In recent days, the issue of shared Netflix accounts has been moving a lot. Facing the user, it is a “trap” that helps a lot to be able to opt for the movie and series service, but for the company, what at first was an impulse to monopolize users, has ended up being the main financial problem of the brand. And everything is about to disappear.
pay more to share
The measure that Netflix would take to stop this way of using the service is quite simple: if you want to share your password, you will pay more. And it is not a simple warning. The company has already been carrying out initial tests in Latin America, raising the price of the subscription so that two additional users outside the home environment can access with the same password.
Pushing to the precipice
The company is taking a series of steps so that the jump to having to pay to share the account feels natural and not obligatory, and the truth is that they are approaching it in a very intelligent way. These are the actions that are taking place in some countries, and other actions that were withdrawn for being too aggressive:
- When a user accesses the service with a borrowed password, You must enter a numeric code which will be received by the original owner of the account via SMS. This code will be valid for 15 minutes, so it forces the main owner to be attentive at all times.
- The additional price password sharing will fall short of the most basic subscription, and in many cases some users would rather pay slightly more for their own account than make things more complicated with account sharing. It looks like it will be 3 dollars.
- One idea they rejected was to display a message like “If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to continue viewing this.” As you can imagine, it was a very aggressive message that did not sit very well, so they decided to remove it.
- It is also talked about be able to continue increasing the number of shared userss adding slots as you need (and paying the extra, obviously).
In a few weeks it opens in the United States?
The news comes through The Wall Street Journalwhere it is assured that Netflix will begin to roll out user control in early 2023, quite possibly in the first weeks of the year. Netflix has not wanted to make statements about it, but if so, we would be talking about the official implementation and the end of shared accounts.
For Netflix, the United States has always been the main market, and when a feature is implemented there, it means that global distribution is just around the corner. Now we will only have to know if they will continue to allow the password to be shared but with all the obstacles that we have mentioned previously, something that will undoubtedly force many to take the step.
Fountain: The Wall Street Journal
