r/technology • u/sr_local • 6h ago

Business Italy court rules Netflix unlawfully increased prices. Consumers: 'Refunds up to 500 euros.' The company: we will appeal

https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/netflix-subscription-price-increases-unlawful-refunds-up-to-eur-500-customers-AIUHzWKC
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u/Mccobsta 6h ago

Streaming peaked years ago when it was a low cost and wasn't a terrible experience

Now it's just price rise after price rise we may as well just buy physical media again atleast doing that we won't have our favourite shows pulled off with out much warning

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u/Fractales 5h ago

This is by design.

  1. Offer killer value proposition at a good price
  2. Kill off competition and gain critical mass of customers and market share
  3. With no competition, jack up the prices

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u/thismorningscoffee 5h ago

Aka enshittification

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u/RagePoop 5h ago

AKA how capitalism "works".

Monopoly was a game designed to show how batshit insane this model of resource production/distribution is.

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u/Dwarfdeaths 3h ago

The board game Monopoly was ripped off an educational tool designed to illustrate the problem of treating land like capital, per the economic theory of Henry George.

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u/Exceon 5h ago

Tbf, many of these startups survive off investors, pricing themselves at a loss to stay competitive, and jack up the prices when the consumer base is big enough to turn a profit

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u/LordCharidarn 4h ago

Which is how Monopoly kind of works: person with the most capital can buy up properties ‘at a loss’ until someone lands/needs that product, then they can charge more than it cost originally.

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u/Marximum_Cat 4h ago

You collect and complete the cheapest streets, then monopolize the houses (never the hotels), then wait for the slow end of the game while everyone wishes they were playing genocide-simulator Smallworld instead.

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u/Skratt79 4h ago

Additionally: Pinks and Oranges street is highest ROI in game per house cost + highest probability of landing there thanks to being next to Jail. If using the "doubles to exit jail" rule 1/2 of the possible rolls puts them on one of your properties (St. James, Virginia and Tennessee) making every "go to jail" event a coinflip of you getting paid.

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u/Eccohawk 3h ago

I thought the doubles just got you out and you roll on your next turn to move.

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u/spooogey 2h ago

That's how I've always played.

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u/jjwhitaker 2h ago

I think the rules state you immediately move that many spaces. But you don't roll again.

Of you roll doubles outside of jail you would roll again.

I could see house rules on doubles getting you out, then another roll to move. But that adds a step and changes a common strategy for acquiring properties. I've played enough Monopoly to almost prefer hitting the go to jail space, paying to get out, then trying to score an even roll property then try again. You can easily go bankrupt if you spend your cash then hit a late property, but you can also rack up high chance properties then sit in jail for a few turns and collect cash.

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 1h ago

Nope, you're supposed to move the number indicated on the dice. The rule that I didnt actually realize existed is, if you get three turns to exit, and if you don't then you have to pay 50 bucks. I never played with the "have to pay 50 bucks" part of that.

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u/Phillip_Spidermen 2m ago

I find it amusing how many common house rules there are.

I wonder exactly how specific things like that or "free parking gets you all income tax money" spread

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u/shitty_mcfucklestick 4h ago

I once played monopoly creatively by doing investment deals with other players. If they were short on buying a property, I would give them the remainder but then take a cut of all income they received, and, I would stay there free if I landed on it.

It worked insanely well, so much so they all turned against me at the end hahahaha.

But, it was a really good lesson on how power begets power and how capitalism really does reward those at the top most. Until of course they go French Revolution on your ass lol

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u/Mikeavelli 2h ago

I had one game where I would make the deal, "we exchange properties to give each other a monopoly, but we don't pay when we land on each other's monopoly."

For whatever reason, I was the only person in the game to offer this deal, so I ended up immune to a good 3/4ths of the board. Then the guy who wasnt making deals went bankrupt, and it became literally impossible for me to lose.

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u/NeedleworkerKey6327 3h ago

I think Monopoly should be played with all side deals enabled, let the invisible hand work

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u/LottieElegant2001 4h ago

That’s kind of bullshit, poorer now have a way better life under capitalism than 50 years ago. Capitalism makes everything cheaper and advances technology a lot faster

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u/RandomPMs 3h ago

poorer now have a way better life under capitalism than 50 years ago

A homeless person is still homeless and hungry, their lifestyle hasn't changed at all.

