Netflix says people just kind of rolled over and accepted the password sharing crackdown
Netflix subscriptions are up almost 6 million this quarter, suggesting we're all just too exhausted to fight this stuff
Aux News Netflix
A stirring and inspirational testimonial in favor of the raw power of apathy today, as Netflix revealed that, for the most part, customers just sort of rolled over and took the company’s recent push to crack down on password sharing. News of the general spiritual capitulation comes as Netflix announces its intention to make its increased enforcement on sharing accounts as planetary as it can, pushing the initiative into holdouts of resistance like India, Indonesia, Croatia, and Kenya.
All of this is per THR, reporting on a Q2 earnings report from the streaming company, which announced that subscriber numbers increased by 5.9 million globally during the crackdown period, bringing the sum total of subscribers up to 238.4 million. (For those of you without a calculator, that means roughly 3 percent of the planetary population is actively subscribed to Netflix at the moment.) Netflix also stated that “The cancel reaction was low,” and said it succeeded in converting “borrower households” (ugh) into full-fledged subscribers. The company also says people sighed and sucked up its new program that allows users to add outside-the-home members to their plans for $7.99 a month, although that particular olive branch won’t be offered to users in the countries about to face the streaming boot, apparently because they already pay lower prices for the service anyway.
Netflix has been talking about slamming the door on password sharing since pretty much the same moment it realized it had reached a saturation point in most of its markets. (It’s hard, after all, to feed corporate America’s insatiable desire for growth when everybody who’s going to buy your product already has it.) The company hesitated on pulling the trigger on password sharing in the United States for a couple of years, though, as it tested out the program in markets like South America in hopes of finding the most rage-tranquilizing ways to roll it out. The news comes as the company is also continuing to push viewers toward its ad-supported tier, with the company removing its “Basic” ad-free plan earlier today.
226 Comments
The conversation in my house was, “screw this we’re canceling – wait new Witcher? Shit!” They timed that perfectly, tbh.
You kept Netflix to watch The Witcher? Might be the scariest thing I heard all day.
People have different tastes. Don’t be insulting.
People are allowed to make fun of TV shows. Don’t be overly sensitive.
Damn, a tame joke like this is considered an insult now?
Always has been.
I used to live with r*tards too so I get it
Ha! My husband has actually suggested timing his dropping the subscription to the departure of Mr Cavill.
How many of those are from corporations buying “subscriptions” as part of bundles and not actual individual people purchasing them?
I’d be more curious to see active user engagement than subscription numbers.If the average home is anything like us, Netflix is now one of the last services we access, if nothing seems watchable. We still have the subscription but we rarely use it these days.
Netflix also offered cheaper subscription tiers at the same time. (Which I haven’t even actually experienced, I still have people across the country using my UHD tier.)To sum it up:1. Notice people are sharing the cheapest subscriptions with the fewest screens.2. Crack down on the cheapest subscriptions with the fewest screens.3. Offer cheaper alternatives than the cheaper subscription.4. Watch people who didn’t want to pay for your cheapest subscription pay for an even cheaper subscription now that they can/have to.
How dare Netflix make customers pay to watch their content?
They have always done that. Now they’re making customers pay more to have access to less content, and also even more if you don’t want to look at commercials, and also even more if you have friends or family members who don’t live in the same house as you, and also if you ever travel, fuck you, you can’t access the content even though you paid for it.
Maybe if everyone who watched Netflix actually PAID for it, they’d not have to raise prices so much so often.
Password sharing has been a thing since Netflix instant first began, yet Netflix’s revenue went up every year for a decade, even though password-sharing steadily increased right alongside it.
The real reason they’re in crisis is a combination of the Hollywood strike, and the $14 billion of debt they’ve voluntarily taken on in an effort to endlessly crank out expensive-looking content so their investors won’t get nervous.
But sure, let’s blame some dude in Nebraska who wants to share his password with grandma so she can watch The Crown.
She grandma be allowed to use Mr. Nebraska’s cable subscription from her house as well? I don’t get why Netflix is any different from any other service. It’s great that we’ve been able to essentially get free stuff for all this time, but no one should be surprised they finally said “enough.”
Not the same thing, because of the underlying tech. Cable was literally a physical connection into your house. Netflix is a website, accessible from anywhere in the world.
This has been an absolute PR clusterfuck for them from the get-go, even setting aside the fact that they quite literally encouraged sharing passwords until recently. They did a poor rollout of the announcement, and it’s still not even entirely clear where or how it’s enforced.
The simple solution was just to let everyone share passwords as much as they want, and charge for simultaneous uses on an account. Base account is $15, $3 each additional user. Or to completely block simultaneous use. You and your partner want to watch things in separate rooms? Too bad- buy two accounts. Pandora does that and it works fine- it gives you a little message when two people try to use the same account asking who should get to use it.
This has been an absolute PR clusterfuck for them from the get-go, even setting aside the fact that they quite literally encouraged sharing passwords until recently. They did a poor rollout of the announcement, and it’s still not even entirely clear where or how it’s enforced.Ah, that explains why they added so many subscriptions…A bunch of children throwing a tantrum on Twitter does not a “PR clusterfuck” make.
lol
Maybe if you didn’t mouth off so much and you weren’t such a stupid shitty kid, daddy wouldn’t have beaten and molested you
then cancel and let the market decide. but that didn’t happen did it?
You’re conflating two things. Charging more to avoid commercials or for more content is one thing. You can decide if that higher subscription price point is worth it to you. I’ve never had trouble accessing my account from hotels either.But with sharing they’re saying “yeah we let this slide for a long time, congrats on being able to pile a bunch of people onto your account while it lasted, but that party’s over.” Any rational person running a business would make the same decision.
