Chhavideep Singh
Source:
Roku
Roku, the TV streaming service is seeing a lot of red flags lately and it is definitely not good news. Things aren’t great or even good for the company as they recently lost the legal battle with Google, resulting in the loss of YouTube TV as its affiliate. Thus, all new Roku devices will lose YouTube access in their entirety, starting next month. Do you think this is bad? Well, there are rumours and speculations that even Amazon Prime Video will leave the TV streaming service in some time.
Now, according to recent reports, Roku has officially announced to drop support for all private channels on its service. This new change will come into effect by February next year. As mentioned in a report by Android Police, any user with a Roku device can install unlisted software with the dedicated code, however, these unlisted channels become a form of sideloading channels for your Roku TV. So, if an application or channel is not following Roku’s guidelines and is not offered by Roku officially on its channel store, users can still have access to those sideloaded channels by way of private access.
Unsurprisingly, the report confirms that most of this content is pornographic videos that were otherwise not available on Roku’s official channel list. PornHub, one of the biggest porn platforms in the world could get its content on Roku devices just by providing users with its publicly listed channel code. However, as bad news strikes, Roku has officially announced to cut on private channels, beginning next year which means no more pornographic content for adults having Roku devices and multiple other adult services are going away as well.
In the company’s latest developer conference, it unveiled the new “independent Developer Kit” that will allow developers to create channels without having the standard SDK. There will be official channels and Beta Channels that are replacing the private channel listings, previously available to all Roku users, according to the report by Android Police. The report further confirms that pornographic content will not be available on Roku devices post-March 1st, 2022.
Why did Roku take such a step, especially during such tough times? Roku recently lost YouTube TV and is on the verge of losing Amazon Prime Video as well, Pornographic adult content or private channel listings were the only thread keeping things together for Roku, why would it do this?
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.