Your Amazon Fire TV Stick Is About To Lose Access To All Of These Streaming Apps

The vanilla streaming experience for Amazon Fire TV users is changing in a lot of ways in the near future. AI, piggybacking atop the next-gen Alexa+ assistant, is adding a whole bunch of new features. The company has also started migrating its new hardware to the Linux-based VegaOS foundations. But in its bid to rethink the film and TV experience, Amazon is also plugging some loopholes. Pirated content happens to be one of the long-standing issues that Amazon is finally trying to fix — for good — starting with the bread-and-butter Fire TV Stick.

To begin, Amazon is cutting down on a wide range of apps that have allowed users to illegally view movies and TV content that is available on other streaming platforms with a subscription attached to it. Now, these apps are not usually available via official app stores, including Amazon's own. However, thanks to the underlying Android architecture, users have been able to side-load these streaming apps that often host films and TV shows that are otherwise available to stream or rent on other legitimate services.

The clampdown on these illicit streaming apps on the Fire TV Stick will take effect following a software update. Notably, Amazon will not only block apps that have been installed from other sources, but will also comb through its own official store to remove such applications. A report from BGR notes that Stremio, Magis, and CyberFlix could be among the first wave of apps to experience the purge for facilitating pirated content streaming. Amazon hasn't shared an official list of all the apps that it's blocking, but it's going to be a long-drawn-out battle against bad actors who keep building new resources that host pirated content.

So far, Amazon has only let users download apps from its eponymous application store, a rule that applies to the Fire TV hardware and the tablets sold under the same brand name. However, workarounds have existed for a while now, allowing users to download app packages from third-party repositories. But it seems Amazon has had enough of these shady apps, which not only eat into its own revenue but also the streaming industry in general. The purge has already begun as of November this year, with France and Germany being the first countries to witness the anti-piracy cleansing.

"We'll now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our app store," the company said in a statement to The Athletic. To set the plans into motion, Amazon has joined forces with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) to deploy the coalition's Trusted Notifier system. The latter will allow Amazon to identify and block software that has already been flagged. Moreover, the blocking will be enforced at the device level. That means if you're planning to use a VPN and skirt around the regional rules, it will be a futile attempt. ACE has already successfully closed down illegal streaming apps like Streameast and FMovies.

Down the road, Amazon will have eliminated the loophole, as the company tightens its grip at the very foundation level. Instead of using Android's open source code to develop the software running atop its streaming gear, Amazon has now shifted to VegasOS. The new Fire TV Stick 4K Select is among the first devices that run the new Linux-based operating system and strictly limit app downloads to Amazon's app store. Aside from the ethical concerns, downloading apps from third-party resources often leaves devices vulnerable to malware, so there's that risk, as well.