“also even more if you have friends or family members who don’t live in the same house as you”
Those are called adults.
They can buy their own Netflix.
Yes, you can. Stop making things up. And my kids can use their log-ins in college. I pay for top tier Netflix, and it’ s$20/month for 5 family. Haven’t had an issue.
stop licking the boots of communism. granted, the boots were free, but you don’t have to lick them.
As others around here have said, there’s some nuance to this frustration — not everyone was “stealing,” and some were simply traveling. My job sends me to different towns that can be 100+ miles apart, and I bring a laptop to my hotel room each night. The company now treats me like a thief, but actually it’s a fairly common lifestyle. Imagine if cell phone companies charged you extra every time you travel to a different area code. The whole concept of a cell phone wouldn’t work as well.
Have you tried logging in on your laptop? For some reason I was able to do so on a shared account even when I couldn’t on my television.
I’m not talking about using another person’s account. *I* am the account holder, it’s in my name, it’s paid automatically with my credit card in my name.
As long as you log into your account at least monthly at your home base or whatever they’re referring to as essentially your billing address, there shouldn’t be any issue at all, at least on mobile devices. People who have smart TVs or other streaming devices seem to be the ones who are getting hit by this, as they never have the chance to connect at that point at all.
Cell phones used to charge a very expensive “roaming fee” when you went out of your area code. It was changed over time to a more expensive base rate. It’s always about corporate profit and shareholders.
Imagine if cell phone companies charged you extra every time you travel to a different area code. The whole concept of a cell phone wouldn’t work as well.Once upon a time, they did.They called it “roaming charges.”
Are you gone from your home for more than a month at a time? If not, you don’t have to worry about it…
Long distance calling rates was such as hassle. I still have two work phone numbers with different area codes because otherwise we used to be charged long distance rates for calling people within the state.
You mean like they used to? That is kind of the general idea behind roaming. It’s not exactly the same, but in the before times if you went out of your cellular network you got dinged.
Uhhh…cell companies did and do charge more for using your phone outside your home area (depending on plan)…it’s called Roaming…😁
people traveling are not hampered by this.
Tethnically they want everyone to pay more for less.Basic math and all that
How dare customers complain about paying more when they didn’t have to for years.
When you car insurance goes up do you not complain? When you phone bill goes up do you not complain? Why do you want those to stay the same price but not Netflix to stay the same? I smell a hypocrite.
I think a lot of the issue is that they are expecting people to pay for Netflix’s own-produced content, much of which is abject drek. If they were still a repository of all things good from years gone by it would be justified, but most of their “Originals” are anything but, as shown by the rate at which these half-formed blurtings are cancelled. We dropped from a multiple device plan to a single device plan after about three years subscribed because there just wasn’t enough that we (as a couple) wanted to watch separately that we couldn’t fit around each other…bluntly I had gone back to other sources and hadn’t logged in for months, so we dropped multi-device; my husband still watches a few series, but the number of those is falling by the month. Now the single person subscription keeps increasing in price and the content offering keeps declining in quality, it’s likely we will bin the whole thing in the next couple of years.
They never notified me or started charging me more, despite three other households sharing from me.Should I just shut up and enjoy it while it lasts? I’m actually kind of eager for an excuse to cancel Netflix; it’s only for my friends/family that I still have it.
Same boat here. I finally got a notice recently about the “option” to add users, but you can just breeze by it. My shared users use it more than me, as I tend to put things on my Plex account now. As compromises go, it seems fair to have Netflix be like the annoying Windows “You really want to update to Windows 11, don’t you? C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it” and me just saying “Nah, I’m cool” and ignore them every few weeks.
Ha. Ha. On the Windows 11 thing, that annoys me every time I restart.
Speaking as an early adopter of Windows 11, just do it. It’s a very incremental upgrade, and what they did change, I like (although I wish they’d make up their mind already and go with either Settings or Control Panel rather than keeping both).
My friend still has the top tier. even tho I work out of state all the time, I still use it. I’m able to watch on my tablet…and my phone.Purchased a USB to HDMI converter cable Haven’t tried it yet, but hopefully That will work. Since I travel with the infamous GOOGLeTV, casting from my phone, etc doesn’t seem to work.
My interest in Netflix was also for Witcher season 3 as well. Once that’s done, I don’t care anything about netflix. Season 3 so far is 1 thumb down. Season 4, um, 2 thumbs down. 😂HBO just moved a ton of content to Tubi/Roku channel for free…if you don’t mind watching commercials..kind of like Netflix 😂. I’d rather do that than PAY to watch commercials. And from my experience it seems Tubi has less commercials than Hulu .I’m tired of paying for cash grabs.
Pay tom cruise $2 or $4 million less per movie and distribute that among the other workers.Problem solved.
“People” might have, but I didn’t. I have the 4k UHD subscription, saved myself 20 bucks a month and cancelled it all. If I ever go back, it will be for a month at a time to watch a glut of stuff and get rid of it again. I’m not going to sit on a yearly deal with them when I can’t share it with my family.
It’s honestly better, when you have subscription to different services, you never know what to watch anyway.
It’s better to subscribe to one, watch everything that interest you, and then move on to another service.
That’s been my approach to Hulu since day 1.
I can understand arguing in favor of, for example, allowing a child going off to college to share a password without additional charge to the account, but the general vibe I get from these articles is “how dare they crack down on any password sharing with anyone??!?” Netflix is a huge corporation driven by the dictates of modern-day capitalism to strive for increasing growth in every quarter, and there’s certainly lots of things to criticize there, but apparently arguing that they ought to allow passwords to be shared without restriction seems like a petty, selfish hill to die on.
