r/technology Feb 03 '23

Netflix says strict new password sharing rules were posted in error Business

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/03/netflix-says-strict-new-password-sharing-rules-were-posted-in-error
16.5k Upvotes

1.8k comments sorted by

13.5k

u/wtfTooma Feb 03 '23

It's only an accident once they saw how many people cancelled their subscription

5.9k

u/IntrinsicSurgeon Feb 03 '23 Keep Calm Starry Vibing

“Sorry, my cat ran across the keyboard and posted that!”

-Netflix

1.8k

u/NotMilitaryAI Feb 03 '23

"Yo, man, it's crazy. So, like, my friend stole my phone while I was in the bathroom, and posted that as a joke. That's so craaazy, right?"

378

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

I actually had this happen. Complete with homophobic slurs. To my boss no less. I did get even though it took way too long

289

u/NotMilitaryAI Feb 03 '23

That would have definitely ended that friendship for me....

275

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

Never was a friendship thing. Film industry backstabbing at it’s finest

159

u/motorblonkwakawaka Feb 03 '23

I went to film school. By the time I graduated I turned heel and never looked back. Never mind the fact that the film industry in my country (NZ) somehow is the only place where normal labour rights and laws don't apply, making pay totally optional and giving film workers essentially no rights or protections. Pretty much the only way people make it through the first few years is by having a second job and never sleeping, or being lucky enough to have rich parents. But yeah on top of all that, it was the most toxic workplace I've ever encountered. Seemed like everyone out for themselves, no qualms stepping over anyone to get ahead, no such thing as honour or good will.

104

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

You nailed it. I spent 35 years in it and finally just walked away before I died in some sleazy hotel far from home

52

u/motorblonkwakawaka Feb 03 '23

Ouch 35 years. Well, hope you've found something a little more fulfilling! I've moved on to writing fiction. Don't need to hire expensive equipment, underpay or exploit people, or get up at fucking 4 in the morning just to hear the 1st AD tell us someone fucked up and filming won't start till after lunch. Just me, Microsoft Word, and a hot coffee, spilling stories :)

34

u/idontsmokeheroin Feb 04 '23

I’ve worked as a background actor in Hollywood for about 20 years off and on when I can. Honestly agree with everything you guys have said. It was hell during COVID. I’m barely 40 and I’m thinking about hanging up my hat. I already work at a bar as well and I started just taking more shifts at the bar rather than trying to get to 6AM call times to be on set for 14 hours. The film industry is so goddamn exhausting.

19

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23

Well I got a good pension, everythings paid for so I guess it was worth it. Don’t miss the 80 hour weeks at all. There are some really good people in the biz, but some real dicks as well. Life on the road just got to be too much in my 50’s

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u/NotMilitaryAI Feb 03 '23

Ahhhh. Sheesh, that's really gross that they would do that.... Glad you at least were able to get even with them

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u/JasonSuave Feb 03 '23

….And we realized it 4 biz days later

149

u/zebrastarz Feb 03 '23

...unlesss?

96

u/OdysseyZen Feb 03 '23

They string up the 'intern' who posted it against the discretion of the company to wipe another boss' ass with a half-hearted apology with no repercussions to the damage done to it's customers.

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u/YoYoMoMa Feb 03 '23

Qwikster 2.0

133

u/watchingsongsDL Feb 03 '23

Exactly this. Make a bold ass announcement about changing everything, watch shit explode for 48 hours, then fire up the rollback plan and start the apology machine. Netflix knew this could happen but they got valuable info about their base.

62

u/PyroDesu Feb 04 '23

Looks at Wizards of the Coast

Gotta make sure you do your about-face quickly enough.

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u/Stoogefrenzy3k Feb 03 '23

I forgot all about that.. Thanks for the reminder. And I have stopped subscribing over a year ago since they last want to jump $2. I've had it, especially when they cancelled their series with no proper ending to their shows.

323

u/themindisall1113 Feb 03 '23

i was legit JUST about to text my family and tell them i was canceling

447

u/NoSaltNoSkillz Feb 03 '23

Already texted mine. When these changes go live and start charging, going to cancel until its revoked or until a series I want gets completed and cancelled and then ill buy a month.

