater to esoteric tastes, even if they're good tastes.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know why you'd really want to mess with CD's in a car. I have all my music (mostly from CDs) on my phone and stream it via BT to the car.
Re: Is capitalism efficient, really? (Score:2)
Cool story brah
Capitalism is breaking down (Score:1)
Ordinarily competition would prevent this kind of nasty rent seeking because there would be competitors that would sell viable products without the nastiness
Billionaires have dominated our economy and they do not like capitalism. They do not like it one bit.
So you have a lot of trust and duopolis and monopolies. You have six or seven companies that make basically everything you buy except a handful of silly artisanal crap.
Under Joe Biden in America Lina Khan was working on multiple antitrust cas
Re: (Score:2)
What are you on about? Go on Amazon or any other retailer and tell me there's a lack of competition in the alarm clock market. No one is forced to buy this and alarm clocks are about as far down as a person can get on the need vs. want scale of products before crossing over into the realm of wall-mounted talking bass.
The free market is its own referee. Businesses that don't offer or stop providing value to customers tend not to have them and go out of business. No one is forced to buy this product or ser
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Billionaires have dominated our economy and they do not like capitalism. They do not like it one bit.
You keep saying that, over and over without providing the slightest bit of evidence to back your claim up. But has it ever occurred to you that capitalism is what allowed them to become billionaires in the first place?
No More HP (Score:1)
And this is why I will never again own an HP printer. I just bought a Canon printer after decades of owning HP products.
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Brother clears.
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There's like a dozen different ink cartridge gimmicks HP uses to fuck over consumers. In my case one had to press a "confirm" prompt every time one printed if the color cartridge was past an alleged expiration date even if I was only printing in black-and-white.
HP used to have a good reputation, then seemed to turn evil on a dime. Was there a board meeting where they had a "let's be evil" vote and it passed?
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, in 1999. The immediate result of this vote was hiring Carly Fiorina as the CEO.
Re: (Score:2)
I few weeks ago my HP OfficeJet 8720 ran out of ink. Replacing the cartridges was going to cost more than $200 for the "XL" size. I said NO.
Instead, I bought an Epson tank inkjet printer, and love it. It works just as well as a regular inkjet, but ink costs less than 10% compared to cartridges. Consumer Reports has a nice writeup. [1]https://www.consumerreports.or... [consumerreports.org]
I'm not going back.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics-computers/printers/best-tank-printers-of-the-year-a3972617436/
Victim mentality (Score:1)
Ah, the “I had no choice but to buy this thing and pay this subscription” victim mentality rears its ugly head.
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And this hasn't been news for at least 10 or 15 years. Must have been a slow day with a deadline.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the same for folks that whine about paying for those "extras" subscriptions for their fancy new cars. I would never agree to such a thing and won't buy a car I can't drive without paying an ongoing tithe to the manufacturer. I won't buy a car that I can only be maintained at a dealership either.
As for the printer example, I switched to a Brother printer years ago and have been able to purchase cheaper aftermarket toner without a hassle.
Best,
Caveat emptor (Score:2)
Buyer beware.
The whole consumer economy is turning into sticky snare traps everywhere, and it won't stop until people start refusing to buy these items.
And, it's going to get worse with the current regime in power. We're going back to the wild west in the consumer marketplace.
Find and read those user manuals before you by items such as these. If you can't find a user manual, don't buy the product.
Seek out real user testimonies, avoid the SEO-placed crap at the top of the search results.
Buy plain-jane produc
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> Buyer beware.
Or if, despite due diligence, what you buy has this crap, return it for a refund.
When to rent and when to buy (Score:2)
When the company has an ongoing cost - such as they have to make new content every year, then it makes sense for you to pay an ongoing cost each month.
But when the company has no mandatory ongoing cost it makes ZERO sense to pay them rent.
And fixing the mistakes in their software is not a mandatory ongoing cost. It is at best an optional one - and by some standards should be free. When you are fixing your mistakes you do not charge others for it.
The issue is that crappy companies that made sucky products
Re: (Score:2)
I subscribe to almost nothing by design. I try to only use what I can self-host or provide.
The idea of a music subscription or a heated seat subscription is insane to me; like you I'd buy a heated seat cover rather than subscribe.
