Netflix password crackdown has actually caused a growth in Subscriptions
bbc.co.uk
I feel like other streaming platforms will follow the same process as they've proven it's worked.
I feel like other streaming platforms will follow the same process as they've proven it's worked.
If Netflix’s reporting on the matter is to be believed, then it’s an ironic outcome considering the wave of strongly-opinionated comments predicting the death of Netflix following the crackdown on password sharing. I guess convenience and habits really trump principles and posturing.
I unsubed. But many did not.
I would’ve but I had already cancelled over a year ago because Netflix doesn’t have anything worth watching.
Yeah, I have been wondering just how bad their content has gotten, or of I somehow got pigeonholed by their filtering algorithms. Somehow almost everything was rated two stars out of five and just plain bad, or in some random language that I don’t speak.
I’m really pissed off when the same movie keeps appearing in every section with different thumbnail. Yes I’ve been fooled by both the category and the different appearance but I don’t recall ever being tricked into watching something, only annoyed and frustrated
What I'm finding and what's really annoying, is that every streaming service out there has like 1 or 2 shows and a couple of movies I want to see. Someone will bring up a show, but oh sorry, it's on Crave. Or nope, that one's on Disney Plus. That other show? It's on Prime.
I recently canceled Netflix and moved to Crave, and I am certainly no happier. Thank God I barely care to watch TV as it is.
I never gave them money to begin with, we are not the same.
Gustavo Fring meme
I told my family I was going to cancel when they cracked down on our households sharing and they haven't yet. My parents are still enjoying it at their house, and me at mine.
I hated the crackdown but resisting on “principles” is bizarre to me. I left Reddit and Twitter due to principles. Netflix wanting to get paid for their service and content is reasonable. Wanting a business to serve you up free entertainment with no catch?
Also before anyone tries to claim hypocrisy - The difference between that and Twitter/Reddit is myself and the community create the content and are forcefed ads.
Sure, it's reasonable, and why I started subscribing in the first place. But if I pay for four screens, I expect to be able to use all of those four screens, no matter what address they are being viewed from.
Yeah that’s totally fair and Netflix fucked that up
You’re not paying for that though. The terms of service have never allowed giving other people your details and letting people outside your household use your account.
Also you can still use 4 devices no matter where you are - mobile devices and tablets and laptops are not IP restricted.
Netflix started out encouraging password sharing, even promoted it on Twitter back in the days.
Yeh, when they allowed it. They changed their terms of service.
So clearly some people did pay for that and it was changed at a later date…
Companies are allowed to change their terms of service.
People are allowed to be pissed off when they do.
Absolutely they are. Didn't say they can't be.
What they can't do however is think that they're entitled to use the service in ways that are against the terms of service.
Whirlybird: Why do people think they're entitled to use a private company's service nude-free while still paying? It's in the ToS!
Whirlybird: unsubscribe if the terms of service are not to your liking
rikonium: no I demand the other terms of service! Netflix is a human right!
Mobile devices are restricted by being forced to connect to your 'home' network regularly.
And that’s fine because it’s not stopping you from using your 4 devices.
About a month ago we could not use the account on a smart TV in the rental home because it was away from the home network. Updating the home network wasn't an option because the family members not on the trip were still watching things at home.
Being able to watch on a phone, but not on a TV, is stupid.
You skipped the part where Netflix actually encouraged account sharing for a long time. Now they frame the account sharers as thieves. Also the other part where quality of content goes down while subscription prices go up while still not providing plans with hq streams for single people. Which all was tolerable for a few bucks a month. Without sharing netflix is simply not worth the money
Can you point to where they’re calling account sharers “thieves”? I’ve just seen them say they’re now limiting screens. And agreed the content sucks which is why I unsubscribed awhile ago. No one is forcing you to use it, but at the same time no one deserves it for free.
