Netflix’s Password Sharing Cash Grab Finally Arrives In The States
from the slowly-but-surely-becoming-Comcast dept
After years of saying password sharing wasn’t really a big deal and was akin to free advertising, Netflix recently announced it would be cracking down on password sharing. It started with a new trial in the global south where users were nagged until they paid an additional fee if they shared their password with users outside of their home.
Now, those efforts are poised to finally arrive in the U.S. in March according to the Netflix website. Company co-CEO Greg Peters acknowledged on a conference call that the move isn’t likely to be popular with consumers, who’ve already been faced with several instances of flat price hikes:
“This will not be a universally popular move, so there will be current members that are unhappy with this move. We’ll see a bit of a cancel reaction to that,” Greg Peters, Neflix’s recently promoted co-CEO, told investors on a call last week.
There are numerous problems here.
One, Netflix spent years conditioning its users to believe that password sharing was not only good, but encouraged. Two, Netflix just got done imposing numerous price hikes on existing customers, while service quality has, for many, notably deteriorated. Three, Netflix already technically charges its users more money to increase the number of allowed simultaneous streams per account.
Four, the company’s implementation of the password sharing crackdown in the global South has so far been a confusing mess. Five, the company is making its service more expensive and annoying at a time when its facing increased competition. Six, the folks (like Adobe) promising Netflix a big boost in income from the move don’t appear to be basing their projections on reality.
It’s certainly not going to be the end of Netflix if it begins increasingly nickel-and-diming its customers with additional surcharges (just like the cable giants it once disrupted), but it’s certainly not going to meaningfully help a company that’s facing increased competition from a rotating crop of streaming services which can now differentiate themselves by… not being annoying.
Netflix clearly transitioned from innovative market disruptor to turf protection in the last few years, and in the process it’s slowly but surely turning into Comcast. And it’s doing it because the company’s global growth has become saturated, and Wall Street demands its quarter over quarter growth at any cost. That cost, as usual, is going to be paid by the end user, whether they like it or not.
And if they don’t like it, they’re going to shift over to a growing number of alternative streaming services (including free ones like TikTok) that don’t nag the hell out of you because your friends or kids never wanted to pay for a subscription in the first place.
Filed Under: alternatives, cable tv, competition, concurrent streams, password sharing, streaming, video
Companies: netflix
Comments on “Netflix’s Password Sharing Cash Grab Finally Arrives In The States”
Netflix is very close to being cancelled here and I’ve been a paying customer since they started here in Brazil. If they implement it here it’ll be the last metaphorical nail in the coffin. It doesn’t help that the value I pay for Netflix today is enough to get all the other streaming services available here with added perks (lots of options like Amazon Prime that comes with Prime Gaming, Music and free or discounted shipping).
It’s sad because none of the services offer an interface as good as Netflix does.
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“I’ve been a paying customer since they started here in Brazil”
I’ve been a paying customer since before they started offering streaming where I live. Along with the actual programming, it’s customer-friendly innovations that kept me coming back, be it downloads (manual, and while flawed the “smart download” feature has been handy if I forgot to prepare before travelling), changing available content rather than just telling me I’m not allowed to stream if I’m in a different region, etc.
“It’s sad because none of the services offer an interface as good as Netflix does.”
I’d disagree slightly here. Prime tends to be the best for me (using the primevideo.com service available to me rather than the Amazon interface at least). The main annoyances for me are the language options (depending on device, you can’t check which options are there without starting to play the title) and looking at content that’s expiring (unless you have a title on your list, they won’t warn you). Prime at least has a section telling you what’s expiring in the next 30 days and a full list of language options.
The other issue with Netflix is their insistence on pushing whatever they just added rather than what’s actually relevant to the person watching. I often use Justwatch (and their tie in with Letterboxd) to see what’s available or new, and I swear that there’s things on there that most customers would love to watch if only they knew about it, but Netflix wants them to know that a new series they’re not really interested in is there instead. It’s actually a pretty bad interface sometimes if all you want to do is browse past their recommendations.
I’m unlikely to unsubscribe any time soon because I have a lot of stuff I’m interested in still in my watchlist. But, I know I’m an outlier with my range of tastes and willingness to compare the value to rentals rather than other services/piracy. For some people, that value has dropped a lot.
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I think you’re my soulmate (unless I put you up to JustWatch…)!
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Nah, I don’t think so, I’ve been using for a long time!
I’m not sure if it’s available with Letterboxd normally or you have to subscribe, but its killer feature for me right now is that you can set the services in Letterboxd that you have. Then, you can filter lists of movies to see which are available on streaming, etc., and get alerts when movies in your watchlist are available elsewhere. That’s such a great use of Justwatch integration.