Netflix used to cost less, be easier to access, and be friendly toward customers who travel.Now Netflix is harder to access, hostile to customers who travel, and costs more.It’s not “petty and selfish” to be annoyed at the obnoxious tech trend of charging customers more money for intentionally diminished service.
Then cancel. It’s easy. Netflix is not a necessity. If it’s as bad as you say, why did 6 million more people decide they needed Netflix?
“If people have a problem with a company making everything worse with time, they should just cancel the service/stop buying the product instead of complaining”. Uh how about no, I’m very much going to complain about predatory business practices.
You’ve got something like 6 alternatives. This isn’t “predatory”. There’s no gouging, no scarcity, none of that.
I say do both. I think voting with your feet is important, but calling out this kind of thing is as well.
predatory business practicespassword sharingUh, what.
Where did I say to stop complaining? . Keep complaining, but cancel the product, too. We can do both things, you know.
how are you prey? you can just cancel. done. problem solved. you aren’t entitled to anything.
“Uhhhhh company is popular that means company is good and always right” Come on, buddy, make an effort next time.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, “STOP GIVING THEM YOUR MONEY!” You can obviously complain, too, but if 6+ million people are rolling over for Netflix by subscribing, there’s no reason for Netflix to listen to the complaints, is there?
Fair enough, but I never said I was giving them my money.
True, but enough people are, for their subscriber numbers to go up six million. I assume at least one person in this comment section complaining is still subscribed to them. They should stop subscribing *and* complain!
then why do you care? this is like being mad that ferrari had a recall but you dont own a ferrari.
I have been thinking the same thing. this is such a first world problem and people just like to whine because they think everything should be free now. Also you can buy Netflix gift cards. Pay for a month at a time or when the show you like is back on. But stop all this complaining about something non essential.
There’s an entire generation of people who just have TV shows running in the background all the time, just constantly watching The Good Place or Arrested Development over and over again. Its why it was such a big story when NBC/Universal brought Friends and such back to Peacock.
I’ve got a roommate who pays for Netflix. I don’t pay for Netflix because, well, I don’t give a shit about Netflix. Anyway, he’s here near NYC for work, and commutes home to be with his wife and kids when he doesn’t have to be here. He can’t continue watching a show here because Netflix views it as two separate households (it is). However, the same guy is paying for the account can only watch content “at home.” Seems like a pain in the ass to me. Again, IDGAF about Netflix, but inconveniencing paying customers seems like a dick move, but they’ve got to maintain growth forever or they’ll die or something, so this is the situation.
that’s not how it works, you are ignorant. he can watch it wherever he wants if he has access to an account.
they’re literally inconveniencing the NON paying customers. are you paying attention to what is going on here?
Yes, we must only be mad when something is an absolute necessity. Anything else is childishness.
It would probably be easier to swallow if the actual underlying reason for it was more obvious: Netflix was operating at a big loss for a long time, but because they had continuous growth, investors were okay with waiting. Now the market is saturated, so investors want a return on their investment, which means cutting costs. Password sharing was never going to last forever.So generally, be mad at capitalism.
You can be mad at any -ism with this one. Netflix ran at a loss since launching streaming, in no small part due to sharing. Even if they were a not-for-profit operating to break even that couldn’t last forever.
I mean, if they were a not-for-profit they probably wouldn’t have been operating at a loss in the first place…? They would have chosen a different operating model, needing to be self-sustaining from the start. Unless they had, like, a huge endowment, but even then they’d have to be self-sustaining in the sense that they couldn’t spend more than they get from the endowment plus other revenue.
My point being that a swipe at capitalism has nothing to do with any entity taking steps to be financially self-sustaining.
good luck making that point here. this family of websites is a bunch of sjw cocksucking communists.literally cocksucking; this entire reader base, save 1% or so, has purple hair, goes by them/they and is either gay or a woman or on their way to be one.
It does when capitalism has led us to the dominant model being “growth at all costs, even if that leads to disaster down the road.”
To be fair, Netflix would just be another in a long list of reasons to be mad at capitalism (though most of the reasons are towards unchecked capitalism).
I think capitalism probably inevitably turns into unchecked capitalism. Capitalism leads to a concentration of wealth, and concentrated wealth allows you to manipulate the system much more easily, changing it to suit your own ends (in other words, making it easy for you to continue concentrating wealth even more).
What you mean is they turned the other cheek while thousands stole access to their service, and now they’ve turned around. The only thing wrong is that they let it go on for someone that ppl feel entitled.
thousands stole access to their service
Oh, stop being such a drama queen. Sharing is not stealing, especially not when the company literally invited people to do it for years.
It is not “feeling entitled” when they cut what was a feature and charge you more on top of that.
I’m sympathetic to the argument about customers who travel, but that’s a vanishingly small segment of the audience. My guess is 99%+ of hours streamed on Netflix is people watching on the same IP address they always do.
I don’t have netflix, but how is it hostile to customers who travel?
It’s not. People just like to complain
It’s not, unless you are gone for more than a month at a time. People just like to complain.
