March 2017 tweet on the official account Netflix surprised everyone. “Love Shares Password” “Love is a password exchange,” he said. A clear nod to subscribers who have historically “loaned” their password to friends and family so they can use the streaming service. But love is goneand 2023 will be the year when the platform will finally prevent clients from using shared accounts. Or at least he wants us to believe it.
But how do you go from “we know they’re doing something wrong, but we don’t care, so we celebrate it” to “what they’re doing is wrong, it hurts us, and they should stop”? A lot has happened in the nearly six years since that witty tweet. However, most of the events that led to the hunt for share passwords they happened in 2022.
Before we move on, we need to be clear on one thing: Netflix wants to prevent users from sharing their accounts. it’s completely legal. After all, this is a business, and companies are nothing but companies. Therefore, they have every right to try to obtain the highest possible economic result from the service they offer, adhering to what is established in their conditions. From there to customers who think it’s fair or love it, it’s a different story. ever youtuber Linus Sebastian from Linus Technical TipsHe said, “Corporations are not your friend,” and he’s right.
The problem with Netflix and its stance against password sharing is that for a very long time allowed users to do so. The company knew that subscribers were doing something that was prohibited by the terms and conditions, but chose to look the other way. A tweet from 2017 confirms this. It was only after the disastrous results that became known in the first half of 2022 that he finally decided to get to work to try to solve this problem.
Netflix and its crusade against sharing your password
In April, Netflix reported its first loss of users in a decade. During the first quarter of 2022, about 200,000 subscribers unsubscribed from the service. This news was a blow that led to the company’s actions. it will drop by 25% after the announcement.
But worst of all was the forecast for the second quarter, where he expected to lose another 2 million customers. Finally, between April and June, the drop was “only” 1 million users. That although it was half of what was foretold, still represents the biggest glitch in the history of the streaming service..
Since then, Netflix has launched a rampant scheme to bring back users. Its most famous component was undoubtedly the launch of a cheap, ad-supported plan. But the crucial aspect that the platform intends to address is preventing subscribers from sharing their passwords.
According to the company, if it can turn people using shared accounts into new individual customers, can add 100 million users. This is a cruel number, of course. How then not to try to turn them into legitimate subscribers?
The problem is that according to Wall Street MagazineNetflix identified in 2019 that password sharing was negatively impacting its subscriptions. However, the streaming platform was concerned that taking action against such ingrained behavior among its users would end up “repelling its subscribers”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a huge rise in streaming services, led by Netflix. Adding new users due to self-isolation and the need to have more fun at home made us forget about the problem share passwords. Basically the tree covered the forest. “The big push from COVID to streaming has clouded our outlook,” the company acknowledged after a drop in user numbers in April.
Tough competition
Since then “Love Shares Password” From 2017 to today, the landscape of streaming services has also changed significantly. For years, Netflix has been the master and lord of the industry.. And its biggest competitors have only appeared in the last three years. Disney+ debuted in November 2019, HBO Max debuted in May 2020, and Paramount+ debuted in March 2021 (despite having been in the US since 2014 under a different name). In the case of Amazon Prime Video, let’s remember that the service has undergone significant changes since its launch in 2006 as Amazon Unbox for the US market only.
It is clear that until 2019 Netflix had much more room to turn a blind eye to shared passwords.. It was only after the emergence and global expansion of its current rivals that it realized that the situation was becoming disastrous. But, as we’ve said, the explosion of streaming during the pandemic has led to a delay in attention to an issue that has only grown.
The problem of making uncomfortable decisions
So far in 2022, Netflix has come up with several options to try and stop users from giving away their passwords. In a limited trial in Chile, Peru and Costa Rica, the company decided raise prices for users who discover they are sharing their accounts. However, the application of the measure was uneven and caused great confusion among subscribers.
Shortly thereafter, the ability to add additional houses to each account was introduced at an additional cost for each of them. The feature was particularly unpopular in Argentina, one of the countries where it was tested, and Netflix ultimately decided to implement it last October, just two months after it was released.
In recent months, the company, led by Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, has decided to release features designed to prevent account sharing. Firstly, there was a function to transfer profiles to a new account without losing the playback history or playback settings. On the other hand, it added the ability to exclude other people from your account without taking more than a few seconds.
What will Netflix do in 2023 to stop you from sharing your account?
Aside from the experiments carried out in the second half of 2022, everything indicates that Netflix’s plan to crack down on shared accounts in 2023 will focus on several aspects. First, in the monetization of “sub-accounts”; In other words, the subscription owner must pay extra to add profiles that other people will use. Secondly, what profile transfer option becomes popular in countries where their basic plan with ads is already available.
This does not mean that the process is simple or that it is free from complications. In some territories, such as Europe, the cheapest subscription with ads is not attractive enough. Both from a monetary point of view, since it costs only 2 euros less than the cheapest option without ads, and from a functional point of view. The inability to download content for offline viewing is deal breaker for many.
It will also be extremely important to check if the methods chosen to control that the account is used only by those who live in the same household are effective. Netflix claims to rely on IP addresses, account activity, and device IDs to enforce its claims. However, not all markets work the same way. Measures of this type they may be easier to apply in the United States than in Latin America.For example.
Between the eyebrows, Netflix is turning those who use borrowed passwords today into legitimate subscribers. 2023 will be a crucial year to find out if the company is able to achieve this..
Source: Hiper Textual