I buy 4 screens, give me 4 screens. Double dipping b*st*rds

108

u/11B4OF7 Feb 03 '23

I’d prefer 1 screen and still have the option to stream 4k but Netflix only offers standard definition on 1 screen lol

57

u/PopCultureWeekly Feb 03 '23

Yeah who tf streams in SD. It should be illegal

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u/ill0gitech Feb 03 '23

I now very rarely go to the office, and I used to watch Netflix on my commute.

My kid intermittently watches on her iPad.

The notion that we have to login every 30 days or have our devices locked out and need to call support is definitely making me consider canning my service

50

u/Drunkenaviator Feb 04 '23

I fly airplanes for a living. I use netflix from 5-6 countries a month. Any of this shit affects how I use it, I'm cancelling.

40

u/AshingiiAshuaa Feb 04 '23

Which airline did you say you worked for again, Drunkenaviator?

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u/Wise_Ad_4816 Feb 03 '23

I pay for the highest package and have two kids in college in different states. Netflix won't get 3 accounts out of me, they'll lose the one acct I have. They better think long and hard, because I'm just one of millions thinking the same thing. We've been customers since the DVD-by-mail days. But Netflix isn't the only game in town anymore.

49

u/handsomesquidward90 Feb 04 '23

Same here. Even worse, compared to their fee, you can get other services combined. They are shooting themselves on the foot .

50

u/Wise_Ad_4816 Feb 04 '23

Look, my husband is always looking for ways to trim the budget. This seems like a classic case of Fuck around and find out. 😂

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u/AshingiiAshuaa Feb 04 '23

Hulu+Disney+ESPN for the same price as the Netflix 4k plan

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u/Startrail_wanderer Feb 03 '23

Already cancelled it

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u/tomistruth Feb 03 '23

Same here. I wanted to financially support Netflix's good business decisions by subscribing to their free tier, the Pirate Plan.

82

u/AlphaSquad1 Feb 03 '23

Ahoy matey 🏴‍☠️

31

u/AppleBytes Feb 03 '23

Do what you want cause a pirate is free!!

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u/GimpyGeek Feb 03 '23

Yeah this sounds about like as much of an accident as that recent update to the D&D license was

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u/Heart_Throb_ Feb 03 '23

Fucking over military members and traveling healthcare workers is never a good look for any company.

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u/FailsAtSuccess Feb 03 '23

Yep, because why was it in English for Spanish speaking countries?

324

u/JackSpyder Feb 03 '23

In fairness all of Spain is using just 3 Netflix accounts.

98

u/TheFriendlyArtificer Feb 03 '23

They love Basqueing in their thrift.

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u/halcyondread Feb 03 '23

Fuck them. My sub's already canceled, and it's staying that way.

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5.4k

u/ikantolol Feb 03 '23

TL;DR

Now, however, those rules have been removed from Netflix's help pages. According to The Streamable, Netflix says it was all a mistake — for the United States.

"For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries," a Netflix spokesperson told the publication. "We have since updated it."

probably just testing the water

hope that water boils and burn their feet

2.4k

u/Amon7777 Feb 03 '23 Super Heart Eyes

It's Shrodengers corporate dick move. If it works they meant it and if it doesn't it was just an accident.

903

u/antonspohn Feb 03 '23

Lol. This just happened with Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast too.

A lot of corporate boldness from clueless executives that don't realize how done with bullshit people are.

616

u/HorseRadish98 Feb 03 '23

People have so many subscriptions now. It's not the glory days 10 years ago where we all had Netflix and forgot about it because it was only 10 bucks. Now there's a dozen subscriptions and they all want 10 dollars. You piss me off I'll just know to cancel yours.

The entire point should be to remain quiet and unseen, quietly delivering content so I don't think to cancel you

197

u/eliquy Feb 03 '23

My dream is to create an app with a yearly $10 subscription that a modest number of people, maybe ~40k, install and use just enough to never worry about cancelling.

107

u/Ok_Dog_4059 Feb 03 '23

How about half of the population of the planet at 8 billion people and it is 1 penny a month so it isn't even worth logging in to cancel.

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u/browniebrittle44 Feb 03 '23

It’s a good idea honestly even if it’s just a dollar…that’s how Google Photos is making money…charging $2 for storage for millions all over the world

38

u/Good_ApoIIo Feb 03 '23

Lots of services start out that way until some suit or investor gets nosey and asks why they aren’t charging $10 instead. Then some brown noser suit in the room will jump up and ask why not $10 and cut a few features?