By way of a hysterical misinterpretation of the actual rules. If you’re traveling, you probably aren’t bringing your 72″ TV with you. Whatever you _are_ bringing with you, you log that device or devices into Netflix at home one time to register it, then you go on your way.I strongly doubt any of the people who were sharing my Netflix logon have signed up for their own paid service. After all, they still have my Amazon Prime, etc. And I downgraded my Netflix service from the top level to the middle one, since there will never again be more than two devices logged in to my service at home, even if one or both of us are traveling elsewhere with a registered device.The next time I visit my vacation home, which has a Roku TV, I will bring a registered Amazon Firestick from home and use that instead. Or stream from my phone or laptop. Then maybe I’ll bring that Roku TV home, register it on Netflix, and bring it back next time, which only works out well because it’s within driving distance. So I do have great sympathy for those whose second homes are so far away they can’t drive there, or whose TV’s are too big for their Escalade, and who can’t afford a Firestick or some other USB-drive-sized streaming device. Netflix is really fucking those people.
Simple answer: It isn’t.I travel for business and have absolutely zero issues logging into my own account on a hotel television or on my tablet and casting.What they MEAN is they stole someone else’s account and are now butthurt that a company that makes its revenue off of people using its service in good faith is asking for exactly that. Or they believe they’re entitled to streaming entertainment and are too cheap to put up $10 bucks a month-got to split that between the other three people you share a bedroom with!
it’s not, he’s just a fucktard. i travel all the time and this has ZERO impact on my billing or ability to use netflix.
I don’t think it’s “intentionally diminished” since that’s not much of a business strategy. I think that’s all part and parcel of trying to prevent people from essentially pirating their services.
I don’t think it’s “intentionally diminished” since that’s not much of a business strategy.
It’s an incredibly popular business strategy among tech companies. Get popular with a wide array of features, then gradually take those features away, then sell those features (which used to be free and which cost pennies to implement) back to the customer at an inflated price. Because that’s much easier than actually improving the product.This has been Apple’s whole business model since they got rid of the headphone jack, Twitter’s business model since Elon took over, and Netflix’s business model since whenever they began cracking down on password sharing.
trying to prevent people from essentially pirating their services. The people who want to pirate their services were already doing that before the password crackdown happened. It’s not like it’s hard. All this move does is punish the people who weren’t, which ironically makes them more likely to actually pirate.
There’s never justification for pirating. You don’t need entertainment. Cancel your subscription and get a VHF antenna for your TV.
this man understands what it means to be an adult and take responsibility for yourself.
Given the increasing amount of content we’re seen removed from services with no sign of it being offered elsewhere, I think there’s a case for piracy in some situations related to preservation of art.
Netflix used to cost less, be easier to access, and be friendly toward customers who travel.Not to mention, used to have a content library worth a shit.
Fortunately you have the ability to cancel your subscription!
stop licking the boothills of communism
when you can cancel instead of cry like a faggot, yes, crying like a faggot is petty
The thing is, they are taking away a perk that they used to explicitly allow.
Sounds like you felt entitled to something you never should have been (and admittedly they should not have fostered), and now you’re pissy because they’ve decided to finally act responsibly.
They also gave people a hell of a long runway to stop doing that, years in fact. There are changes in EULAs that go into effect billing cycle to billing cycle. In terms of predatory practices, this is one of the tamer ones…. and probably something that’s been against the EULA that every user has agreed to sign probably going on at least 5-6 years.
No, they implicitly allowed it. I don’t recall them saying “buy one subscription and share it with your friends and neighbors!” They just looked the other way. Sharing across a nuclear family while a kid is off at college or something is a different animal.
They explicitly encouraged it:
Fucking Kinja.
They encouraged it. Granted, they were coy about it, but it only proves they were planning to pull the rug eventually, which doesn’t make it any better from an user perspective.
implicitly*They never said you could, just they didn’t say you couldn’t.
I figured there was a chunk of people who were using someone else’s streaming service login because they literally could not afford to (someone with a very small paycheck who can only afford to pay for essentials, a college student who can’t fit in a job between classes), & the alternative was piracy– a thing some people are morally against or too terrified of getting arrested to do.
It’s 2 things 1. They used to allow it, even promoted it. Now they act like people have been cheating them, when users been playing by the rules they set down all along. They are within their business rights to do so, but acting like they are correcting a moral wrong is bullshit. I explicitly asked when I signed up if i could share the account with my mother, who lives in a different residence, and they said it was fine. Which leads us to …2. They said it was fine because the plans were priced by number of simultaneous logins, not where those logins took place. As long as I paid for two simultaneous logins, why should netflix give a shit where the people watching were? And they shouldn’t. It truly makes no difference to them if I am watching downstairs while she is watching upstairs, or if I am in my apartment across town, except it’s a new way to gouge money. Again, it’s their right, but words like “cracking down” implies they are correcting a wrong, which they are not.
This exactly!!
Preach brotha.
That’s the main kind of upsetting thing. I’m paying them for 4 simultaneous streams. Why should it matter where those streams physically are?
Exactly – I pay for four screens because I want to allow my daughter to watch at her mother’s, e.g. As soon as they want to ding me because my daughter watches a bunch when she’s not in my home is the day I reduce my subscription to two screens.In fact, the only thing keeping me subscribed is kids and the convenience of the service remembering where I left off on a particular series. I also pay a newsgroup provider and could download every Stranger Things episode I want if I ever cancel – if they also raise their prices for the two-screen option that may be the way to go for me.
Except Netflix used to advertise “love is sharing a password”
And back in the day, people used to say “the first hit is free, it costs after that..” meaning it’s a lure to try to get bodies in line. No one ever said this was something would last, it was more to just get people interested. So, when the time came up and they were making original content instead of showing old re-runs and old content they started showing new stuff, that they would want more money for it. Maybe they should have bought 20th century fox instead of Disney, and not made new content and then this might not have happened. But I doubt it.
