Netflix’s New Plans Don’t Like Its Users, Many Have Reverted To Piracy

Francis Fernandez

For the first time in years, Netflix surprised a significant drop in the number of users. So much so that the company is already planning to create new cheaper plans, but with ads that may appear in a few years. However, it seems that maybe it’s too late to try to find a solution to a problem that has been brewing for a long time.

Along with this drop in the number of users of the video streaming platform, it is amazing to see how piracy has also increased recently essential. Traffic from the BitTorrent platform, commonly used to download illegal content, has grown for the first time in a long time in almost the entire world, and is likely to related to future plans for Netflix and competition.

The decisions of Netflix and competitors have revived piracy after years of free fall.

While the pirate sector has been in complete decline for years, incessantly falling, during 2021 it has grown 16% growth over the previous year, according to a report prepared by Akamai that reveals users’ Internet usage according to their records. This figure is quite alarming, especially since the content that users download most often illegally series and films.

Although it is not entirely clear, and the reasons may vary depending on each user, it is most likely that this trend towards an increase in the number of websites with pirated content and torrent downloads refers to video streaming platforms. As there are more and more of them, users do not think to pay for everything at once, which ultimately leads many to choose get content illegally which they want to see and which belong to other platforms.

In addition, for example, Netflix had a significant drop in users not so long ago, and although they mostly blame users who share accounts, the main reason is probably due to lack of content. If there are not too many interesting series and movies, users prefer to pay for other platforms like HBO, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+, and when another platform like Netflix launches an interesting game, instead of paying, they decide to get it on websites pirated content.

According to this study, most illegally obtained content series as Loki, Walking Dead, Rick and Morty, Game of Thrones or vikings, although it is true that the real list includes many more titles. Particularly troubling given that most of them can be viewed on the aforementioned streaming content services, no need to pay separately for every content.

With the sharp drop in the number of Netflix users, it is expected that sooner or later they will launch cheaper ad-supported plan. However, this is not the first time: Disney+ AVOD will arrive in the United States before the end of the year, and it is a very interesting model, mainly because it will many users are considering subscribing not so expensive. However, everything points to it won’t be enough how to solve the problem of piracy.

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The problem is not always the price, but the exclusivity of the content

many of the platforms exclusive series and content launched. This is normal, given that in the vast majority of cases, they are the ones who produce it. For this reason, when Netflix, HBO, or Movistar Plus+ are hard at work on a series or movie, they usually just release it on your own platformto get new users.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that when this happens, many people they do not consider investing in two or more platforms streaming video at the same time. Therefore, if the user already has an active subscription from another platform, it is displayed in should be canceled to be able to meet the new.

However, if other content available they don’t quite like it on the new platform, or something interesting is already being watched on another platform, other ideas will most likely come up to watch this new series or movie exclusively. The first is to request a user account from another person who pays for your subscription though most often resort to piracy.

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Thus, while the download levels of torrents and other types of illegal content much lower than those in 2016-2017, when it began to decline sharply, the truth is that this upward trend that piracy has suffered in recent years gives enough cause for concern for the entire streaming content sector.