That $3 represents a 37.5% increase. From $8 to $11.

This, yet again, showcases to the people claiming the "ad experience is optional" are ignoring the fact that the new "normal" price will be the ad experience, and that ad-less will be a premium tier priced accordingly. We've seen it numerous times, but yet people still repeat the same tired defense.

It is highly unlikely Disney will extract the full $3 from ad revenue, therefore this is just a price discrimination strategy disguised as the illusion of choice.

I don't really see the problem. A company's allowed to charge whatever they want for access and prices will always go up. I think it's good the companies are even giving us a choice about ads.

I pay for the bandwidth though, and ads just waste it and cost me more time and money - we don't really save anything with a "lower cost" plan in the end. And stop pretending to be a daft that they are doing us some a favour - it's only pure greed driving these decisions. Note that that with online advertisement comes harvesting of our personal data too.

I've been barking about this for years, and is the reason I'm forced to pay for YouTube Premium as well. The amount of time alone ads cost me insane, and the bandwidth (at home or especially on mobile) usage involved means almost any form of video advertising is incredibly costly to me, and any free service costing one hour of minimum wage work per month saves me many, many hours (in literal cost hours and pure time) in the long run.