Bonum Certa Men Certa

Don’t Use Disney Minus. (Disney “Plus”)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 13, 2024

Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer.

When I was a child, we had video tapes. When parents wanted their children to watch Disney movies, there were tapes and there was the movie theater. That was it. That was all we had.

But it worked.

Disney was a business, and in business to make money, but it wasn’t the obscenity that it has turned into today.

Walt Disney banned alcohol from his parks. He said, “It would lead to a certain element frequenting our parks that you’d really rather not have.” Today, they sell alcohol (almost certainly at obscene price points, because captive audience). Nothing says “$6,000 vacation” like watching some drunk people get into a brawl at Disney, I guess.

Their creativity is gone, they’re morally bankrupt, the freaks and weirdos have taken over and even better yet, Communist China gets to approve the scripts because they’re a “more important market” now than Americans.

The asset Disney has is a massive back catalog from when they were….more.

Practically every release they’ve made lately has been a box office bomb, something unthinkable for a major Disney release when I was a child. There have been huge layoffs at divisions like Pixar, and even at their parks and management. The morons that run the company even managed to screw themselves by picking a fight with the government of Florida and losing badly.

When you went to the parks, it was at a relatively “high” price, but it wasn’t thousands of dollars a week like it is now. When you went there back then, society had not yet collapsed, and there weren’t drunken people in their parks, and a lot of perverts that, in modern times, you just have to “pretend not to see there” as you watch your children like a hawk.

But Disney is exploitative in other ways. They have pushed for “forever copyright” laws, and although they haven’t quite gotten them, they’ve more or less accomplished everything they’ve wanted due to widespread political corruption in the United States.

Their more recent scheme is “Disney Plus”, or as I like to sometimes call it “Disney Minus”.

With Digital Restrictions Malware, they’ve taken everything from you that you used to have, including the ability to make copies, or even just have a copy, and they’ve slowly been dialing up the cost per month, and stuffing it with ads.

Like most things you “stream”, as soon as you quit paying them, no matter how much you paid them, you lose everything. This means that your subscription turns into a “curse”. It keeps taking more and more.

When Disney Plus was new, Disney only charged $8 and there were no ads, ever. This wasn’t a long time ago, only five years. Today, the “ad free” tier is $20 a month, and it just keeps getting more expensive.

According to some people on Reddit, even the ad free tier has a few ads.

The $9.99 tier with ads has become so overrun with ads, that some people on Reddit have taken to complaining that every five minutes, there’s a minute and a half full of ads.

When you pause the video, the pause screen is another ad, and that’s with the intro ads of course.

So it’s clear that the only purpose of the $9.99 version is to annoy you into paying for the other half of the cost, to avoid having your evenings and weekend free time being filled with ads.

Disney Plus is so nasty that my credit card company would reimburse me for most of it, and I still don’t use it.

I read an article today that says that very soon, Walmart will make money on Disney Plus, by selling Disney your shopping history at Walmart so they can figure out what ads to play. Of course, the reason that this targeted advertising works so well is because Walmart never forgets what you buy, and Disney never forgets what shows you watch.

So they can ink a deal and trade lists, and figure out how to burrow into your head, and sell you stuff, and put you deeper and deeper into debt. They want to know what makes you tick, so that you spend beyond your means on products advertised on Disney Plus.

When you run ads, you are psychologically manipulating a person. You might make them feel like dirt for not having a thing, or make them think they’ll be very happy if they buy a thing, but then they buy the thing and they’re no happier than they were.

As one person on Reddit put it, it doesn’t matter how many times you run an ad for a $60,000 Ford truck, if I can’t afford the truck. Advertising will only make you feel bad.

Back to Disney Plus, back to more ads.

The truly horrible and dark part of this is that people using Disney Plus as a babysitter are plopping their kids in front of these ads while Disney Plus (the bait) trains them to be a “consumer”.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part III: Mr. 'Secure Boot' (Shim) and His Fake 'Holiday' (Sending My Wife and I Threatening E-mails on 9/11)
despite being on holiday, according to him, he finds time to instruct lawyers to contact my wife
Ron Wyden: Microsoft Should be Held Accountable for Security Breaches (He Has Said This for Years Already, It Never Happens)
Negative media coverage isn't a fine and it does nothing to compensate Microsoft's billions of victims
Disable 'Secure Boot' (If It Lets You)
it doesn't put you in control
Longtime Red Hat Staff: Maybe Just Disable 'Secure Boot'
A refreshing take from Adam Williamson
A Dozen Observations About "UEFI 9/11" Deflections
What we are expected to see, tentatively
 