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This is pretty much what happened to Netflix’s highly regarded (amongst people who watched it) adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club: The show got great reviews from critics and audiences, but the audience numbers never really improved over time because of Netflix’s algorithms and lack of “hey, look, this new thing is new and here now” advertising for anything but the most successful shows (and that’s even within its own service). Netflix spent so much time making content and figuring out how to deliver said content that they forgot how to market that content.
Then again, this is the same company that ran Glass Onion for only a week in theaters and left millions of dollars on the table as a result. I really shouldn’t expect much out of Netflix at this point.
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You’re significantly understating the problem. People are also unwilling to try watching new shows because of Netflix’s habit of canceling them—often on cliffhangers—instead of completing them. This is basically Google-style anti-marketing.
I know several people who have mental lists of Netflix shows to start watching only if and when they come to satisfactory conclusions. Netflix may have to focus on mini-series for a while.
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@anonymous coward.. I agree with your sentiment about netflix series cancelations. I don’t start a netflix series until I see a second season.
Re: Re: Netflix's algorithm doesn't work
Netflix has stopped using their taste-watching algorithm and now just slaps “98% match” on whatever they want to push at viewers. I’ve been a subscriber for years and rate everything I watch, thumbs up or down. If they don’t know my tastes better than to shove Emily in Paris at me, then I give up. They’re not even trying.
I have to find the stuff I want to see elsewhere (word of mouth usually) and then check justwatch to see where it is. Then I subscribe to services sequentially and watch my list of stuff for that service.
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“Netflix has stopped using their taste-watching algorithm and now just slaps “98% match” on whatever they want to push at viewers”
Yeah, this is a big problem. It means people don’t see what they actually want to see, and get things they find uninteresting. I regularly have conversations where I recommend things people didn’t know were there. I don’t think that’s a good thing…
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Re: Good
I’d rather they did this then another price hike. Maybe people should pay for what they use?
Everyone knows people should be paying, that’s why the very idea create a cognitive disconnect which becomes outrage.
Finally, actual writers done to number list to make points.
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You seem to believe that it had to be one or the other.
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I already pay for 4 screens and have been using it like that for years?
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If you’re going to insult someone’s writing, make sure the insult doesn’t have multiple typos next time.
Re: Re: Or, maybe there's more to it
My outrage stems from the fact that Netflix already charges a premium price for 4K and 4 streams, while competitors give you both for their base service. Furthermore, my daughters in school are still residents of my address. They get their mail here. They have bedrooms here. They live here full time in the summer, and this is their legal address. They’ve watched Netflix from here for years. But now, because they’re in school in a different location, I should pay extra for the exact same content streaming to the exact same people who still officially live at my house? I don’t think so.
There are far better services for far less money and no headaches like this. Netflix is gone as soon as our giftcard subscription runs out. I might subscribe one month a year to catch up on the few remaining shows I like. Might. If I still care by then.
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It seems even crazier than that to me. How can Netflix tell the difference between you and your daughters using the same account in different locations, and my wife and I using our account at home or on one of several of the household’s numerous mobile devices when not at home? What’s the difference to them? We’re all limited to the number of simultaneous streams we already pay for.
I would miss Netflix, but it’s not like I couldn’t fill my time with other content.
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In what way am I not paying for what I use? Please be specific.
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“Bill Oney”? Damn, guys, I think out_of_the_blue’s back.
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So, instead of the price rising for… reasons (what? they’re still growing, still profitable, why do they need to do that?), you’d rather people be falsely accused of misusing their accounts? Which will lead to a drop in subscribers and thus likely a price increase.
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I’m surprised to read that. I guess if you know what you want to watch, Netflix is fine; otherwise, they make it exceptionally difficult to determine whether the suggested things are actually good. My parents often bring a laptop or phone over to the TV so they can check ratings while browsing Netflix. They’ve been burned too many times by getting like half an hour into one of the suggested movies, before realizing they’ve wasted their time on something with a 5.2/10 rating. Amazon, by contrast, shows the IMDb rating up-front (though there’s been recent controversy about them manipulating those ratings, e.g. for their recent Lord of the Rings series—and this controversy seems to have been scrubbed from Wikipedia, except the talk page, and is even difficult to find via web searching).
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Oh, I don’t bother with the suggestions or ratings so there’s that. I mean if I want to watch some content and it is on Netflix it just works whether you are on the site or the app on your Android device. The second best is HBO, quite close actually, the app is a bit slow but quite ok. The rest is either bad or not usable. Granted it’s been a while since I used Amazon Prime, my wife uses it so it could have changed recently.
