Super cool new tech firm wants to use A.I. to narc on you for sharing your Netflix password
Aux Features TVThere aren’t a whole lot of issues that every American is willing to stop screaming at each other and just agree about at this point, but we can think of at least one that we’re pretty sure most people would be happy to see enshrined in the U.S. Constitution: The idea—nay, the principle—that it’s a god-damn, god-given right for every person on the planet to share (and make use of) their friends and family’s various collection of streaming service passwords. After all, what’s even the point of having an interconnected web of supportive human relationships, if not to serve as an easy way to get access to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, right?
Netflix has always been mostly cool about password sharing, both because it’s just plain good marketing to seem like a chill, “If you’re going to party, we’d rather you do it in the house” kind of parent about this stuff, and also because nobody wants, you know, an armed riot breaking out in their corporate offices, just because little Becky went off to college and now she can’t watch Orange Is The New Black. But as more and more companies sluggishly follow the leader into the streaming market—most notably Disney, that bastion of cheerful cartoon totalitarianism—the question of what to do about password moochers is becoming an increasingly profitable one for brown-nosing, teacher’s pet-type innovators to try to crack.
Enter the digital narcs of Britain’s Synamedia, who are pioneering new A.I. techniques in order to totally fuck up your queue. Per Variety, the company is headed to the Consumer Electronics Show next week to show off its “Credentials Sharing Insight” tech, which reportedly tracks data like “people on the same account streaming from across the continent,” or “people streaming for 24 hours straight” in order to issue scores suggesting how likely someone is to be sharing their passwords with others. (In the latter case, they might want to refine that metric, at least when a new season of BoJack comes out.)
The company’s chief product officer, Jean-Marc Racine, was quick to point out that it’s up to the companies themselves to figure out what to do with these online communists/password sharing freedom fighters—who one report suggests might cost the industry something like $9 billion in upcoming years—once they’ve found them. It might not even be punitive, he cheerfully noted, suggesting that it might be a way for corporations to ID people to upsell more shit to (hooray!), or merely cut off some of the service’s most popular content.
Racine then presumably had to cut the interview short, so that he could rush off to spend more time with his most beloved hobby, reporting people’s expired parking meters to cops.
29 Comments
Digital snitches get digital stitches
I pay for 4 simultaneous screens. If a 5th screen tries to stream, it gets told no. So what if two of my screens are in New York? I only pay for that because I wanted 4K anyway, or as I like to call it, HD for Suckers.
You need to see every single flaw in a disastrous cupcake on Nailed It! to truly appreciate the culinary disaster.
Does this company think that netflix/amazon etc can’t tell when 2 locations are using the same login?So their business model is selling tiny bits of info to companies that already have all the info they are trying to sell, plus every other possible info that this company has no chance of getting?I am not a genuis, and am relatively poor. But even I know that this is about the most worthless idea ever.
I’m sure Netflix has already looked into the economics of rolling something like this out, and decided it wouldn’t be worth it.
Apparently HBO, along with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon are fully aware of who uses the accounts and are completely fine with it. I’m going to assume Disney (who basically owns Hulu now) will be fine with it too. I could see CBS caring and being weird or maybe DC or those other ones.
Did Hulu just play with the idea for a while? I was using someone else’s account and it started kicking me off for not being at the location the account owners were at, so I got my own account. But now my girlfriend’s sister is using our account without issue from across the country.
That was happening to me. I went Oh Well, and just stopped using that Hulu password. Started working again later tho, so who knows?
Weird, I guess people complained and they listened?
I don’t know that, but I do know their background stuff isn’t as up to speed as Netflix. So issues can come up in streaming.
The account holder may have added Hulu Live TV… I did that a few weeks ago and then all of the sudden my son couldn’t watch (from a different state). They said it’s because the live tv makes it cable or something? Anyway the live service sucked so I cancelled it and then he was able to watch again.
I know that Hulu can tell if you’re streaming from more than 2 locations at once; I think once three people are signed in to an account they start checking the locations…or at least I get a notification from Firefox asking me for my location.
Counting distinct IP addresses is “A.I.”?
This doesn’t seem to even make practical sense to me. Netflix already has limits on device log ins built into the feature set of the subscriptions. So any data on consecutive time watched etc. is spoilt by the fact people could be logged in from all over.
There’s one way the services’ disinterest in preventing password sharing could change: if an important enough content provider decides to press the point by withdrawing their programming from a service or services until it’s addressed.That seems unlikely to happen given 1) the growth of service-funded, service-exclusive content and 2) the universal disinterest in “fixing” the “problem” among the service companies. The other side of those, though, is that #1 could hit a ceiling and plummet back down to earth, while #2 is one of those games where under the right circumstances, one player could cave and capitalize on the losses of the others.None of this stuff is governed by eternal, unalterable conditions, and customers may find themselves becoming incredibly angry later if they think the current situation can’t change (see also: commercials).
None of this stuff is governed by eternal, unalterable conditions, and customers may find themselves becoming incredibly angry later if they think the current situation can’t change (see also: commercials).
Shit, never mind commercials – just think about Netflix’s broad selection a few years ago, compared to the increasingly balkanized split of shows and movies across multiple streaming services. I went to streaming to get away from cable gouging, and now streaming seems to be headed back in that same direction.
Aren’t the content producers paid by the view, though? If that’s the case, I don’t see why they’d care, since it’d only be digging into the service providers’ bottom lines.
I consider this post proof that there are two people sharing your account: one who posts insightful commentary on social and technological issues, and one who posts insulting, scorching hot takes about the same topics.
Their Credentials Sharing Insight works differently in different parts of the country. For example, there’s one for Miami, and a separate one for Las Vegas.
How many times does it need to be said before you idiot “journalists” get it through your heads. Piracy doesn’t equal lost sales. It’s not a 1-1 pirate copy to lost sale relationship so stop uncritically repeating the industry’s “losses to piracy” figures like they actually mean something
Yeah, I don’t get why it’s so hard to grasp the concept that a lot of piracy is done by people who never had any intention of paying money to get the pirated thing. Back in Napster’s heyday, most of the stuff me and my friends downloaded were either stuff we couldn’t buy (bootlegs or out of print) or stuff we would never buy (“Cherry Pie” is fun to listen to, but I’m not paying $15 for that privilege). Our heavy Napster usage probably cost the music industry relatively little.
I have the premium package and I share my password with my Sons and Mom. If Netflix tried to give me grief for sharing, I’ll tell them “eat a dick” and drop their service.
Wow, you’re a bad-ass. 🙄
Yeah but vpns are a thing sooooo this ai’s gonna have a bad time.
Read another book
I travel for business a fair bit between three states and live in a fourth state and routinely use my streaming platforms in these 4 states and connecting airports. I’m curious how this type of thing would impact me. Would they know I was streaming on the same device(s) across all those locations and be “okay” or would they be looking at that and think I have 3 secret families sharing my account? Cause I definitely don’t have any secret families that my husband doesn’t know about. Definitely not.
Somebody give me a heads up if this becomes a crime they are prosecuting. For a friend.
Great time to fuck with our breads and circuses. Boy howdy.