Just send it back (Score:2)
Don't buy it or if when you receive it it requires an account send it back.
car, flashlight, smartphone, much more (Score:1)
Cars require you to buy gas or electricity. Flashlights require batteries (especially pre-LED ones). Smartphones require you to buy connectivity (or mooch for it). The list goes on.
The main difference is vendor lock-in. I can buy gas or electricity from a company other than the one that sold me the car.
Either way though, if I don't pay up every month, my device is pretty useless except as an paperweight or status symbol.
Protocols, not platforms (Score:2)
Exactly. Gasoline, mains power, and batteries are standardized. So are LTE, 5G NR, and Wi-Fi. Compare what Mike Masnick of Techdirt and other Internet user freedom advocates have called [1]"protocols, not platforms." [knightcolumbia.org]
Though even if there were no cryptographic lockdown of these "smart" devices' system software to interact only with the vendor's server, one big obstacle to running your own server (with proverbial blackjack and hookers) is that so many Internet providers nowadays block inbound TCP connections. T-M
[1] https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech
Re: (Score:1)
> so many Internet providers nowadays block inbound TCP connections
It's easy enough to rent a shell somewhere that will let you do what you want using ssh-reverse connections. Yes, that's another required monthly payment, but at least it's not to your smart-device-manufacturer or to your ISP, which collectively put you in this position in the first place.
Sidebar: Personally, with the current security landscape, your average consumer is best served by having inbound connections blocked at the ISP level. That said, they should be able to unblock them without having to pay
Re: Protocols, not platforms (Score:2)
A bare bones gcp server with low ram and a shared CPU is free. Works great as a ssh bridge.
And this is just Explicit subscriptions. (Score:3)
There are also stealth subscriptions .
Example: Google arbitrarily bricking Nest thermostats 1st and 2nd Gen to encourage purchase of Updated version (while the old devices still do go online in order to upload your data; they are artificially rendered useless). . That new hardware cost is a disguised subscription.
IoT hardware vendors have been doing this for quite a while -- often by discontinuing updates to Fix security defects their product was shipped with.
Or pushing out a deliberately customer-hostile update to lock features the product had been sold with.
Potentially illegal (Score:1)
If ending support violates an "implied warranty for fitness" the seller or manufacturer could owe you a refund depending on what legal jurisdiction you are in.
Arbitrary bricking or arbitrarily removing features that were marketed at the time you bought it could also be grounds for damages, depending on where you live.
Arbitrartion requirements notwithstanding, the companies could still be on the hook for lawsuits from goverments on behalf of their residents, particularly if a state Attorney General thinks he
After expiration of warranty (Score:3)
> If ending support violates an "implied warranty for fitness" the seller or manufacturer could owe you a refund
Which is why Google waited several years to brick early Nest and Revolv thermostats: the factory warranty had expired.
It’s not nothing. (Score:2)
I refused to be nickel and dime for hardware I buy, that said I certainly have my subscriptions:
Cellphone (2 lines, unlimited data): $145
Home internet: $88
Streaming video: $55
Online newspapers: $45
Audio books: $12
Total: $345/$112 per month; or $4140/$1344 per year
The second figure excludes Internet. It could be argued cellphone and home internet are necessary instead of discretionary since I work from home. But those other subscriptions use them too. The internet obviously isn’t used solely ju
Re: (Score:1)
What about other subscriptions? No need to actually answer this (it's really not my business what you spend your money on), but it's something to think about.
Do you subscribe to a garbage-collection service (if you live in a US city, you probably do whether you want to or not). Does your water, electricity, or wastewater service have a minimum or flat-rate charge (some do, some don't)? Do you have any kind of insurance with recurring charges? Do you subscribe to any dead-tree or electronic magazines or
duh ... (Score:2)
> What vexes me are the companies that sell physical products for a hefty, upfront fee and subsequently demand more money to keep using items already in your possession.
really? doesn't vex me at all. abstaining from buying such shit just takes a handful of braincells and nobody ever forced me to do so. that these products thrive just speaks of the geographic concentration of suckers in the world.
Opting out (Score:2)
I've reached the age and mental state where I can fully opt out of anything that asks for a subscription. I have only one exception - seamless cloud backup. That's it. No car features, no smart IoT, no printer ink that I can't third party... if my laser printer fails I'll buy a used one that takes knock off toner. If new cars all demand subscriptions them my subscriptionless 2019 Camry will be my last new car.