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Ratings, like Amazon product ratings, are garbage except if they’re negative. Positive ratings (9/10!!!) are useless.
Even then, I only look to see if my feelings are confirmed. I’m pretty good about shutting down a show that isn’t engaging in the first 1/4th.
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Not entirely true. A movie with a whole shitload of positive ratings doesn’t necessarily mean the film is universally acclaimed—no film is perfect—so digging into the negative reviews can be helpful in figuring out whether such a movie will genuinely appeal to you. I mean, for as good as The Shawshank Redemption is, I’m sure even that movie has some “haters”.
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There are lots of problems with ratings. The whole “star” system, in particular is bullshit—a person gives a small number of stars to indicate something is bad, when a bad thing really shouldn’t get a star at all. And most raters are incapable are chosing which of 7, 8, 9, or 10 to assign to a movie they liked. We’d be better off, I think, with “hated it”, “disliked it”, “meh”, “liked it”, and “loved it” (or -2 to +2).
But I don’t find the ratings garbage or useless. I won’t like every movie 8 rated or more, but I’ve hardly liked any rated less than 6. The IMDb top-250 list is pretty reasonable if one eliminates the recent flood of superhero movies and the “overly artistic” stuff. If it’s like a 6 or 7 I know I should probably wait till I hear from friends or family, unless it looks particularly interesting to me.
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Amazon ratings are also garbage if they’re negative. The number of times I’ve seen “reviews” that are just whining that the package was late, they ordered the wrong thing, someone who loved a movie but gave it one star because they don’t understand what rating systems mean, etc. Some review platforms are better than others, but “1/10 my 5 year old doesn’t like horror movies” in’t going to tell me whether or not the sequel to Orphan is worth me watching and more than “10/10, haven’t watched it yet but I love The Rock” will tell me if I want to watch Black Adam.
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That’s partially Amazon’s fault. There’s a clear desire for people to rate sellers, and they’ve offered nothing. Nor is there any way to comment on the metadata—like a bad listing—rather than the product.
I think this is a terrible idea for various reasons, many already outlined. The company was built on allowing customers to tie their streaming to a max of X number of devices streaming at the same time, and they did so while making it clear they didn’t care whether those people lived together. Even to those who are sharing, it doesn’t seem to them that they’re doing anything from, and I suspect a lot of people who aren’t sharing will start getting falsely accused.
But, the key to this is how they determine what is and isn’t “sharing”. I can foresee a lot of false positives, and in the current era of real competition and their “jack of all trades” approach leaving them not always being the primary choice for many people, it could lead to a net loss of subscribers across the board.
We’ll see how it goes, but this seems to be the classic blunder the music industry made when it first started freaking out about file sharing – a download != a lost sale. In this case, a shared account != a lost subscriber. As with that history, the crackdown might be way more damaging than addressing customer needs, only in this case it could be even worse because they’ll not be attacking people who they think are freeloading, but the people who pay them for those accounts as well. Once you stop listening to those and try dictating what customers should put up with, the outlook isn’t good.
Netflix, this you?
@netflix. Replying to. @netflix. Love is sharing a password.
This looks to be a familiar pattern.
1) start up encourages sharing
2) sharing results in increased viewers
3) ??? (going public?)
4) draconian policy implementation
Just the natural evolution of a corporation
Re: What?
Yes, nothing says draconian like ‘please pay for our services’.
LOL.
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They’re already paying. The draconian bit is suddenly forcing people to pay more, or risk losing functionality.
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I wonder what you consider money being charged on my credit card by Netflix to be other than, you know, me paying for the service and using it like that for years? They just want to double charge it and are using whatever lousy excuse to please Wall Street. So I decided, you know, that I’m not paying for their services anymore. Profit! … ?
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Are you saying that if you pay for 4 screens, you shouldn’t… be allowed to watch simultaneously on 4 screens without paying more?
You are a bit confused, no?
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He’s very likely not confused. Netflix is only starting to learn that just because you haven’t been an asshole in the past like your competition, it doesn’t mean that you’ve earned enough goodwill points that will suddenly make up for the assholery you’re trying to pull now.
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Nothing says gullible rube like snarkily agreeing to paying for something twice.
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God forbid a company try to make its customers pay for its products.
