What is the worst streaming platform and why?

I hate them all, for much the same reason. They're all packed full of ads, even if you're paying top dollar (I count auto playing trailers for shows I'm not watching). Search is buried on purpose to make you look through the content that they want you to watch. They only have one or two good shows running new episodes at a time, so you have to bounce around between subscriptions, or forget about them and run up your credit card bill. Good shows get canceled all the time due to obscure metrics. Stremio + addons beats them all by a lot. If you want me to pay for streaming, make it worth it again.
- So, uhhh, just put of curiosity, any particular add-ons you'd suggest?
  
  Torrentio forever and always
- The big issue with Stremio is that it’s not a sustainable model. It relies on torrents to actually download the video, then just holds it in cache. This means you’re not actually seeding anything (at least, not enough to hit a 1.0 ratio) so you’re essentially just perma-leeching off of torrents. This means that if everybody used Stremio, nobody would be able to use Stremio. It makes torrents worse for everyone, including other Stremio users.

Disney+. Fuck The Mouse.
Niche answer is probably some little alt-right ULTRA MAGA FREEDOM NEWS NETWORK but I'm honored to not know any of those cesspits by name
- ^ I was watching movies on Disney+ with a friends and I was appalled that a streaming service had so many ads, not to mention that she was paying a subscription fee. Not only that, but some classic Disney movies just weren't in English for some reason? They were dubbed in Mandarin and the only option was to add English subtitles. Awful platform
  
  You get ads even if you pay for the more expensive ad-free subscription.
  At least those seem to be rare, only at the beginning, and they let you skip, but it's frustrating that you have to do that at all.
- Disney is what prompted me to ask this question

In terms of functionality and UI, my vote goes to Paramount+. They're lucky I love Star Trek so much.
- Their app is such hot garbage. I have had to pirate episodes because my app gets frozen on ads and refuses to play an episode.
- their app is so garbage. I would just give up on trying to watch stuff when I had it

Hulu. Fuck Hulu.
I was given a subscription once many years ago, (2014) and it came with ads.
They helped start this pay to get ads on streaming shit. I will never forget or forgive.
On the opposite end of the spectrum: Nightflight has been fun to have, even if it isn't for everybody. But it does what is says and no ads.
Also Kanopy is nice enough for what it is: a way to watch movies from the library.
- Amen. Fuck hulu!

Netflix. They cancel anything worthwhile, flood the channel with knockoff realty programming, and charge the most.
Close second would be Max because Zaslav and the Discovery merger have have ruined it. Again, canceling good programming in a race to the reality show bottom while charging a premium price.
- Yep! Sick of shows being cancelled so I'm wary of starting things that aren't finished, increasing the likelihood they'll drop it. Plus so much of netflix is pure shit.
- Never will forgive them for canceling Kaos
- Realty would be more interesting than half the shows on Netflix tbh

Prime Video, absolute trash tier, doesn't even have its own unique URL, because Amazon wants you to go to their e commerce landing page first in the hopes that you'll end up seeing something you want to buy.
The search sucks, oh you wanted to stream this show you are already paying a monthly subscription for, let me put these options to buy or rent it at the top of the search results just in case you want to pay extra to for it.
The content is also usually shite and why is my landing page filled with previews of content I have to buy extra subscriptions to view?
It's one of the few platforms where continuing from where you left off just fucks up every now and then, of you were watching season 6, episode 4, now you click play and it starts Season 1 episode 2 for reasons.
Heck even when you navigate to the show and select the season you want to start watching, it shows you shit to buy first and then you have to make a extra click of the episodes sub section to actually be able to start playing the video.
- Don't forget that their ads have a section about adding it to your amazon cart. Its awful

Pretty much all of them, for much the same reason. If I’m paying you directly, you shouldn’t be showing me ads. If the amount you’re charging is not enough to support your service without showing me ads in addition to my subscription fee than you should raise the damned price.
To be clear, Ad supported is fine. Subscription supported, fine. I’m not paying a subscription to watch ads.

I'm not seeing enough hate here for HBO or MAX or whatever the fuck they're calling themselves to avoid liability or whatever. I mooched off the account of a friend of a friend, and I still felt ripped off. Dogshit app, constantly starting the next episode halfway through the last one. And don't even get me started on all the shows they made unavailable anywhere just for the tax write-off.
- Plus the subtitle bullshit. If you’re in Latin America, although you can watch things in English, oftentimes the only options for subtitles are Spanish and Portuguese. It’s obvious English subtitles exist. They’re just… disabled.
  
  Yes, that was another thing! The whole thing felt half-baked, like they rushed whatever they could out the door so they could do the rebrand, then figured it was good enough, since they had your money anyway. Well, not my money, but you know. Someone's.

I would think the underground ones that host content which is horribly abusive and illegal (in ways beyond merely piracy)
- I bet they offer a better ui and amore stable service than Disney though.

Paramount+
Every time I have tried it either via a free trial or on someone else's account, it refuses to load any of the content I want to see. The other services all suck in various ways, but at least they fucking work.
- That's the one I immediately thought of too. We use my girlfriend's sister's account to binge classic shows, but it routinely plays a completely different episode than the one we selected. You also can't pause most episodes, so you have to exit the episode and then start it back up again and find wherever you left off. And on top of all that they show ads for their own shitty shows before every episode -- dude we're watching Andy Griffith, clearly we're not the target audience for your G-rated "Friends" knockoff.
- Not that long ago I tried that on a free trial, I just don't get it. Like there's nothing on there. I used it to get to watch a couple football games, not even the local ones you can't watch those, but there was nothing else. Shocking lack of content for a paid product.

All of em 🏴‍☠️

Any of them with a completely unnecessary boot up noise. Especially when you forget download you left things, it can scare the crap out of people. And no options to disable it. Fuck these companies.
I think Diseny is the only major one that doesn't do that shit.

All of them
Because I said so that's why

Fanduel Sports Network The Roku App improperly validates email addresses. You have to contact support to change your email address on the account. The website stream doesn't automatically switch from the pregame show to the game. You can be logged in to the website and the support chat doesn't know whop you are.

I sometimes use dailymotion for old tv shows that aren't on the others - the app used to be alright, just another YouTube-esque clone, but now they seem to be trying to turn it into a reels/tiktok/shorts thing and it is Bad
- Grayjay has a dailymotion plugin.
  
  Oh wow this looks great, thanks

What's a streaming platform?
glances at thepiratebay[dot]org 😎
- Well in that case, I guess you can add Plex to the list. I switched to Jellyfin after their recent update.

The only ones with a decent video player are Hulu and Apple. You hit seek back, and it just goes back a few seconds with a preview, then you hit ok, and it loads quickly and plays. Max is the exact opposite. Netflix is still finicky with this like 15 years later, and Amazon has different functionality for every device I've used.

Discovery Plus. Reality show garbage; not worth even those five quid per month. I subscribed when they acquired streaming rights for Eurosport, and tried to find anything that would be at least marginally entertaining without rotting my brain. I failed. When they lost Eurosport, I immediately cancelled my subscription.