In a closed-door meeting at Disney’s streaming division, Andre Rohe, the company’s executive vice president of product engineering, offered his colleagues a new term for a familiar folly. Employees, he said, should not be “tokenmaxxing” — a coinage that describes the indiscriminate use of artificial intelligence tools regardless of whether they actually improve productivity. The neologism, reported by Business Insider, was part of a broader push to clarify the Mouse House’s AI ambitions, including an in-house ad tool that product and tech chief Adam Smith recently called “one of the clearest areas where we’re really making traction.” The moment was small, but it crystallised a shift inside the world’s most storied entertainment company: after years of subscriber-chasing, the new mantra is efficiency.

That pivot is visible in the organisational charts now circulating among Disney staff. Smith, who joined from YouTube in September 2024, has eight direct reports and has delivered updates on a “super app” vision that folds Hulu into Disney+, alongside a reorganisation of commerce and data teams. The strategy is already yielding results. According to Nielsen data, Disney’s streamers posted their best month versus Netflix in nearly a year in March 2026, while cancellation rates for Disney+ and Hulu remain below 4%, the lowest in the business except for Netflix itself. Yet the drive to narrow the gap with the market leader is also playing out in courtrooms: a $50 million partial settlement in a class-action lawsuit alleges that Disney used its control of ESPN to force YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream into pricier packages, a claim the company denies.

While American conglomerates fine-tune their algorithms and legal defences, the content that fills their platforms is increasingly drawn from unexpected corners. In Argentina, the Disney+ top 10 on a recent Saturday was dominated by the Avatar franchise and Toy Story films, but also featured the animated series X-Men ’97. Over on Netflix, Argentine viewers were flocking to a Turkish miniseries, Un fuerte aplauso (A Strong Applause), a six-episode existential comedy that uses dark humour to dissect family, anxiety and identity — a stark departure from the melodramatic tropes that first carried Turkish dramas across borders. Elsewhere, the Indian series Super Subbu, about a timid virgin who becomes a sex-education teacher, was gaining traction through word of mouth, while the Spanish psychological drama Vladimir, starring Rachel Weisz as a professor caught in an obsessive fixation, was being recommended as a weekend binge. These titles, none of them global blockbusters, illustrate how streaming has become a bazaar of niche sensibilities, where a hit in one language can quietly amass a following on another continent.

Beneath this abundance, however, a quiet unease is spreading among consumers. Research cited by the Russian outlet Meduza found that Americans underestimate their monthly subscription spending by a factor of two and a half — guessing $86 on average when the real figure is $219. In Russia, a survey by YuMoney and Rosgosstrakh revealed that 22% of respondents only notice a subscription charge after it has been deducted, and just 6% actively manage their payments. The fatigue is not merely anecdotal; it is structural, as economist Neil Mahoney argues, because “one payment won’t ruin anyone’s finances — so it’s easy to forget.” This psychology is now colliding with an influencer economy that, according to the DeRev 2026 report, is worth €425 million in Italy alone. Yet even here, the logic of efficiency is taking hold: celebrity cachets are falling for the third consecutive year, while mid-tier creators with smaller but more engaged audiences are commanding rising fees. Brands, analysts in Milan note, no longer want reach for its own sake; they want measurable return.

On a Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires, a viewer scrolling through Netflix’s top 10 might pause on Contrarreloj, a German-produced action thriller, or the Argentine film La ira de Dios, a psychological drama about a woman convinced her former boss is orchestrating her family’s deaths. The choice is vast, the cost seemingly trivial. But somewhere in the background, a payment is being processed, an algorithm is learning, and a Disney engineer is reminding colleagues not to tokenmaxx. The word, half-joke and half-directive, lingers as a fitting emblem for an industry that is learning, perhaps too late, that more is not always better.