Thread by @doctorow

There are so many reasons to dunk on HBO Max: its confusing name (quick, what's the difference between HBO, HBO Max, HBO Go, and HBO Now?), its terrible UI, and so on.

But worst of all is what it embodies about monopolies.

eff.org/deeplinks/2020…

1/

HBO, of course, is part of Time-Warner, which is part of AT&T (a garbage company).

AT&T caps its customers' data, but not when it comes to HBO Max. So if you're a Netflix subscriber, every video you watch brings you closer to massive excess bandwidth charges.

2/

But if you're an AT&T subscriber, HBO Max is "free" (in the sense that the monopoly provider you're forced to use for internet access doesn't charge you directly - merely uses your viewing habits to try to destroy all alternatives).

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(Incidentally, the US has some of the slowest, most expensive broadband in the world, and the poorer, Blacker and more rural you are, the more you pay and the less you get. Fun fact!).

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Now, AT&T's competitors - Disney+, Netflix, or a new service that's trying to enter the market - can pay AT&T to have their data exempted from the caps. But when Disney pays AT&T, money actually changes hands, making Disney poorer and AT&T richer.

5/

This is fundamentally different from what happens when HBO Max "pays" AT&T for preferential treatment - in that case, no money changes hands. The company just uses an accounting trick to arbitrarily allocate some share of the profits to the broadband division instead of TV.

6/

Fine, you're getting HBO Max. Maybe you're even paying for it! You wanna put it on your TV, which came with Roku built in. Or maybe you want to use that Amazon Fire stick you bought.

Tough shit.

7/

AT&T only lets you put the video you're watching on your screen if you use a device that it has greenlit, based on backroom deals that are totally opaque to you.

8/

Back in 2016, we almost got an "Unlock the Box" order from the FCC, that would have forced cable cos to allow you to buy ANY cable box and use it with the service you paid for, instead of paying eternal rent for an underpowered, electricty-hungry crapgadget of their choosing.

9/

AT&T and its co-monopolists killed Unlock the Box by saying that cable boxes didn't matter anymore because everything would move to streaming anyway.

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As @k_trendacosta writes, "In the cord-cutting era, Roku and Amazon Fire TV have 70% of the market share for these kinds of devices. Users are stuck in the middle of a fight between giants just to watch content they supposedly get for 'free' or have already paid for."

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"We need more choices for our ISPs, so they can’t keep charging us more for bad service. We need more choices so they can’t leverage their captive audiences for their new video services."

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"We need net neutrality so these giant companies can’t create fiefdoms where they manipulate how we spend our time online. And we need our technology to be freed from corporate deals so we get what we paid for."

eof/