Tell HN: A Conversation Needs to Be Had over Subscription Software
My most recent experience is Shutter Stock, a completely scam company that charges ridiculous amounts of money with no easy to unsubscribe.
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.shutterstock.com
- Microsoft has used its dominant position to charge for MS Office in perpetuity, breaking features and now trying to trick people to use One Drive more (renaming files from an Office App is only a "feature" that works for files saved remotely on One Drive)
- Apple's "services" income is mostly from various apps that use predatory practices to maximise how much they can extract from users. For example, it makes sense for me, with a broken App Store search, to pay $4 for each download when I can get users to pay $5/month to use my app.
- Many other examples, with the whole industry going towards SaaS and HaaS
What has the world come to, where technology has been appropriated and we are left paying rents every month and companies are increasingly becoming user-hostile and predatory and monopolistic!