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u/Pensato Feb 03 '23

You just described gym memberships.

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u/turtleman777 Feb 03 '23

Hasbro/WOTC has been pulling this shit for years with Magic. Push the envelope as far as humanly possible to see what outrageous crap they can get away with. Then if there is community outrage, silently reverse course without apology and pretend like that was the plan all along. Then they publicly jerk themselves off over how great they are because they managed to survive shooting themselves in the foot.

"Look how incredibly reasonable we are, we listened to community feedback!"

The situation with D&D is only going to continue to get worse. Hasbro will find every single possible way to squeeze D&D players for money until you have people quitting in droves.

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u/Vegan_Honk Feb 03 '23

Oh I'm excited for this new world to appear to show business who's actually in charge, especially with the limited money we all have.

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u/soyarin Feb 03 '23

Just like the WotC License uproad just a couple weeks ago.

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u/entitysix Feb 03 '23

Hasbro just did a similar move with Dungeons and Dragons

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u/jorgejhms Feb 03 '23

They been testing this in Peru for several months already. Its obvious they are planning to launch this globally.

Here's an article about that https://restofworld.org/2022/netflix-crackdown-password-sharing-peru/

79

u/imnotmrrobot Feb 03 '23

That’s actually what brought down the Pedro Castillo administration.

53

u/Vjornaxx Feb 03 '23

Little known facts - Lee Harvey Oswald was a Netflix agent and the moon landing was actually a Netflix Original.

38

u/peakzorro Feb 03 '23

So that's why it was cancelled without a sequel for 50 years.

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u/DonNotDonald Feb 03 '23

Wizards of the Coast. Netflix. Which big corporation will release a "draft" next?

118

u/antonspohn Feb 03 '23

HBO. They're desperate to ruin their image & run the company into the ground. The merger between Discovery & HBO was a craven cash grab.

78

u/dratseb Feb 03 '23

It’s different because Discovery is killing HBO on purpose. Netflix is doing this because they’re incompetent.

101

u/lanekimrygalski Feb 03 '23

Deciding to kill a premium brand associated with high quality content like HBO, in favor of the Discovery brand, seems pretty incompetent to me

80

u/dratseb Feb 03 '23

It’d be like a winery converting to a beer factory to save money while expecting people that like wine to continue buying from them. Discovery and HBO are fundamentally different services catering to different people. Wine connoisseurs aren’t going to suddenly decide they like beer.

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u/CoolPractice Feb 03 '23

It’s not incompetence it’s hubris. Discovery is the CEO’s baby. He bought WB just to prop up Discovery.

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u/fgtrtd007 Feb 03 '23 hehehehe

Hahaha, because password sharing is especially bad in those countries. Talk about walking it back..... Fuckin Peru.

Why was it written in English?

158

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 03 '23

My family in Peru all speaks English and Spanish. We’re also all part Chinese.

Peru is an interesting place.

That said, Netflix be lying.

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u/Chicken-Inspector Feb 03 '23

Have a Peruvian friend. Made me some Peruvian dishes once. Mind was blown to learn about Chinese food mixed with Latin American o_O

Lomo Saltado is fucking bomb.

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u/Latyon Feb 03 '23

Yep. Accident my ass. They've been trying to dip this toe for years.

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u/gaybraham-lincoln Feb 03 '23

Too late, we already canned our subscription

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u/historynutjackson Feb 03 '23

April 2022 for us. No regurts.

22

u/silversatire Feb 03 '23

Not even one little 🏴‍☠️?

28

u/historynutjackson Feb 03 '23

Okay, maybe just a little 🏴‍☠️, as a treat.

30

u/madbamajama1 Feb 03 '23

Cancelled mine yesterday. Replaced it with Paramount+ and Peacock, and am saving $10/month and getting better content.

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u/orlyfactor Feb 03 '23

Once they announced more strict rules I cancelled my account several months ago. I had been a subscriber since the DVD in the mail days. Uhhhhhh CYA!

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u/shnurr214 Feb 03 '23

We already cancelled our subscription, Netflix's original catalogue is pretty crap anyways and we only legitimized the sub because my wife and I would split the cost with her sister and brother. Netflix's originals with the exception of stranger things are so weak that I cant actually rationalize paying that for just our family. It's mind boggling that Netflix chose to do this and didn't do what software companies do and charge by the seat or something akin to that.

