Of all the people to pirate from, Floatplane shouldn't be one of them...
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
29 points (65.6% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
53843 readers
550 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
💰 Please help cover server costs.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Why? Is floatplane free? Or just really bad.
No and no.
It's a video/streaming platform that pays creators fairly and doesn't rely on ads or harvesting user info.
But in order to do that, they don't harvest every bit of your personal data for sale or ad generation, but instead you have to subscribe to individual creators (ie pay).
I don't know, but I also don't think you should. They are one of the few reasonably ethical platforms so unless you truly can't afford it or have an ethical reason I don't know of I would pay. They do occasionally promote proprietary software but are still far more ethical than any other platform.
I have a question.
I never pay for Netflix, prime or whatever. Only watch movies on yts for example.
There is no reason for me to "pay for floatplane" because I don't have that kind of money coming from a third world country with a much less purchasing power to US$
The end result is simply, if I am pirating some content, I wouldn't otherwise pay them because I don't have the means.
The "lost sale" argument doesn't hold when I have to go through dozen hoops.
So, what does "ethics" have to do with this? Let's talk about floatplane only.
The pirater who leaks the content paid for it once and suppose I acquire it, why does it matter have I paid for it or not? Its not a case of bread from a bakery shop that they can't sell so what gives?
Why should I have ethical issues with pirating it?
You shouldn’t. For one thing, Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever made some valid points, also my point wasn’t that you shouldn’t at all, just that I would have made an effort to get it legally. Normally when I disagree with what someone is trying to do but can help, I tell them why I think they shouldn’t but also try to help, but in this case I didn’t have any suggestions.
Pirating a small company/org feels weird to me.
Like yeah, sure, LTT makes (at the bare minimum, the actual # is more this is just extrapolated from their lowest sub cost) like 1.5mil/yr from Floatplane (gross, ofc, not net). That's a pretty modest amount for their team to include profits/salaries/hosting/etc.
Linus Sebastian, the individual, is a millionaire. That isn't money that is being used to make my quality of life/other services worse, though. I don't care enough about the exclusives to actually watch them, but if I did I'd fork out $3-5 every few months to catch up on the ones I wanted to see.
Big tech? Raise ye flags. Normal people making a living off of big tech? Feels weird to me. Not saying not to hurt their bottom line, just that doing it through a platform that (at their scale) isn't making a ludicrous amount of profit and isn't actively damaging your access to your services, feels weird to me.
Just pirate YouTube. It will give you the same content for free, and you'll be stealing features Google thinks you should be paying for, like background playback, video quality, a down vote count, the ability to download videos for later, etc.
Same as everyone else I wouldn't pirate floatplane content
your best bet is probably just seeing if u have any friends with an account that can rip them for you or share the login with you