I think you were on to something in the first half.Netflix is a company and companies only care about increasing profit, everything else be damned.IMO, that means we should treat companies as being hostile toward us. I mean, the property management cartels that so many of us have to rent from don’t give a shit if we end up on the street, they only care about getting as much money out of us as they “legally” can. And then they’ll lobby congress anyway to change laws so they can take more money.
I get that there’s some nuance. Surely, some password sharing is okay, but you shouldn’t share it with the whole block. On the other hand, I don’t think companies as big as Netflix are entitled to that kind of good faith.Too reiterate my point, if Netflix was a monopoly tomorrow, they would be figuring out just how much more money they could coax from their subscribers. I’m not even making some moral judgment about it, I’m saying that’s what they would do and it should inform how we engage them.
Look, there are more important places for this kind of scrutiny, but we need to be cutthroat when ANY of these guys try to pull something because if we give them an inch, they’ll lobby away what power the public still holds.
Yeah, those people were delusional. They thought one account should get their whole extended family of 100 free access.If you wanna be a cheap then just pirate it like everyone else, at least that way you aren’t stealing server traffic.
“arguing that they ought to allow passwords to be shared without restriction seems like a petty, selfish hill to die on.”
Yeah, No. Netflix used to actively encourage using an account across multiple households including but not limited to structuring plans that only made sense if you had a sprawling mansion or more realistically used one account for multiple households and posting regular social media posts encouraging password use across multiple households. They are engaging in historical revisionism when they now claim that they were always against it and people like you are falling for that lie hook line and sinker.
And so what? Read the T & C’s, genius.
Ah, so a company lied about approved use of their service, profited from it then pulled the rug from under users by then lying about what they did and you are just double-plus good on that. You should really try some mouthwash to get that boot taste out of your mouth.
can you come up with a better line than the whole bootlicker thing? it’s played out.company: this is how we operate, enjoy!customers: yay!company: now we operate this waycustomers: but you said…company: we did say, and now we’re saying this other thing. since you listened to what we said before, will you appreciate that things have changed and you can now make a decision of this most recent thing we said?customers: a;ehit.2l3j6.2kjb.akdjb.,kbdsv.ak1$!@$!$?!>$%
Perhaps if you’d get your tongue out of corporate ass then people would stop calling you out for being a simpering corporation apologist. Oh and the fact you seem to incur being called a bootlicker such a constant should make you consider that you are exactly the sad little bootlicker you come off as.
there’s a difference between NOT throwing an internet tantrum and acting like a victim, and “falling for that lie.”I just cancelled netflix. they dont owe me anything. i feel more compelled to call you fags out for crying on the internet than I do complaining about netflix price hikes. do you people have this same reaction anytime a price goes up? how do you live? lol. jesus christ.
Literally no-one here is throwing a “tantrum” or “acting like a victim”. A corporation lied and got caught in that lie and is being called out for it by their customers. If you don’t like it you can go cry somewhere else.
Real good look resorting to slurs by the way you insect of a man.
What’s wild is the other article about Netflix referred to college kids sharing their parents password as “adult children”. AV Club cannot pick a side with this one.
“Adult dependent” is probably a better title for college kids. I have one and financially he’s still entirely dependent upon me, but obviously has the legal right to do whatever he wants as an adult. “Adult child” just sounds like a layabout who lives in the basement.
This site can’t be bothered to spend 30 seconds proofreading articles they post, and you expect them to have a consistent style guide?
I’m not sure that would be a justifiable one since the whole reason they are getting butthurt about sharing is that those accounts cost more. Presumably having family members more or less living elsewhere for 4ish years and on the account makes it likely the account will consume more total content which means the company pays out more in royalties, server costs, etc. Still shitty when you have them championing sharing years ago.
Right, petty and selfish, unlike those generous corporations.
There’s a fairly easy solution if the sharing is with family members or close friends. As long as the streaming device connects to the ‘home’ network at least once a month, you won’t be flagged for password sharing. My brother has a shared account with my parents and he visits them at least once a month, and can then stream Netflix from his phone to his TV with no problems.
I mean I don’t know IMO if I am paying for a service, say Netflix, and my tier has 4 users max, then it shouldn’t matter WHERE those 4 users are. Say you always hang out at a friends/partners place, you should be able to watch there, or maybe you travel for work.
You can watch it there… you have to be able to log into your “home network” or whatever once a month on a device in order to then not have it recognized as mooching. They’re not gonna throw the ban hammer at you if you’re logged in at the Courtyard in Racine for a week.
“love is sharing a password”.
I think if you pay for 4 screens you should be allowed 4 screens np matter who is using the screens
Mostly because Netflix actively, literally encouraged sharing passwords at one point:
As someone who password shares, I thought the amount of people who were upset by it were a bit… Entitled? Like, you’re stealing. Don’t get me wrong, I support the stealing, but those who reacted with “Netflix is no longer letter me share passwords with another independent adult who lives states away?!” were a bit… Silly.
No, we weren’t stealing, we were paying for 4 or 5 user profiles, with no strings attached. Now that they saturated their user base they decided to attach strings. You might disagree that this is a dick move on their part, but that also doesn’t make us thieves retroactively. They are degrading the service the minute they can get away with it, and this is not on us.
Were “no strings attached” or did Netflix just not bother enforcing a rule that it’s always had in place?
Can you honestly say that you thought it was OK to share a password with someone who didn’t live anywhere near you?
Yes, I can. I pay extra for that. Works like this with Office, five licenses to install wherever. Why is this so hard to grasp? Netflix promised a different paradigm when they were the underdog. Now I guess they’d rather turn into cable or broadcast, if they could.
