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Comment by madbicyclist | Hacker News Reader

Is it really worth dodging one lawsuit at the cost of the impending disgust from thousands of potential customers?

I feel in my bones that sometime in the last five years, large enough companies have lost the fear of pissing off the public. Consumers have proven too passive and docile to act. Big enough companies have become too big to be disrupted. We're about to enter a new phase of powerlessness.

> Big enough companies have become too big to be disrupted

Eg: Boeing.

> Consumers have proven too passive and docile to act

I know it's tempting, but don't blame "consumers".

For one thing, it's mathematically impossible for people to be appropriately outraged over every instance of corporate evil. There's too much of it.

If you want to assign blame, maybe put it on corporate media (like Disney lol). They're the ones who sold us every war, every atrocity we're complicit in, and covered up or distracted from the most important crimes which enabled everything else.

And yet, not doing business with disney is so easy. All you have to do is not spend $10/month on their streaming thing. Or not spend thousands on a trip to their park thing. Or not pay a $20 premium for their toy things.

I can't recall ever giving disney money as an adult. And I think the last time my family did was buying a DVD copy of Finding Nemo some time around 2008.

So the outrage threshold to "do something" in this case is "barely outraged at all". In any case, going after one company is a more, not less, realistic target than attacking "corporate media" as a whole.

You might be surprised how broad their reach is. Checking 538 for the upcoming US election? Disney. Popular YouTubers like Epic Rap Battles of history. Disney again. ESPN. Also Disney.

They also have significant investments in most of the other big media companies. There's a high chance something you've watched recently led to compensation for Disney.

I might check FiveThirtyEight once in a while but use an ad blocker. I don't really watch much content regardless and my main newspapers (Economist, FT, WSJ, NYT) aren't owned by or affiliated with the mouse.

In any case, let's stipulate cutting out direct revenue to disney is the easiest and largest step. If a significant proportion of customers just stopped going to parks that would be a serious financial hit.

Consumers have free will, agency, and responsibility. We're not NPCs. We don't have to be outraged every day, we just have to stop casually shoveling our money over to just anyone.

I would totally agree with you but I think this silent recession is starting to force a miniscule amount of change. Mcdonalds recently had a loss after quarter upon quarter of raking in the profits during the pandemic and treating their customers like crap. The automakers letting their dealers pull all that nonsense of "dealer adjusted" pricing has really come back to bite some automakers really hard. Now brands like Stellantis have their cars piling up and they will probably have to take massive losses to move the metal.

Big enough entities, whether commercial or political or religious. From Apple via Disney, past the DNC and Microsoft towards the Vatican, 'might makes right' is the prevailing attitude. It takes a lot of 'customers' to revolt against such behemoths so they feel safe in the (mostly correct) assumption such a revolt will not get off the ground.

Disney isn't worried about a few thousand customers, and most of them either won't hear of this or won't know how else to occupy their kids' attention

Thousand of customers is nothing to Disney

158M subscribers according to the article.

Sounds like someone should let them know. ;)

Will it matter? The article mentioned he just signed up for a 1 month free trial years ago. If they cancel their subscription, will the contract be void, or will Disney still hold it over their heads for the rest of their life?

This makes me want to cancel Disney+, but can I revoke my agreement in the process?

Those are good questions, and seem pretty relevant. It'd be good to have them clarified.

158M members certainly seems enough for a class action. :)

The most important lesson of the 2010s is that neckbeards and g*mers whine online, but they can't stop paying.

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