They're not saying it directly of course, but they clearly frame the account sharers as "bad guys" now. I mean you're correct that no one is entitled to watch netflix for free but that "poor netflix just wants to get paid" narrative is some serious BS. I also kinda doubt netflix tells us the 100% truth about subscription growth/recession. The only reason I did not switch my account on/off over the years was because it was shared and it would have required coordination with the other party.
Except netlfix sold people a license to view 3 streams then told people they couldn't decide who used those streams.
Speaking of hypocrisy https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?s=46&t=AxsExHbq5ge_2Sse5GmXFg
I think I am more annoyed by their pricing plans following this move. They are double dipping by charging more for additional screens and then preventing users from using said additional screens. They shouldn't have tiered pricing plans by number of screens if they have no intention of honouring them.
Yeah that all sucks, which is why I unsubscribed to it. But I also understand I don’t deserve it for free.
It isn't free, someone is paying for it.
They’re not preventing you from using more screens. If you want to watch Netflix while the kids watch Netflix in another room, that’s what the multiple device plans are for.
Unless I want to watch from my holiday home. Or if my kids want to watch Netflix at my ex's house. Or if I travel regularly. Or I want to regularly watch Netflix with my friend or girlfriend at their house. There are numerous reports of restrictions on all of these, so they clearly are limiting the number of screens I can use.
You get a one time use PW in all those other instances. I was actually thinking about creating a shared email address with only a Netflix account associated to it so my whole family could still use it without having to pester one another about the one time use code, but at that point piracy is just easier.
I haven't heard of that. So the one time use password is used to log in and then it works fine without warnings etc?
To my knowledge yeah, it’s a one session pw.
Your a shill. Find a boot to lick
I don’t pay for Netflix and think their content mostly sucks but thinking “I deserve this service for free” is a childish perspective. Go ahead and pirate it, I couldn’t care less, but don’t act like it gives you the moral high ground lol
Nobody said free. Nothing is free. We all pay a service. If you want ads go ahead. Don't bring the rest of us down with you.
Indicated of shill and bootlicker syndrome.
*You're
No your
This isn't a logical argument. It's a childish attempt at discrediting. You failed.
It was always going to lead to more subscribers because more people would lose access to Netflix so would subscribe themselves than would cancel their account because others couldn’t use their login.
The people that lost Netflix weren’t subscribers, and lots of them would have them subscribed. The subscribers had no reason to unsubscribe.
I was the subscriber and I unsubscribed because I alone wasn't using it enough to justify the price. When I knew my sister and her family were watching too, it felt more like it was worth it.
Always and inevitably, each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in the world
Just because they don’t share the same opinion as you doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Netflix is great for just sitting down and watching something random and discovering new shows and movies - especially foreign ones. It’s also priceless for kids shows for parents.
Stupidity is in the eye of the beholder. You can judge me as stupid in return for thinking that of these new subscribers if you want and then we‘ll both go our ways. Only one of us will pay Netflix no matter how much they enshittify their service or how much they raise their prices (since it‘s "priceless") and one won‘t. C‘est la vie.
Jesus Christ the arrogance.
In the timeless wisdom words of George Carlin,
Step 1: Crack down on password sharing.
Step 2: Open subscriptions to foreign countries with cut-rate pricing.
Step 3: Announce subscriber growth.
We’re too smart for you Netflix. Your revenues are actually down because of all the premium-paid subscribers leaving your platform.
Sorry, but that's just incorrect.
That's US-only data.
https://www.antenna.live/post/a-first-look-at-the-impact-of-netflixs-password-sharing-crackdown
I'm not surprised. The number of people sharing accounts who now need their own was always likely to be greater than the number who were going to cancel. They only had to convert a fraction of the non-subdividing viewers for it to work out in their favour. I think they'll find they have less viewers now, though.
The approach of tacitly allowing account sharing to build viewership then cracking down on it to boost revenue is smart enough as a business strategy. It signals what most of these companies will do when it comes time to really monetise.
I worry for the future of the internet when YouTube and Google really kick off. It's going to be a subscription hellscape (it is already, but it's going to be so much worse).