Links 12/09/2025: Shira Perlmutter is Back, “Software Per Se” Patent Rejections in In re McFadden
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linux Plagiarism, Slopfarms Still Infesting Google News, Many Images Are Fake
Google is promoting plagiarism
"This Morning Might Turn Out to be an Interesting One for System Admins Who Haven't Updated Their Devices' Secure Boot Certificate" (If They Reboot)
Who asked for this anyway?
Gemini Links 12/09/2025: Metric System, Dumping Windows, and Software Architecture is Dead
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 11, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 11, 2025
Microsoft Admits the Workers Have Lost Trust (Endless Layoffs, 12-13 Rounds of Layoffs This Year), So Now It's Trotting out Its Peter Bright-Like Media Prop Jordan Novet
What they don't want people to pay attention to right now
Links 11/09/2025: Windows TCO and Russian Drones Invading Poland (EU/NATO)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/09/2025: xkcd, misfin, and Alhena 5.3.2
Links for the day
Repetition of Last Summer (Microsoft Breaking Dual-Boot Systems)
UEFI 9/11 is about to kick in
UEFI 'Secure Boot' Boiling Frogs (Cannot Turn Off 'Secure Boot')
"MSI laptop is locked on Secure Boot and doesn't allow me to turn it off"
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part IV: The 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' and His 'Hideout' Holiday (Retreat From Reality)
Let's keep an eye on what matters
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part II: "The SecureBoot Thing Got Out of Hand."
The next few weeks might be... interesting
UEFI 9/11 Aftermath - Part I: "I Believe This Affects Thousands of Devices... Because Multiple Devices I Checked, Whether Client or Server [...] Affected."
Most people aren't even aware that this is happening or about to happen
The UEFI 9/11 - Part X - An Outline of the Series About Microsoft Sabotaging GNU/Linux (With Ramifications to Unfold Online in Coming Weeks as People Reboot)
Today is UEFI 9/11 (9/11/2025)
Culture of silence: Ubisoft harassment convictions, Mozilla, Sylvestre Ledru & Debian make no comment
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 11/09/2025: "Hey Hi" Ponzi Schemes at Oracle (Unpaid Contracts) and Cindy Cohn is Leaving the EFF
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/09/2025: Playdate Console, Dichotomy between the Real and the Digital
Links for the day
The Microsoft AstroTurfing and Microsoft-Led Blame-Shifting Tactics Are Ahead of Us
Of course it has nothing to do with security, it's about control, i.e. them controlling everything
Celebrating Assassination is Bad Because It Legitimises Assassination of the People You Like, Too
Condoning or even celebrating political assassinations is bad optics (and taste)
The World's Richest Ponzi Scheme (Faking Value Using Net Waste)
The higher they go the harder they fall
We Could Dual-Boot Back in the 1990s, Why Has This Become So Difficult?
And prone to breakage
Being Conditioned to Accept Unreliable Computer Systems That Fail With Black Screen of Death (BSoD)
Welcome to 2025
Slopwatch: Google News is Still Promoting Many Fake Articles About "Linux", in Effect Rewarding Misinformation and Plagiarism
things continue to deteriorate
New Series: The Coup Against GNU/Linux Has Begun
today, this year in particular, we shall also focus on Secure Boot, which is sold based on a lie and tortures many computer user
New Paper on "BYOVD, but in firmware. Signed UEFI shells, vulnerable modules offer new paths for Secure Boot bypasses."
One might say digital "security theatre"
Links 11/09/2025: Oracle Layoffs, Drunk Pilots in Japan Airlines, US-Korea Tensions Grow
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Xubuntu Site Compromised
Let's hope it is not a security breach
Links 10/09/2025: Retaliation at Facebook and Microsoft Reveals Almost 100 Security Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Annihilation of Self, The Future Eaters, and Leaving Academia
Links for the day
They Say That People Are Afraid of or Worried About "Hey Hi", But the Worriers Should be the Fools Who Invested in It
At the end of the day nobody should worry more than those who invested their money in this bubble
Harassment evidence: franceinfo's Clara Lainé report on Ubisoft prosecution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 10/09/2025: Microsoft Layoffs in "RTO" Clothing and Windows TCO, GitHub TCO
Links for the day
Blaming Everything on China
TikTok works for China. GAFAM works for fascists.
People Get Tired of "Hey Hi" (AI), Unlike the Subservient Money-Obsessed Media That Gets Paid to Pretend This Bubble Still Matters
"crash will be way bigger than dot.com burst in 90s. and that was Internet, actually transformative technology, not this expensive AI toy with direct dependency on the energy input which is not scalable"
Brett Wilson LLP Accepts That the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Filed a Case That Also Implicates My Wife (Everything is Connected)
They used to pretend that there were two separate cases
10 Reasons to Disable (or Enable) UEFI Secure Boot
Tomorrow the "trusted corporation" Microsoft will see a certificate expire
Gemini Links 10/09/2025: Hospital and Large Feeds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 09, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 09, 2025
The Bluewashing of Red Hat is Being Completed, Many Staff Understand They'll be Made Redundant
Jim AllowHurst (Whitehurst) is meanwhile promoting Microsoft's agenda from within other companies
Throwing Away "Old" Computers (Mozilla and Other Climate Deniers)
Mozilla is not leftist