And it’s not Wall Street screaming about profits, it’s the fact that interest rates are up and VCs aren’t dumping billions into companies losing money hand over fist. The status you’re defending was one where billionaires used their dollar advantage to try to drive out and break up established firms by subsidizing loss-making firms. The fact that it’s Comcast makes it easier to enjoy, but never forget that you’re doing your part in handing over the economy to the VC folks just so you can pirate a stream of “Rich Housewives of NJ.”
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How would they be sharing an account with others if they weren’t paying for it?
Also, while this crackdown is seen among shareholders as a ploy to make people pay for a subscription, we have direct evidence of Netflix becoming successful by literally doing the opposite.
Re: And it’s not Wall Street screaming about profits
Oh yes it is!!
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How about considering that kids go to college, and if they cannot share the family Netflix account they might well develop new viewing habits, and when they set up their own household, they will not be thinking of getting Netflix. Netflix will then be complain g of losing subscribers because few young adults get an account, and their old customers will gradually die off.
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But we are. We are paying for the consecutive streams and we’ve set up the different profiles for members. Then deciding on Wall Street whims to add additional charges is bullshit.
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You sir sound like a bit of a corporate bootlicker.
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God forbid companies deliver what we already paid for without trying to double charge stuff to increase their quarterly profits!
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You really haven’t paid attention to anything since Netflix competitors started launching, have you?
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Netflix has been a public company for years. What do you think VC funding has to do with it at this stage?
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And yet somehow at the start of your unhinged rant, you claim the following:
So which is it? Are VCs running out of money because we’re not giving it to them, or are they getting stronger because we’re not paying for every single alleged usage of our Netflix accounts?
It’s honestly funny that you think the economy isn’t already run by corporations or hyperwealthy individuals with far too much money to burn, and it’s somehow the fault of the individual consumer for causing the economic hellscape we’re now living in. But if you gotta blame someone, I guess it’s far easier to blame the man on the street who has the least influential clout or money to fight back.
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“God forbid a company try to make its customers pay for its products.”
How did I know that the usual shower of morons would make shit up here?
Nobody objects to that. What they object to are people already paying for and using the service under it’s T&Cs being told they need to pay more money for the same service, because they use the service in ways Netflix explicitly told them was OK in the past.
Don’t tell me we’re in for another tiresome few years where people point out real issues and absolute fucking morons keeps calling them thieves because they’re too fucking stupid to understand the actual arguments? That got tired a long time ago.
Address the issues and stop lying about the words in front of you.
How does it even work
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Netflix joined the MPAA years ago. They are no longer concerned with concepts such as reasonability, reality, or “love”.
Markets Rock
If only our government didn’t force us to use Netflix.
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If only you had the smarts to make an argument that didn’t rely on a total straw man.
Chasing dreams
I suppose the problem with our economy is how much a company is valued not at what it is worth today, but by how much it could be worth tomorrow.
Reality will never catch up to those dreams.
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The innovation is so good in the 21st century that there are many individuals that skipped the spoonfed emotions and fiction.
I always laugh at the oblivion storylines that they try to call dystopian. The clarity with innovation makes all of those made up stories mostly comedies.
Its like the difference with diets. Some individuals know the ingredients… And the obesity problem with ultraprocessed food skipped the nutrition. Data diets are just as nutritious.
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The comment is a bot, right?
I canceled my Netflix months ago, almost $20 a month for a bunch of b rated movies didn’t seem worth it. I get much of the same with my $10 a month amazon prime subscription.
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I canceled my Amazon Prime after they broke their music app. There are so many shows on Amazon Prime that just aren’t available without an upgrade.
Yeah, no thanks.
Maybe it is just me but ...
I have noticed an uptick in the number of comments, here and elsewhere, supporting big business in their blunders.
Typically the comment is refuting and/or rationalizing recent news items in which the corp played a part and are not looking so good as a result.
I doubt these are real people, my guess is a troll farm.
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Could go either way really, between contrarian or paid trolls or people that buy into the ‘if you’re rich that means you can do no wrong’ mentality either seems equally possible.
If multiple screens doesn't mean multiple screens...
What I’m hearing is that assuming someone doesn’t cancel their Netflix account entirely there’s absolutely no reason to pay for multiple streams at once so everyone should stop paying extra and just go with the most basic package available.
Strange move on Netflix’s part if they’re trying to increase profits but have at it I guess.
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Except that Netflix locks 4K down to the 4-screen plan. For reasons that totally make sense. Just ask them.
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Well, if you are indeed just one guy or willing to timeslice, then you’re correct. If there’s more than just one – a family, flatshare – then there may be different people watching different things at the same time.
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I pay the extra mainly for the 4K. I like big pretty pictures.