I don't have a link for it, but I read that YouTube is working on a 3 strikes policy for anyone using AdBlock programs... So after the 3rd warning you're not able to watch anything on YouTube at all...
Arr me hearties, thar be many ways past the blockade to fetch me booty!
It's less extreme than Hulu's method of going from an all free service to a subscription service. When you think about it from Hulu's perspective there's no way they would make less money and unlike social media sites like Twitter or Facebook the users' labor isn't the content. The movies and tv shows are.
I canceled when the news broke about shared accounts. Haven’t missed it at all. Arrrr!
I had a family account, but I stopped using it since going abroad to uni once they cracked down. The amount of content is just at the point where I don't see any value to subscribing.
Generally though, exactly what killed cable TV is killing my use of Netflix and other services. All the interesting stuff is now so spread out on so many different services, it's just no longer worth it.
Dealing with N different subscriptions and different websites, is too much BS to deal with AND pay for, so I'm just going to run my own server.
It is trivial to sign up for a service when you want to watch something, and then cancel it when you don't, until there's something else you want to watch on the service. That is the benefit over cable.
Most people still treat it like a cable subscription: always on, even if they're not watching it.
That's a good thought and would probably work if I lived alone and only watched one thing at a time.
But I would say it depends on your use case and the size of your household. We are 4 ppl in my family that watch different content on the same TV at different times of the day. We have Netflix (the wife's show is here), Disney (kids), HBO (me), Viaplay (family movies in my native language when we all watch together). I have been sharing thease accounts with my brothers family but we are about to move to Plex, I would rather buy DVD or digital releases and host it myself then use all thease subscriptions.
If they would price it better, could work together and all be used in the same interface on my tv then maybe I would be willing to go back.
I have spent thousands of dollars over the years on my Plex setup. I'd caution against the assumption that switching to Plex and hosting your media is going to be cheaper in the short run, or maybe even the long run, than paying for streaming services. Depending on your use case you may even need to pay for Plexpass. (Hardware encoding, iirc, is locked behind their Plexpass subscription.) And factor in the inevitable troubleshooting you'll have to do when something doesn't work for your brother's family.
Do the math for yourself, is all I'm saying. It's not automatically the better solution.
Those are all good points and I'm happy you replied, as it will probably help other who read this 😊
However I already have a Plex server for my older media (VHS 😅 tapes) that I have converted to digital, that's hosted on my NAS, and lifetime Plex pass. I have been meaning to look into open source replacements but many older smart tvs only have Plex 🤷
I should probably have mentioned as well that the inconvenience of having multiple apps are a bigger hurdle for my family then the cost, as that pushes us towards things like Plex where the kids could find everything in one app
Fucking corpos always win
Well I wasn't one of them. I canceled mine.
Corporations bank on the fact that the majority of people would rather complain than go back on what's convenient for them. This was obvious from the start.
If they ever start instituting ads regardless of membership tier, then it's back to buying discs for me. It's just going to turn into another cable service eventually.
I cancelled when they first rolled out their test. Cheaper to get a VPN and sail the seas again.
I didn’t want to subscribe to Netflix but I subscribed after using someone else’s account for years just because my wife was insistent about it.
We already have access to someone’s Plex with Ombi and can request whatever TV shows or movies we want. But she’s too impatient to even wait for max. 24 hours for a movie or a season of a TV show to be downloaded. And sometimes requests fail, since it’s reliant upon inherently unreliable means of downloading like torrents.
Netflix is unfortunately still more convenient than piracy for the average user. But if it was up to me only, I wouldn’t have chosen to subscribe.
I host a Plex server that my friends use, they just text me what they want and I'll get it. Is there an official request feature? Or are you just talking about asking the host like I do?
Lookup Overseerr. https://overseerr.dev/
Oh, interesting. This could be useful but idk if I could get others to use it lol.