You pay more for extra members, or profiles? Because those are different things.
This point is moot, since they are now defined as “members of the same household”, wtf that mean. I any case, they grew up their market share using this semi-oficial perk, and now that they have nowhere else to grow, decided to eat that pie too. Their right, but still a dick move. To say they “never allowed” is to say that the Hitachi massager is ONLY for back massage. We know it is not, they know it is not, everybody knows why they buy it. Imagine if Hitachi did officially enter the dildo scene and somehow disables the original massager when used as a sex toy? Dick move, of the entirely wrong kind.
100%
Is Netflix paying you or something? No one is going to reward you for trying to spin this in their favour. People are so strange honestly.
To be fair, how would they know I’m not watching Netflix anymore?
I believe it. People are cowards these days. Just fat soda drinking sheep.
Sharing devices in the same home is reasonable, imo. If you’re giving passes to anyone you know or kids who live elsewhere… that doesn’t seem reasonable. Consistently raising prices isn’t something I like.
The bottom line number that matters and will judge the success or failure of the crackdown is revenue. We did not cancel, but instead went from the $20 a month plan to the $7 a month plan. The two adults (grown children that no longer live with us) that were sharing have not signed up for their own accounts.Netflix lost $$ with us – and how many of “us” are there? So let’s see some revenue numbers, not just brag on subscribers.BTW, Netflix used to advertise “love is sharing a password”
There are very few of you, I’d guess.
Their business model also changed pretty significantly since they encouraged password sharing. One day they realized they needed to stop having astronomically high losses, and then actually making money made a tangible difference.
Ironically, they’re the only streaming company making a profit at the moment.
By supplementing their prestige programs with a bunch of really cheap reality show dreck that might get them more eyeballs then all the things they spend gobs of money on producing.
and now they don’t. since you were able to swallow and comprehend those words last time, why can’t you wrap your head around this?
Seems reasonable, theft is theft – and if you try and spin it another, then you are condoning theft.
The rules of their services are pretty clear, don’t like them? Leave…
You mean their rules like this? “Love is Sharing a Password”.
but they changed the rules. theft may be theft, or whatever, but if you spend 10 years telling me something isn’t theft, and actively encourage me doing it, then turn around and go ‘actually this thing is bad’…that’s certainly LESS resonable.and i did leave.
There product, they get to make the rules… and you voted with your feet…
Get that corporate cock out of your mouth
You must have been a master debator at HS – and presumably are comfortable being a thief
Attempted obfuscation noted – and dismissed! #BlessYourHeart /s
Piracy is a victimless crime.
I actually canceled Netflix last month for several reasons, including this one. I’m sure I’m not the only person who canceled. And, based on the experience, I don’t think they care about losing subscribers.
The enshitification of streaming is allowed largely because of consumer apathy. We probably should have seen it coming. The success of streaming was based on convenience. Consumers don’t want to do extra work to get what they want and then wait for it.
They also don’t want to subscribe to five services to have consistent access to enough quality content.
If only that were enough. The fact that subscriptions picked up after Netflix went after password sharing suggests that having a bunch of services that do and have less for us is not a huge issue for a good number of consumers.
Fair point. Clearly enough people would have been paying for Netflix if they weren’t getting it for free off someone else’s account.
The succes was also based on not having a dozen streaming services
It’s true. Not competing helped, but now everyone acts like they’re locked in.
And so much money was poured into streaming services, now companies want to see a good revenue stream from it. And it’s never enough with publicly-traded companies, stockholders want to see constant growth year after year.
Both you and the main post mention apathy, but it’s actually the opposite. Consumers are actively choosing to sign up and pay for accounts now that they lost access through password sharing. Apathy would be doing nothing and losing access.
Apathy doesn’t mean lazy or inactive. It means not caring. As in, “Yeah, they’re making things worse, but whatever I’m used to this.”
I see what you’re saying, apathetic toward the price increase. I thought you meant apathetic toward receiving Netflix.
“Too exhausted to fight this stuff”? Here’s a novel idea…pay the price set by the company…or don’t…the “middle ground” isn’t stealing and then justifying it by saying it’s not stealing because “its digital” or “Netflix is successful enough” or “Reed Hastings has too much money”. It just smacks of bullshit. If someone broke into you home and stole your TV and the criminal said he was justified because he can’t afford his own TV…tell me you wouldn’t want him punished just the same. You guys have to grow up.
It’s not stealing, it’s sharing.If you take my TV I no longer have my TV, can’t watch done.However if my brother uses my password, (which was allowed) we both, operative word both, can enjoy.
How about because NETFLIX FUCKING ENCOURAGED IT. You are one stupid fuck. “Love is Sharing a Password”.
You must be a conservative.
I’m still able to use my shared Netflix account. I thought I’d be cut off but so far, no issues. Is this univerally enforced yet?
I use to pay for a sub (that I shared with my family). Nobody was using it.
Now I use my girlfriend’s account, I still barely use it.
My Disney+ sub is also coming to an end, not going to miss it either.
The only way to go about this is to subscribe to 1 service, and only one, use it for a few months and move on to the next. None of those services are worth being subscribed all year.
You just hit on one issue, that there are so many streaming services now it’s become more expensive than the cable they were supposed to replace. No one of them has enough content to really justify their existence, with the possible exception of Disney.
Yeah, and it spread the costs of the programming you wanted to watch by also carrying programming you didn’t want to watch.
And you all hated it.
Not me. I still have cable (well, ATT direct TV stream but it’s the same thing from a programming perspective). Get HBO Max free with the subscription, Prime because we use the free expedited shipping constantly, and so only actually pay for Netflix. But if we dumped the TV subscription it would likely cost just as much for far less content from various independent services.
Even Disney doesn’t have the library unless you have kids to entertain.
That’s really what I meant – access to children’s entertainment.
only a tool subscribes to and pays for more than 1 service at a time
No not even disney, unless you want to rewatch the same thing again and again, the new content they release every month is not really worth it.
Streaming services were never “supposed” to replace cable (and I’m pretty sure that’s why you still have cable). And at any rate, there is no mandate to subscribe to all of them at the same time. People have been begging cable companies to let them pay for cable channels a la carte; streaming services are basically that.
Cord cutting is 100% a thing. But with everyone pulling their content back to their own platforms it’s much less viable than it was a few years ago.
No, I understand that cord cutting is a thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s what streaming services were “supposed” to do. Consumers were dissatisfied with cable companies for years before streaming even became a thing. There was basically a segment of the market eager to cut the cord as soon as there was any viable alternative. If all you’re saying is that it’s no longer viable, I still strongly disagree*, but there’s a reason streaming is adding up to “as much as cable”: the cost of producing entertainment has not actually gone down. You can’t just have as much entertainment as either cable or streaming provided (legally) without paying for it.*The ability to choose which services to subscribe to is still an overwhelming net good for consumers at a net cost for workers.
This is the way.
And with that in mind, I think these subscriber numbers might eventually prove illusory as more people do exactly what you’re doing. People signed up, but will they be retained? For example, I am one of the six million “new” subscribers in this group. But I’m only a new subscriber because I was a longtime subscriber who cut off my subscription last year after the rates went up. I resubscribed last month, with the intention of keeping it for two months, catching up on stuff in my queue, then cancelling again. So essentially, Netflix’s rate hikes succeeded in converting me from a 10+ year all-the-time subscriber (at about $200/year now) into a sometimes subscriber who maybe pays for four months out of every year (about $70 total). At this point, the only services that I have year-round are those that I get at a special rate, usually through Black Friday or New Years’ specials: Hulu ($24/year), AMC+ ($24/year), Peacock Premium ($30/year). Everything else is month-to-month, and I set reminders to cancel services I’m not using.
Lol bullshit
Who are these people? I don’t know anyone who went and made a new account
The subheadline here is hilarious. We’re “too exhausted” to fight this stuff? When “fighting” is canceling a subscription?
Don’t forget this also has a huge impact on children with divorce parents that have more then 1 home; Netflix already costs enough this whole Netflix household thing is stupid
Is rolling over the reason why I share my media server with 30+ people? Don’t think so.
No…no they did not. What they DID do is relearn how to pirate things or get them from their library. A library card and a library that can get things from other libraries is the ultimate screw you to Netlix and any streaming service AND it increases circulation numbers for your local library.
The Netflix catalogue is not in great shape. There’s very little on there I have any interest in. We have it because my partner puts on awful dreck for background noise.
Do we actually believe them, though? They never release proof of anything.
I was on my mom’s account when the sharing crackdown happened here and I phoned her and told her how upset I was and said that I didn’t want Netflix anymore to try and persuade her to cancel her Netflix subscription in protest as well. Consumers have power right!?
She phoned my a couple days later telling me she added me to her account again and she’s paying for it so I better activate it. Ugh
Simple, people will keep it if it’s worth it to them. Also, “business mentality” goes both ways.Neither the seller or buyer are in it for charity, we both have our reasons for wanting and selling this service.
This is it though. They will gain subscribers now for maybe a couple of months and all the boomers who realized they could be added to their children’s accounts for 8 bucks are going to cancel. They wont gain any after 2023.
I don’t believe them. They get by on not revealing any real data in every direction, there should be regulations that force transparency so that we don’t have to just go by the word of these companies.
Just curious – on what basis should they be required to tell you all the data? Like why do you feel you have the right to know that information about a private company?
Who convinced you that corporations deserve privacy? All they do is leverage that privacy to screw over consumers and employees. The obvious basis for that requirement would be to empower customers and employees.
Slow down partner. I never said they do, I was asking for your thought process. Not sure how knowing that data “empowers” you, but you go girl.
Slow down partner. I never said they do, I was asking for your thought process.This is always such a bizarre act that people like you do. Obviously you had a reason to ask such an asinine question. Own up to your opinions instead of this unconvincing show. Not sure how knowing that data “empowers” you, but you go girl.It takes a deep dishonesty to pretend that there’s any value in allowing corporations to lie to the public for their own gain. You probably imagine yourself profiting from such dishonesty.
Sorry you got triggered, snowflake. Maybe put the meth down?
I don’t believe them. No one gives a shit, pal. And if you had bothered to read the article, you would know that this is an earnings report for a publicly traded company. You generally don’t want to fudge those unless you’d like a visit from the SEC.
“They used to allow a thing and now they won’t allow it any more!”*cue temper tantrum*Netflix is not a monopoly. No one is forcing anyone to use them. They’re not even an essential service.Grow the fuck up, people. Cancel and subscribe to something else.
Not I. I am back on the high seas. I really do thank Netflix as I trimmed all my streaming services and have more money for useful things.
And now they axed the 9.99 tier
This article makes the writer sound bitter he can’t use Daddy’s Netflix password anymore
The issue I have always had with this is that it will set a precedent with the rest of the subscription industry. Seeing as how they were one of the frontiers. Look at Costco. Only took them a few weeks to start cracking down on membership sharing – even if you live in the same household. More will do the same. The last thing any of us want right now is even more expenses.
