Ah, the choice content providers made a few years back that put us all in this situation to begin with - throw constant ads at us for marginal revenue.

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toraway 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Uh, it's a complete false dichotomy? There is literally no reason you need to participate in a botnet to stream content for free.

That's ... not a thing. Those sticks just glom on to free software maintained by other hardworking unpaid devs to steal residential IPs from unsuspecting buyers drawn to the "all-in-one" pitch for their sketchy VPNs and/or botnets. Then, eventually whatever API keys/endpoints they stole for streaming stop working and all you're left with is the botnet part of the deal.

This is like saying the included porn malware you got bundled with uTorrent from the first sponsored link on Google is a price worth paying to access The Pirate Bay and stick it to Netflix, lol.

Why earth would anyone voluntarily advocate for that/defend the malware authors instead of just downloading qBitorrent from Github like a normal person?!

	▲	munk-a 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You absolutely don't have to and I'd encourage people not to (I personally advocate for just using a desktop/pc that you have control over to make the experience more palatable. But I disagree with framing that solution as one where the customer is solely involved in making a bad decision. The old version of Roku, and even streaming sites within recent memory, offered a significantly less enshittified product. The botnet you bring into your home is only an option people are willing to consider because of how poor the UX has gotten. It's disingenuous to frame this situation as a cavalier abrogation of duty at the sole discretion of the selfish consumer. The malware laiden set top box is a terrible solution, but it being even in the realm of consideration is due to how incredibly terrible set top boxes and streaming platforms have become. In the 2010s torrenting was something of an archaic habit done mostly by those with a strong idealogical bent - gone were the days of everyone installing napster or kazaa to have any access to digitized music that they could actually listen to without a binder of CDs. Excessive enshittification brought on by the selfish actions of corporations is what is bringing these options back to the table for the mainstream. The consumer should be better and shouldn't bring a malware laden box into their home - but the platforms should also be better and offer reasonable pricing for their value and experience.