Started at $8 dollars
They made me pay $13.50/mounth to have 5 devices . Now it’s up to over $20/mounth if I pay for 5 devices being used at a time it shouldn’t matter who is watching . And my account can be accessed anywhere it’s not a household based subscription in the first place.
The Entertainment Industrial Complex
Like the Military Industrial Complex, the EIC has formed itself into an organism that is designed to feed upon one like a parasite, not as a symbioses. That one finds enjoyment or usefulness in a particular offering is not the point. One’s money is.
Netflix is simply doing what successful parasites do: grow and suck more blood.
Aside from books published via (mostly) honest E-Book sites, I don’t feed the EIC, haven’t for decades. Not because I’m offended by what they do, but because it simply isn’t anything I’m interested in.
Bad companies go for short-term gains, good ones don't
“We love people sharing Netflix whether they’re two people on a couch or 10 people on a couch,,” Hastings said. “That’s a positive thing, not a negative thing.”
“As kids move on in their life, they like to have control of their life, and as they have an income, we see them separately subscribe. It really hasn’t been a problem.”
Oh good
I have an account I pay for that my disabled daughter M__ uses. She lives in a different state. She needs somebody to administrate the account for her. I do that.
My other daughter D__, who lives with me, has an account as well. I use that one for watching content.
Netflix assumes that any log-in to an account is an intent to view, and they start freaking out when I log into M__’s account do perform administration, and scream at me about stealing. All I want to do is check to make sure things are running smoothly, but they have been threatening to crack down on me. For stealing. Which I’m not doing. I’ve stopped watching anything on M__’s account since they’ve been being bitches about this, I’ve painfully manually transferred all my viewing to my profile on D__’s account (mostly by taking screenshots and scribbling notes, since they provided no other way to do this).
So I’m in the position of trying to administrate the account of a disabled person but unable to do so without violating their terms of service and their moral outrage because they can’t be bothered to provide separate administrative access for the account owner, even though doing so makes a ton of sense.
So my conclusion is that Netflix don’t care about the developmentally disabled. Sorry it took me a lot of work to get the conclusion, but I’m not sure what to do about this except complain, and… probably cancel the account. M__ is going to be disappointed and I won’t be able to explain it to her in a way that she will understand.
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Sounds like you need to retain counsel to press for reasonable ADA accommodation. Might look to see if there’s a class action possible.
And again the misuse of “competition” in the context of streaming services shows up. At this point, it has to be deliberate.
Fragmentation of content is not competition.
in case you don't know the backstory...
About a year ago, Netflix had a bad quarterly report where their growth hit a wall. Not coincidentally that was the report where they announced their ad tier and password sharing crackdown.
Pretty obviously, both were quickly cobbled together “solutions” to their growth stalling although the stalling happened because of competition and they’re maxxed out in the US. That stall-out will follow them around the world as competitors launch everywhere.
Which really calls their business model into question but they need investors to avoid thinking like that – because then the solution is, sell the stock, and that could put Netflix into a death spiral – hence the hasty smokescreen. Before that quarterly call, there was no indication they were interested in ads or password crackdowns. Totally out of the blue.
So now we wait to find out that the ad tier isn’t doing much (especially since we’re going into a recession and ad budgets are being slashed across the board) and the password sharing might chase away more customers than it gains. And then the death spiral will hit because what other schemes can Netflix pull out of its posterior? Games? Hah good luck with that.
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Fitting that your comment shows up under my comment about how people are misusing “competition” in the context of streaming services. A perfect example of my comment.
Canceled streaming
We were very early adopters of Netflix’ DVD mailers. Then Netflix gave us streaming for free for the first two years. Their content was so great, I stopped downloading content because there was no longer a need.
How anyone can still stream after the fiasco it has become is beyond me. Several years ago I canceled Netflix for good and will never go back to any streaming service. Though Netflix’ content issues were mostly due to bottomless Hollywood greed, the overall direction Netflix choose was horrendous and getting worse each year. Netflix has many other issues such as its useless website, content quality nosedive (though Matilda the Musical was excellent and if they had more consistently provided that sort of quality, I’d still be there), never ending price increases, most actors smoking on screen again, political messaging (though I am very liberal, messaging masquerading as entertainment has no place on my TV), compressed bandwidth picture quality, etc…
So in recent years I’ve returned to the old ways of my youth matey. It works, I get to choose what/when/how to watch, there are no price increases, no network sputtering, has a perfect interface, no lag time for NF’s bad app startup, and most importantly, content is not removed while we am in the middle of viewing.
Already paying 24bucks, trying to get more from me for shitty platform no thanks
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