Yup, this is the same fight the Music labels fought in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Piracy offers a far superior user experience and a lower price point. With the chances of facing punishment low enough that most people expect to get away with it. The content producers could solve the problem, but none of them want to, as that would mean lower profits per person. So, we’re stuck in a cycle of companies whining about piracy while not actually addressing the incentives which drive people to it.
It’s kinda funny that, what people want is a lot like the old cable TV model, without the bullshit of contracts and bundles. Imagine a single service, when you can get all the content from all the producers for one price. Ya, that’s cable TV. The problems were that cable TV had regional monopolies (in the US), consumers got locked into expensive contracts which discouraged free choice and it was largely impossible to say, “I want channels X, Y and C. But not Z, A or B.” Your choices were “Here’s every channel known to man for the low, well not that low, price of hundreds of dollars per month; or, you can get two of the channels you want, but not that other one you really want.” It’s no wonder that people jumped ship when streaming came along. Oh and as a bonus problem, time shifting content on cable was chock full of “fuck you”.
I was a reasonably early cord cutter. Went with an OTA antenna for a few years, followed by YouTube TV and finally just axing live TV all together. I’ve done the math a few times and even with costs creeping up, and subscribing to half a dozen services, the costs for streaming still beat the stuffing out of what I was paying for cable. Back when I cut the cord, I was up around $200/month for all the channels I wanted (and a shit-ton I didn’t). With the services I have now, I’m closer to $100/month. And I had to pay an “early termination” fee back then to break my contract. Given that history, anyone asking for a return to that type of model can go get fucked. Ya, it’s a PITA when content is pulled or I have to fumble between several different services to find something to watch. But, I’d rather have the freedom to trim and adjust services at a whim, than be locked back into that bullshit.
And all this is why rising piracy doesn’t surprise me either. The current system is broke. The system which came before it was broke even worse. And it’s been pretty well established that piracy on the internet is a low risk action with an end result that puts the official way to shame. Piracy isn’t a price problem, its a service delivery problem. You can never compete with piracy on price, just on service. And the content companies aren’t doing that. Video content needs a Steam like service to create a service offering which is, at least, as good as the service piracy is offering. And while some people won’t use an official service at any price, it’s still early enough that many potential pirates could be swayed to pay a reasonable cost for a good service. But, that might mean lower costs and companies not having exclusive access to viewership data. And they won’t allow that until market forces make their refusal untenable.
Yup, OP doesn’t seem to understand that the Fediverse is still in an “early adopter” stage. For tech stuff, that’s a demographic which is usually dominated by male tech nerds. I suspect the age range is more diverse than the OP claims. Though, I imagine it centers somewhere near the 25-35 range, as those will be the people with the drive and time to
engage in online mental masturbationargue with people on the internet.Also, the math will make the median age skew older. Each older person will have a larger effect on moving the average age up. For example, consider 3 people with ages 45, 20, and 18. they have an average age of of just a bit over 27. There is a lot of room for us old farts to drag the average up while there is only a small range for the kids to drag it down. There might be the rare 9-10 year old who has the wherewithal to make an account and comment. But, I don’t suspect the user base will get all that much younger. Whereas, there’s probably lots of late 30’s and 40 year old users and some even older. Take those same three ages listed above and add in a precocious 10 year old and a 60 year old grey beard. The average is now just over 30. That older person had a larger effect on the average than the kid.
Also, age doesn’t matter all that much. The important thing is that the early adopters are here and making content. Ideally, this will build out the site and others may follow (or not, not every trend works out). But hopefully, this will end up like the Great Digg Migration before it, which fed the Reddit beast. And we’ll have something a new, different and maybe actually better this time.