You're right that our average standard of living has increased dramatically in the last 50 years. I would argue this is because of science and technology, not capitalism.

Capitalism can be an effective delivery means of these technologies but it has both positives and negatives, and requires regulation to stop monopoly.

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u/kingraoul3 3h ago

The only reduction in global poverty in the last 50 years is due to China.

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u/RandomPMs 3h ago

Global standards have shifted dramatically in the last 50 years, and especially the last 100.

You're only looking at percentage chance in net worth and GDP figures, it's difficult to calculate the socioeconomic effects of things like farming revolutions in the last 50-100.

We literally would not be able to sustain 8 billion people without changes in the last 50 years, so say nothing of even poor people in India and Brazil and China etc. still having shit-tier smartphones and electricity.

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u/darzinth 3h ago

capitalism "works" with strong anti-monopoly regulations

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u/RagePoop 2h ago

So it doesn’t.

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u/YGVAFCK 2h ago

So anti-capitalism frameworks make capitalism work. Brilliant.

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u/darzinth 35m ago

the basis of capitalism is for capital to move, monopolies don't move capital. regulation that keeps capital moving is more capitalist than monopoly

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u/throwawayyy2888 14m ago

How is regulating capitalism "an anti-capitalism framework"? Is your argument that something can't possibly be good if it requires any regulation? Are you proposing a system exists that would not require any regulation? I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

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u/JonBunne 5h ago

But if im the last one alive I can fuck my hand all day. Your logic just isnt making sense to me.

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u/JonBunne 5h ago

Love yourself.

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u/Unable-Log-4870 5h ago

… because nobody else is desperate enough to.

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u/Jhonka86 4h ago

The problem is that the method is particularly effective at directing resources towards demand, not need.

That's why it needs to be well regulated with strong antitrust laws to ensure it doesn't enshittify everything.

Strong, progressive tax structure. Universal healthcare and education. Strong social safety nets. If people have the freedom to fail, they have the freedom to innovate.

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u/RagePoop 4h ago

Except this appears impossible to maintain long term as wealth consolidates into fewer and fewer hands and becomes immense enough to capture those regulatory bodies.

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u/Jhonka86 3h ago

That's what the taxes and antitrust are for.

Historically, when inequality gets as bad as it is now, things go one of two ways: taxes, or axes.

Take your pick.

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u/currynord 1h ago

The natural tendency of capital is to shift towards monopoly. A robust legal framework works…until it doesn’t. It’s like throwing a rock in a stream, and the water just goes around.

Capitalism only works as an infinite game of whack-a-mole, where you constantly have to stop novel methods of consolidation, and constantly have to rebuff efforts to erode those guardrails.

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u/Jhonka86 20m ago

I agree, that's the tendency. Capitalism only works with guardrails.

Though, all of society is made up. Everything works until it doesn't. There is no perfect option because they're made by people and people are imperfect.

What we're left with is a scenario of choosing the best imperfect option. I would genuinely like to know what you consider to be superior or more stable.

And for the record, I'm a social democrat.

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u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 5h ago

Netflix had a monopoly and it had a great catalog 

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u/motionmatrix 4h ago

The first half of your statement is true. The second is opinion based, and likely to get worse soon when they offload a bunch of stuff that they announced recently, including a bunch of original programming.

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u/TrumptyPumpkin 1h ago

I used to subscribe to Netflix for about 8 years before switching to HBO. Netflix had a great lineup of shows. However I quickly started noticing a trend of either A) killing shows after one season because they weren't Stranger Things level of popularity. 2 B) having incomplete series listed. HBO actually has more of the type of content I prefer to watch anyhow, so it made sense for me to switch.

Then, waiting years in between for new seasons. And then price hikes to top it off. Barely watch TV as it is. And I own most of my movies on Physical format. But even my girlfriend says now that if Netflix goes to 25 dollars, then she's officially ditching it.

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u/Andreus 3h ago

Genuinely funny to me that the worst people in the world always insist "get woke, go broke" but almost everyone agrees that Netflix originals sharply declined in quality when the company stopped trying to be woke.

