cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/28397398

The suspension triggered strong responses across social media and beyond. Hashtags like #CancelDisneyPlus and #CancelHulu trended as users shared screenshots of their canceled subscriptions.

With cancellations surging, many subscribers reported technical issues. On Reddit’s r/Fauxmoi, one post read, “The page to cancel your Hulu/Disney+ subscription keeps crashing.”

    • Zron@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      “If we don’t let you leave you might forget you were mad at us and keep giving us money”

  • Eezyville@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    MAGA hates Disney because of their current movies perceived “wokeness” so the big brained executives decided to piss of the Left as well by attacking the 1st Amendment and bowing down to the Right. Big brain move there.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

      the thing to understand is that for Disney it’s not always about the money. they control so much power over all media that they can inflict their world view on everyone through their propaganda streams. the performative wokeness that still sits within overall metanarratives about the value of the status quo? that’s for the dollar. cutting Jimmy Kimmel loose? that’s in alignment with their core values

    • ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Nah, cancellation resources are always minimal. Doesn’t make sense to pay for serious hardware to please people on their way out the door. Every service I’ve ever had to cancel has always been a maze and generally more annoying, slow, and cumbersome than the signup process.

      • DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Yeah well when the laws regarding this allow mass psychological manipulation for profits then it’s on the countries for enabling the greediest pieces of shits to do this.

        Edit:Antilaw suits everywhere but Mark Zuckerberg creating an entire algorithm dictating your view on Instagram and Facebook is completely fine using psychology to manipulate everyone.

  • philosloppy@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    it’s easy to do something in the heat of the moment when passions are running high (and your favorite show is in-between seasons) but let’s see where the boycott is in 6+ months after everything has cooled down and about 300 other new little fires from the current admin have come and gone from the headlines. That’s the true measure of these kinds of “low temp” protests.

    • Ordinary_Person@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      Even if they get back two thirds of the people who quit while the other third have discovered “other” ways to get their Disney content, that’s still a third of a loss of revenue. A small dent is better than no dent. And whether the website crashed because of all the people quitting or they intentionally crashed it to prevent people from quitting, that means its a significant amount of people, and a third of that is still significant to them.

    • AquaTofana@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I mean, I finally quit Hulu over this, and neither my husband or I had even watched Hulu in about a year at this point. I’d always kept the subscription going “just in case,”. I was the only one paying and neither of us has any qualms about letting it go.

      I can’t believe that we’re the only ones in this bracket of users.

  • joan@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Sad that all we can do to prevent literal fascism is unsubscribing from a streaming service

  • Otter@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    crashes

    Maybe, but could it also be an intentional dark pattern to make it difficult to cancel?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      2 days ago

      Anytime I want to cancel something and the company makes it difficult I just cancel the credit card side of it. Sod them. That’s what they get if they want to play silly buggers.

    • nalinna@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They use AWS and specifically design their software to be able to dynamically scale, ever since Wandavision crashed their playback.

      Is it possible that they never entertained having to make their cancellation page scalable? Sure. Is it more likely that they intentionally haven’t made it scalable? Yes.

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      Unlikely. I was trying to contact support and that was completely broken also. Unlikely if they were just trying to make cancellation harder. Likely if they were overloaded.

    • Wynnstan@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It’s amazing to think that people were fooled into thinking a greedy litagatious mega global corporate conglomerate like Disney was actually progressive in the first place instead of just following market trends for maximum shareholder profit.

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      even if that is the case it’s a good sign imo. it means people were causing an impact big enough for them to notice and take action.

  • SpazOut@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Call me a cynic, but engineering some rate limit on a cancellation page suits them rather well

    • eah@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      I’m similarly skeptical it’s a genuine outage given how so much stuff nowadays is done with cloud computing which enables dynamic on-demand procurement of server resources. Or whatever the correct terminology is to describe that.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Remember to no only tell your friends but also keep the boycott going even if they bring back Kimmel’s show.

    Per Deadline:

    Still, according to another well-placed source, while some senior staff are expressing disappointment in how it all went down, “it is in no way widespread”.