I moved to the $9.99 and have one foot out the door. After I finish Witcher I’m probably going to cancel.
It took long enough but streaming companies finally realized that making your own content costs money. Password crackdowns were easy and didn’t spark the backlash everyone was predicting. The next big fight. Advertising. I think a lot of people will and already do opt for a few adds if it means a cheaper monthly cost. The question is what’s more profitable; the total number of users who pay for a premium subscription with no adds vs the number of users who pay for a cheaper subscription + the add revenue from advertisers. And if streamers can prove there are more eyeballs watching the adds they may be able to get more from the advertisers. Hate to say it but if it makes money the low tier of streaming services is going to look more like cable
etwork television. And expect to pay more for a premium ad free service.
I don’t know why they didn’t do something similar to Now TV where you can register 5/6 devices to watch on but can only change a device twice a year.That way, you can’t share it too widely but still get to use the number of simultaneous streams under each tariff. (Eg. You pay for 4 streams, register 4 devices)
I’m really going to start trying hard to burn through my queue on this service so that I can finally get rid of it. It’s not worth it to keep around for one or two shows a year that miraculously haven’t been cancelled yet. Funny how they can brag about having record years and quarters and still not publish viewing data, pay residuals to the actors of the shows being streamed the most (like how cable used to work), or pay its writers enough to withstand more than one season of a show that doesn’t go viral.
Speaking only for myself, I’m still watching on my friend’s account, though I’m not really watching much because Netflix has neither the licensed library nor the original content to merit opening the app more than once or twice a year.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I suspect most people have wised up and only keep 1 or 2 active subscriptions and then move around to something else when the content has exhausted. Up next, mandatory annual subscriptions!
I cancelled mine. Thanks for being spineless I guess.
So, I haven’t paid for Netflix for three years now. They finally caught on (I had switched from credit card to PayPal), and I get a notice to update my payment option yet I still have access to watch content. LOL I wonder how long that will last.
Count my family among the ones who cancelled. Military families like ours really get screwed by their new scheme. Users have to log into their home wifi every once in a while with the device you want to use, and if you get deployed, that’s impossible. Netflix’s take is pretty much “too bad.” It was only 7.99 when we started, and now it’s 20 if you want the best quality, plus more if you’re sharing with family or friends. Content quality has diminished too. Prices will keep going up and quality will keep going down as users subsidize Netflix’ experiments in areas that they don’t care about. That last price hike? Funding mobile games that nobody asked for or wants. Haven’t missed Netflix in a long time.
I don’t think the new sub numbers tell the full story. I cancelled, but I know others downgraded to the ad-supported or 9.99 tier. There’s a reason they phased out the lowest ad-free plan and the timing is not a coincidence. My guess is they make more money over-all on the ad-supported tier versus the lowest ad-free tier and many people have made the shift to the cheaper plans, or started their own low tier plan. My bet is revenue is down overall, but you’re never going to get the full story from them given they want to paint the narrative that people just rolled over and accepted their password sharing crackdown to give others the OK to roll-over thinking they’ve lost the battle.6 million new subs out of the 100 or so million they said were leeching off the service is not that impressive, and is even less impressive when you factor in how many people downgraded or cancelled.
The coming months are gonna be more telling as I suspect people are gonna be more liberal with cancellation once they’ve exhausted content any given month, instead of keeping their accounts active for family/friends who can no longer access them.
Voting with your feet is a lot easier when the product/service is fungible (and now everyone knows this word thanks to NFTs). If one day we get some sort of parity on streamers, by whatever enlighted model that can remunerate creators regardless of the distribution, the well get real competition. Right now we have feuds of contents, and if you want (legal) access to it, you have to bend over. Blame the game, capitalist is evil, yeah, sure . But absolutely blame the player, they are being dicks the minute they decided they can get away with it, and it is OK to be mad. Being in a crooked distribution ecosystem does not absolve them!
That’s because you can just click I am traveling so it doesn’t really do anything to prevent people from sharing accounts
“A stirring and inspirational testimonial in favor of the raw power of apathy today, as Netflix revealed that, for the most part, customers just sort of rolled over…”How is that math working out for you? Nothing supports that claim at all. Netflix said over 100 million accounts were sharing with multiple people. Even if we assumed only TWO additional people were using each account (which we ALL know isn’t necessarily yhe case, as many people share with friend groups and entire families), that’s still 200 million additional accounts they wanted to convert.They got 6 million. Even if 50 million of those households cancelled their accounts, that would be making 150 million+ people now without Netflix. Then of those 150 million, only 56 million went back and made their own accounts.Or more realistically, maybe very few people actually cancelled (the ones who paid or controlled the accounts just kept using but pushed others off) and we had had 200+ million users who were mooching off of other accounts now without Netflix. And out of those numbers, only 3% actually went and started up an account. And realistically, some of these Netflix accounts are being shared by way more people but there’s no way to get specific numbers on that.The only thing we can be sure of is that they either had tons of cancellations and a small to modest amount of people making their new accounts or they had few cancellations and converted almost no one to their own solo accounts. Or somewhere in between. Either way, it absolutely demonstrates that many millions of people who used to have Netflix no longer have Netflix.
Maybe just pay for the things you want?
This a lie. I know mad people who canceled netflix
most people accepted it because most people are adults and most people dont come to this website to cry and bitch about every single fucking slight they can think of.this family of websites is a perpetual victim factory.
“People”. Speak for yourself. I’ll never pay for that slop.
They aren’t true subscriptions. They give you the option to add someone on at $7, and it’s added on to your subscription – but it makes them make an account. That’s how they’re counting these ‘subs’.