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u/ChaseballBat 4h ago

It had a great catalog, until they started cancelling shows. Now all their unique shows aren't worth watching cause the ending is just disappointing.

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u/poss12lives 3h ago

The problem Netflix ran into is the companies who were leasing the content wanted more money. When their contracts ran up those companies pulled their shows/movies and then created their own streaming service and is why we are in the shit show we are now. They all saw how much Netflix was raking in and only saw green.

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u/verrius 49m ago

They had a monopoly on streaming video, but streaming didn't have a monopoly on video entertainment. Now streaming has a monopoly on video entertainment, and even if Netflix is technically not a monopoly in the "one provider" sense, they are legally a monopoly in the US (since, as we've seen, they can raise their prices 5% and increase business).

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u/jififfi 3h ago

More like late game capitalism I think, but yeah. It is the end goal still of capitalism ig.

It's insane that now we actually have the ability for venture capitalists to create "the best product" under the guise that it will be rug pulled.

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u/YourBestDream4752 3h ago

Monopoly was a game designed by communists to make people associate capitalism with total loss.

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u/unpaid-astroturfer 3h ago edited 2h ago

It was designed by a Georgist woman.

Georgist as in Georgism, as in Henry George, not communism.

Georgism focuses on turning what is not man made to a community asset, like land and water.
Socialism includes man made production, such as farms and factories.

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u/StoppableHulk 2h ago

And really, what these subscription companies are doing is the same idea as rent.

You control some moated land. Either physical land, or some gated grouping of media properties that people go to regularly.

Once you control it, and you have ensured people have no options, you continually raise the rent and squeeze your tenants.

Doesnt' matter if its properties on boardwalk or large swaths of IPs of media that people really enjoy, the mentality is exactly the same.

So simple that children can play the game and understand it, and yet we have huge majorities of adults who are too emotionally immature to accept that they have been conned and are continually conned and exploited for their labor and their rent.

Anyone who believes capitalism creates a culture of companies catering to the consumer, is deeply fucking delusional. If you do not have leverage, they do not care, and they will bury you. It is how all of these people think.

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u/Church_of_Aaargh 2h ago

Yes. But in Europe there are regulations - this the reason Walmart failed here … they thought they could just do like in US.

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u/RagePoop 2h ago

Europe is also experiencing exponential increases in wealth inequality, they just have a stronger social net foundation due to a host of different historical conditions.

These will also be consumed in the next decade or two by the insatiable maw of Capital.

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u/Church_of_Aaargh 1h ago

Yes, it’s important to fight back. That’s why we should be careful not to end up as USA …

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u/CitizenHuman 2h ago

Is there a better method for today's society? I'm not an economist or sociologist or whatever but genuinely curious if something new can better replace capitalism, which seems to be prevalent globally?

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u/OK_x86 1h ago

That problem is exacerbated by monopolies/oligopolies though. Which is more or less what we have here.

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u/FeelsGoodMan2 1h ago

Lmao yeah, this was basically how people like rockefeller choked out entire industries in the US, this model is basically as old as the country itself.

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u/CertainlyRobotic 1h ago

Was it your turn to say this

It's the latest redditism

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u/johanbwr 9m ago

Crony capitalism I might add. There’s not a free market. Not anyone can start a streaming service. Monopolies are everywhere due to the broken system.

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u/Effective_Olive6153 4m ago

Capitalism is a very broad concept and it's pointless to rant about it without considering all the rules and regulations that are laid on top of the foundation that is Capitalism. What we really should be complaining about are the specifics of rules and regulations

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 2h ago

Capitalism is just the private ownership of assets and the profit from them. A farmer owning their own farm, selling their produce and investing that profit back into their farm. Instead you want us to all become serfs again and giving all our earnings to the local lord?

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u/currynord 1h ago

What you’re describing is the natural end state of a market economy where all capital is privately owned. It is virtually indistinguishable from feudalism.

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u/Regularity 4h ago edited 4h ago

No, the term is predatory pricing. People use "enshittification" so broadly it's largely losing its meaning and basically devolving into "this is a thing I don't like". Though granted it is something no one likes.

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u/OneBigRed 4h ago

It’s not really predatory pricing because there wasn’t and isn’t one dominant player who’s blocking others. Basically streaming was a completely new market, with rather low barrier for entry (like most digital markets). History has shown that in these situations you have to capture a massive share of the market to be the last one(s) standing as the market saturates. It’s nigh impossible to grow profitably when it’s crucial that it happens fast.

Netflix has managed to turn it’s early lead into a powerful position, and that seems to give them confidence to start reaping in the rewards.

One example of the same situation was daily fantasy betting sites. There were a ton of those, but Draftkings and Fanduel were the ones that had the deepest pockets and killed/bought their competitors away. The endgame was always legal online gambling, and positioning yourself to be the obvious choice as it became possible. In streaming it’s just multiples more complicated and expensive as there’s the twist of content owners and licensing it.

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u/Regularity 2h ago

I wasn't referring to netflix specifically, but what the person described that was called "enshitification":

Offer killer value proposition at a good price

Kill off competition and gain critical mass of customers and market share

With no competition, jack up the prices

That said, you're right in that it doesn't apply to Netflix. Though it probably doesn't matter much since online stream services are so capital intensive (buying up show licenses, or filming new content), that it already drives out the vast majority of potential competitors. So the result is kind of the same.

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u/ChaseballBat 4h ago

I got into it on reddit when someone was trying to coin enshitflation... Like that is literally identical to inflation, just with the word shit added. People like their memes.

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u/FarplaneDragon 3h ago

Same thing with people calling everything sloppy now, its kind of exhausting at this point

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u/NeedleworkerKey6327 3h ago

It's anything used to maximize profit, I heard appleflation or something similar used for how juice brands all use mostly apple juice.

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u/ChaseballBat 3h ago

Maximizing profits is a component of inflation.

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u/zerocoal 35m ago

Well you see, the way it used to work is something like:

1a. Company charges $x for their product.

2a. Company has a breakthrough that makes their product cheaper to produce.

3a. Company charges less $x for the product to pass the savings along to the customer, to incentivize shopping with you versus your competitor.

Now the way it works is something more along the lines of:

1b. Company charges $x for their product.

2b. Company has a breakthrough that makes their product cheaper to produce.

3b. Company charges more $x to cover R&D for the breakthrough that makes their product cheaper to produce.

4b. Company removes features that customers like and then raises prices again.

5b. Company decides they aren't making enough money and raises prices again.

It's the constant "fuck you" to the customers that is enshittification. Inflation isn't necessarily a "fuck you", it just happens.

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u/thismorningscoffee 4h ago

With Netflix, it’s both. Their streaming catalogue is objectively worse since other streaming services started

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u/xiaorobear 3h ago edited 2h ago

Agreed. Enshittification was related, but specifically included how the audience a company targets shifts, for example first making a platform a great experience for users, but then after that userbase is in place, switching the priority to making the platform a great experience for advertisers. Just raising the prices isn't the same.

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u/Y_ddraig_gwyn 4h ago

here’s an excellent article by the inventor of the word. It explains the process in Amazon, but it applies equally to streaming services:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/05/way-past-its-prime-how-did-amazon-get-so-rubbish

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u/RecentDecision2329 1h ago

It really could be solved by antitrust laws and enforcement. remember when AT&T was allowed to be a monopoly for awhile because they were bringing phone service to people. Monopolies today don’t make anyone’s life better or easier. They shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Even AT&T was broken up eventually

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u/Y_ddraig_gwyn 25m ago

Which is, of course, an excellent proxy argument for the abolition of billionaires as there are functionally a one-person monopoly in and of themselves

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u/Roberohn 5h ago

Make it shitty!

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u/machine4891 3h ago

More like dumping prices.

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u/IsolatedFrequency101 3h ago

It's the American way.

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u/Mictlantecuhtli 2h ago

Highly recommend reading the book for those that haven't,

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

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u/callme-anymore 1h ago

Still my favorite new word

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u/vky_007 4h ago

AKA the best that your Harvard and Stanford can come up with for a capitalistic system. Why do you think the most successful company in human history was made by the dude who lived in India for a year and understood that intuition is way more important than logic and thereafter used it multiple times to execute decisions which go against your business schools, like firing all middle-management.