    They have not learned a single lesson here, keep boycotting and I’ll be willing to help with anyone who’d like to get a docker based media server going so you can protest while still watching the content that the creative people stuck contractually at Disney are making.

  • JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    I’m ready to bet that only a 0.something% of customers will actually cancel, there will be a barely visible bump in Disney’s KPI this month, and in a month half of them will subscribe again to watch the latest Avengers vs Star Wars: the Invasion of the Ducks.

      • JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        It’s not about caring but about effectiveness. Even if I’m one of those suckers that “vote with his wallet”, I know that it’s naive to think that cancelling a subscription will move the needle for corporations like Disney.

        Consider also the collateral damages of a hypothetical successful anti-Disney campaign: layoffs, drop in the stock market with impacts on pension funds, projects cancelled with third parties (so more layoffs and drops in the stock market), …

        The right protest here (IMHO) is against Trump, MAGA, and especially who voted for them. That may be more effective and with less collateral damages than trying to bankrupt Disney by cancelling Disney+ from the couch.

            • Valmond@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              Lol good luck, it’s like saying I’d like Roquefort cheese to taste like pineapple.

              • JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                Of course, but it’s a more realistic goal than shouting “let’s burn the megacorps” and it can be achieved through regulations.

                • Kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  2 days ago

                  You know what’s even more realistic? Reality, the one where megacorps are funding a new wave of nazifascism around the world, just so they won’t get regulated.

                  Wake the fuck up.

            • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 days ago

              I want them to be ethical.

              I’m gonna tell you something you shoulda heard a long time ago:

              Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          2 days ago

          You think the global economy is going to collapse because Disney collapses? They make a lot of money as a corporation but that’s not important because they don’t pay any taxes.

          • JumpyWombat@lemmy.ml
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            You think the global economy is going to collapse because Disney collapses?

            No, I don’t, but Disney could easily be a 5% of a pension fund, and its price fluctuation can have a significant impact on common people.

            They make a lot of money as a corporation but that’s not important because they don’t pay any taxes.

            That’s actually ad advantage for investors such as your pension fund.

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      Probably, but if it turns out on the higher end of that, say 0.8%, then that’s also not nothing, considering that it’s the result of firing one (1) dude.

  • Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Wish I could cancel but I was never a subscriber to begin with.

    Stop giving money to those facsists-friendly business. Use stremio, and begin by stopping to watch stupid american content. Don’t use Amazon, they hate you, people where just fine just a few years ago, before all that crap. We are legions, we could destroy their entire economy within 48 hours if we really wanted.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I was thinking about that. Do we need to sign up when things are quiet so that we can cancel to protest such stuff. I usually feel left out because I already don’t use most of the things I want to cancel in protest. I got to do it this time because I had forgotten I signed up for my kid a while back.

  • drath@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The classic card payment and subscription model is actually insane. You literally have to beg companies to stop taking money from you. Good thing it is changing with more modern payment systems - you literally just stop paying for services you don’t need and it’s on them to stop providing them to you. Nothing is ever charged off my account without an explicit action from me.

  • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I canceled my Hulu/Disney+ subscription two days ago. A long time ago, I had an absolute boycott on Disney because I hated their hypocrisy when it came to copyright law. They tried to extend their copyrights indefinitely, even though the majority of their IPs came from the public domain. They were like a dog who only knows how to fetch the ball, but won’t ever release it.

    When Disney acquired Pixar and was the American distributor for Studio Ghibli, and bought Star Wars, and distributes Marvel, at some point I eventually relented and stopped my boycott. I stopped caring as much about hypocrisy, in general. But never again. It was obviously a mistake to ever give them money. They will never get anything from me again.

    • Jaysyn@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Same here, except I stopped giving a shit about Marvel & Star Wars when they bought them.

      • SavageCoconut@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Same here. When they bought SW, 1313 was cancelled. I remember i had a friend who had faith in disney owning SW… he isn’t my friend anymore (because other things) but he won’t stop bashing disney for what they did to the IP, lol.

        • acosmichippo@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          i had optimism they’d handle star wars well given how they handled marvel up to that point. unfortunately they learned absolutely zero lessons from that success.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I’ll admit, I’m hypocritical on some things. Disney became an easier choice for me when all their stuff became kinda bad.