*arr can also use lists that people make. I have also seen where users can request it in Plex, and *arr will add it.
The requests bit is facilitated by Ombi - https://ombi.io
Ahh, I'll have to look into the options I've been given once I'm not shitting at work. Ombi having an app is quite intriguing. What will I, the host, be notified on if at all? Is it a Plex extension that I'd only see when I go onto my server?
Meh. We did not share our account but still canceled a few years ago. Seriously do not miss it.
How does a Netflix subscription fix this? So many interesting shows and movies are missing or barely available for a month. The catalog of Netflix used to be good when they were the only streaming service but really, really tanked when every content producer started their own (and removed their stuff from Netflix).
It fixes it for my wife who likes to watch garbage shows that Netflix has
The account I share with family still works, but the second it doesn’t… it’s the pirate life for me
Same here. As soon as my mom tells me she can't log in, I'm cancelling.
IMO this is not surprising, I actually considered buying stock in Netflix, because they were so low.
I'm guessing the ones to complain the most, were the ones who were at the free end of those shared passwords.
I don't use Netflix myself, but adding advertising for slightly cheaper subscriptions, and ending password sharing, seemed like an almost guaranteed win for Netflix to me. At least in the short term.
People here may disagree and find it outrageous, but most people probably don't care enough to make a big deal out of it, and will simply choose the option that suit their needs best.
Yep, people really think they are smarter than netflix?? They trialled it, got their positive feedback data and rolled it out
I cancelled and don't miss it.
I didn't think there was doubt this would work, it's just a dumbass way of making up the "lost" profit. When you got a Netflix subscription before this, it was based on the total simultaneous screen count. Where the screens are should not matter, and never should have mattered. A simpler, less idiotic solution would have been to rethink the price per screen cost and adjust the plans. It would have been a more acceptable compromise that accomplished the same goal.
And a growth in my friends using my server, let the public support unethical business practices, we'll get fat off their content.
Too bad Netflix content isn't good anymore, it's concerning what the general public enjoy.
Did they report the growth? Or just new subscribers?
Doesn't confirm if that's better or worse off though since this whole thing started
well maybe if majority is feeding them, they wont actively crack down those sailing the high seas?
I haven't followed the Netflix password news all that closely because I barely ever use Netflix - but when I do use it it's through password sharing an account my sister pays for. That worked as recently as just a week ago.
Should I expect that to stop working soon?
If someone is actively watching something and a second person logs in to the same account and starts watching something, Netflix recognizes it within a minute and displays a message to the second person that logged in stating that someone is already logged in to the account.
As long as you're not watching at the same time as each other, you should be good to go.
Thanks. I doubt that'll ever be an issue for us so it looks like it'll be business as usual.
That’s not how it works. You will be forced to set a “home” for your account, which then IP locks your account for stationary devices. Anyone else not on that IP and not on a mobile device won’t be able to watch.
There is an method if you log on eleswhere ip but you have to "approve" every 24hrs on the primary email or 2fa in app that visits home
Oh. Guess I'll stop watching then. Thanks also.
As a person in charge of shared Netflix subscription for my friends I noped out the moment they started password sharing crackdown. Yeah, they added "small" charge to add more users to subscription but the writing was on the wall and I realized I was the frog being boiled.
2 of my friends went for basic plan separately. The cost of 2 basic subscriptions is about the same as 4k / 4 screens one we were using before. So yeah, subscriber count up, now Netflix needs to do a rug pull on basic plan (which they already do in US and UK).
I don't even see a need to pirate stuff from Netflix these days, barely anything worth watching. I still pay for HBO, Disney+, Apple TV+ (part of family Apple One) and Prime - which in the country I live in cost together about they same as Netflix did lol.
How much is Netflix and how much is HBO? Where I am HBO is nearly as much as Netflix. I'm curious to see what differences there are elsewhere. For me, Prime is only cost effective comparatively because I qualify as a student currently.
Can't reply to kbin accounts due to language bug so I'll reply to myself: