No idea. You should ask raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world about that.

So much tech support has moved to Discord. That’s worth keeping around.

Why is it any more okay to create conflict with less secure people?

Then you’d run into the same problem you have with insurance where they refuse to fix/replace your appliance because of “misuse” or something like that.

Subscriptions are like insurance and gym memberships. They’re profitable only if they represent value that is never fully realized by the consumer.

Think of your monthly spending as a probability distribution. They provide value by reducing variance of that distribution at the cost of increasing the mean.

Consider at a more concrete example. You’re provided with two options:

1. You get $100 a month guaranteed
2. Flip a coin each month. On head, you get $200. On tail, you get nothing.

The expected value for both are the same, but option #1 is predictable. It’s the better option of the two unless you’re in a situation where getting $0 is effectively equivalent to getting $100. You would need to increase the amount you get in option #2 to make it worthwhile. Similarly, you can decrease the amount you get in option #1 and still have it be the better option.

By default, life is like option #2. The value proposition of insurance and the like is to give you option #1 with an amount lower than the expected value of #2, and in exchange, they get the difference as profit.