“Netflix is trying to crack down on ineligible users, though it is unclear how many people use the platform against their terms of service.”<p>It’s soooo many people. Sometimes it’s pseudo-household sharing, such as my parents and my sister’s family that lives five miles away. Sometimes it’s folks that have agreed to share the cost of multiple streaming services (you pay for Hulu, I’ll pay for Netflix, Bob will pay for Disney). Sometimes it’s folks that bought an account login from a shady website. But the activity is pervasive. I’d be willing to bet that over half of Netflix accounts have given access to someone outside their household. And when you consider that sharing your account increases the number of users, I’d say that most of Netflix’s users are in violation of the ToS.
This would be a smart move if their content library was half as interesting as it once was. But people coasting on their parents' account aren't going to pony up for what they have to offer today.
I have an account for us, my parents and in-laws. It's barely worth it when split three ways, we're definitely not paying for three accounts for Netflix. I might as well set up a Plex installation and torrent a bunch of shows for them.
This is from January 2020 in India: [1]<p><i>> Still, we can joke. So, apparently can Netflix.<p>> Because when a Twitter user in India posted a clearly fake offer--a "free Netflix subscription for six months" if you'd just be one of the first 10,000 people to call a certain telephone number--Netflix (actually Netflix India) replied:
"This is absolutely fake. If you want free Netflix please use someone else's account like the rest of us."</i> [2]<p>Netflix knows that many users share their accounts. Since Netflix is also the lone streaming service in India where the pricing is very close to the US prices (compared to Amazon, Disney and Apple whose India prices are substantially lower than the US prices), anecdotally, there is a lot of account sharing happening. It's a tough question whether Netflix would prefer account sharing or piracy, since it has many great original shows and has also increased the amount of local/regional high quality content (in India) that's talked about or shared around.<p>Netflix has also been experimenting with mobile-only lower priced plans in India (still costlier than its competitors mentioned above). If account sharing is banned or made very inconvenient, people would get the content through other means.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/netflix-already-has-best-tweet-of-year-and-were-just-1-week-into-2020.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/netflix-already-has-best-...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://twitter.com/NetflixIndia/status/1213422409576927232" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/NetflixIndia/status/1213422409576927232</a>
Good time to reconsider if you really should continue subscribing, I'd say. Money to them means money to the copyright holders, and they are destroying our equipment with their DRM. Perhaps better to do something else with that money and time and do something productive instead of being passively fed content for consumption.
Netflix's selection is ever-shifting, ever-shrinking and constrained. There is no way that people will subscribe to multiple accounts within the same close friend/family group before switching to alternatives.
I always figured Netflix didn't crack down on this because they knew the risk they run by pursuing it and had weighted out the risk vs reward and concluded that the value of having a larger market out-weighted what they might be able to squeeze out of their current customers. I guess this might mean Netflix is looking forwards and are expecting less from a growing market as the competitive pressure from Disney, Amazon etc. and are thinking that they'd better try to claw in some profit expecting not to grow their market?
Many are saying how they won’t pay for a subscription themselves if Netflix does this, but this move can be worth it even if the vast majority of freeloaders don’t sign up for new accounts. It seems like an obvious win to me bc the cancellation rate of the actual paying accounts will be small and less than the accretive freeloader signups.
With the competitive landscape transformed in the past few years, user growth is going to be much harder to come by for Netflix. Monetizing existing users is going to be much more important than it was five years ago. This is a signal that the digital streaming gold rush is officially over. Next stop: advertising.
They’re welcome to it. I cancelled recently after they notified me of yet another price increase. I was a subscriber for years and the price constantly went up while the quality went down. Disney+ is cheaper and surprisingly has more content I’m interested in watching.
Canceled Netflix when I read about the content of the Cuties movie. The 3 other people who used my Netflix account were a bit bummed, but nobody paid for Netflix for themselves after I canceled. Plex + Sonarr/Radarr & a VPN is the way to go.
I will drop netflix soooo fast. The content is terrible and I have not been happy with the last 2 price increases. Don't forget I have 5 other subscriptions I have to pay for now too. This is all ridiculous, I want cable back
If they lock me out of the account I share with my friend (i'm using his account for years, before that he used mine for years) I'm done subbing to them. There are other ways to watch content.