The world can swing in that direction, but I don't need to stay in the seat. Nor does anybody else.
I will not rent software. (Score:2)
I bought about $2,000 of software, and another $500 in games. I do buy software, but no, I will not rent it.
Caveat emptor (Score:2)
Seriously. If you do not actually look at what you buy before doing it, you will get shafted at least on part of your purchases. That insight is as old as humanity. I see some are still ignorant regarding that issue.
Captivity? (Score:2)
Seems like whining to me. You chose to buy the product. And if it does not live up to your expectations, there is always the trash can.
Never buy any device (Score:2)
...that requires access to a server in order to function
The cloud is a trap
Run away
Re: (Score:2)
You mean, like a computer or a smartphone?
They are basically useless without a connection to the cloud. Every website and most apps, depend on it.
You get what you buy (Score:2)
> "A reporter at Mother Jones writes about a $169 alarm clock with special lighting and audio effects. But to use the features, "you need to pay an additional $4.99 per month, in perpetuity."
Yeah, and who is stupid enough to buy it?
> "Welcome to the age of subscription captivity, where an increasing share of the things you pay for actually own you."
Not me. I don't buy junk like that. Never. And once consumers eventually wise up and stop buying such junk, it will stop. They will start reading specs a
Re: Bad example (Score:2)
What kind of moron buys an internet-connected alarm clock at all?
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I use my iPhone or my HomePod when im actually home. This is a shit decision to buy an internet connected alarm clock. However, with Office 365, every fucking company switched to subscription, especially in software. Remember when apps were one-time buys? Recurring revenue has become the only meaningful way of driving valuation (otherwise BMW wouldn't have started charging monthly fees for seat warmers).
Re: (Score:2)
The $20 basic alarm clock I've had for at least two decades now continues to work just fine. A lot of people I know don't even have one as they just use their phone to set an alarm to wake up. Anyone spending $170 on an alarm clock has more money than sense to begin with so it's little surprise that a product prices to attract stupid people will nickel and dime them after the purchase as well.
Someone will always sell a basic $20 alarm clock and there's little need for anything beyond that. I refuse to fe
Re: Bad example (Score:1)
Speaking of...remember the Juicero...which literally advertised itself as refusing to squeeze packages past their arbitrarily set use-by dates?
Some people actually seek out the nickel-and-diming as a status symbol. Black cards, subscription boxes, all of it.
Fuck, Bernie Madoff had people begging him to handle their money knowing full well the cut he took.
Re: (Score:2)
I still have a digital alarm clock with a built in radio I bought back in 1991. It’s only special feature is a spot for a 9 volt backup batter so it continues to work even if the power go out or trips over night. I bought it to make sure I’d wake up for my paper route. I mean, I’ve upgraded since then but it still kicking and in use in one of my kids’ rooms.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't buy one, but I did build one with a Pi Zero W and an LED matrix display.
The reason it's Internet-connected is to sync its time using NTP. It's the one clock in my house (other than computer or phone-based ones) that I don't have to reset after a power failure or adjust for daylight saving time.
As for the subscription crap: Just don't buy products that use these shenanigans. Vote with your wallet.
Re: Bad example (Score:2)
Many clocks can synchronize their time through radio signals. I own multiple Marathon clocks with large displays, placed near areas such as showers, where I don't normally use my phone. They are not alarm clocks, though, but there is no reason they couldn't be if the manufacturer chose to do so. Most importantly, these clocks don't need time to put together, or ongoing software updates, network connectivity, etc.
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Sure. I just happened to have an unused Raspberry Pi Zero lying around, and the LED display was about $5, so meh... decided to do a little project.
Re: Bad example (Score:1)
My Radio Shack alarm clock from 1990 still works and keeps good enough time that I only have to set it once every couple of years or so. It has a 9V battery in it that keeps time in the event of a power failure. I put a lithium 9V battery in it in 2018 and haven't had to change it since.
This premium level of convenience and performance costs me $0.00 every month.
Re: (Score:2)
> What kind of moron buys an internet-connected alarm clock at all?
Guilty as charged. My smartphone is intent-connected.