I hope this really burns them and they learn a lesson from this..

23

u/MillianaT Feb 03 '23

Technically, they do. Basic supports 1 stream, the $15.49 one supports 2, and the expensive one supports 4. They use the same breakouts for stream quality, though, so people tend to forget.

They’re desperate for growth in saturated markets.

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u/FullofContradictions Feb 03 '23

Yep. I'm only paying $20+/month for 4 streams because I'm sharing it with my parents and my two nephews. Take that away and I'm going to subscribe for a month at a time to binge popular shows before canceling again just like I do with HBO and Hulu. Basically the only service I keep full time is Prime but that's just for the shipping.

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u/vicemori Feb 03 '23

I live in Chile and now I don't have access to my father's Netflix account because I live with my mother... Time to get back to piracy I guess

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u/Practical_Law_7002 Feb 03 '23

Ah yes...a help page typed in English on a ".com" was supposed to be for Spanish speaking countries that use ".cl" for Chile, ".cr" for Costa Rica or ".pe" for Peru.

They think you're morons folks.

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u/NakedAfraidMoleRat Feb 03 '23

"ahah jk my cousin took my phone lol lol"

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u/SloppyMeathole Feb 03 '23

For anyone wondering, this is called a "trial balloon". This is what happens when it doesn't go well. They can just claim it was an accident and never meant to leak it. If the perception had been positive they would have just left it out there.

672

u/per08 Feb 03 '23

How could the perception of this move be considered to be positive by anyone? Oh Netflix is about to charge me more for the same thing, hooray! (?)

310

u/duuudewhat Feb 03 '23

Yeah there’s no way to spin this as anything but anti consumer. Who the fuck pays for Netflix and says “awesome. Less options!”

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u/fffangold Feb 03 '23

You would be surprised how much corporate will reframe things as a positive for the customer even when it's a negative.

For instance, when I worked retail, we had an "item of the week" that was at checkout. You had to offer it to customers, and if you didn't offer it and the customer called you out on it, they got the item for free. And then, of course, the person who didn't offer it got written up by management for not trying to sell the item.

We were told the customer might want or need the item, and once offered see the benefit in buying it. In reality, most customers hated being offered the item, with reactions ranging from a hurried decline, proactively asking us not to offer it, and occasionally getting legitimately upset about us trying to sell them more crap. But of course, once in awhile someone would call us out because hey, free item.

But in the end, customers, on the whole, hated it, but corporate was always like "but what if they want it and you don't offer? See, it is good for customers!"

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u/Urag-gro_Shub Feb 03 '23

CVS did this years back when I worked at the pharmacy, except instead of trying to sell something, we were supposed to say 'Mr./Mrs. So-and-So' three times during the transaction. Was supposed to give us a "small town vibe", (It's not a small town). So then when everyone refused to because that's stupid, they put up a sign offering customers a $25 gift card if they called us out for not doing it.

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u/fffangold Feb 03 '23

That's quite the small town vibe. Nothing says small town like a forced awkward interaction where the customer can call you out for free money if you don't do it.

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u/Holovoid Feb 04 '23

So then when everyone refused to because that's stupid, they put up a sign offering customers a $25 gift card if they called us out for not doing it.

Honestly with this shit I'd just do it all the time and point out the gift card policy just to see how much money I could wrack up from the shitty company before they fired me.

I'd invite literally everyone I knew to try to get as many gift cards as possible. It'll never bleed em dry but fuck em, if you work at CVS you can literally get a job at almost anywhere else on the planet and it'll be as good or better.

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u/Rough-Cry6357 Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23

I remember working at a dollar store in high school where they did this except with the added bonus of the customer getting a free chocolate bar if they called you out on it.

So basically corporate turned customers into snitches against employees. Customers would try to distract you or blurt out that you didn’t offer the item before you had a chance just to get a shitty generic brand chocolate bar, not realizing we got in trouble for “losing” our candy. And if you lost 3 candy bars, you would get fired. Can’t understand how it would help anyone but people loved to try and get that candy

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u/waldojim42 Feb 04 '23

I would literally stop what I was doing, and walk. The moment one of them pulled that. And when the customer got upset, I would just say "that was number 3. I just got fired. Enjoy your candy bar." And fucking walk.

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u/Working-Amphibian Feb 03 '23

For then, positive would probably be it going under everyone's radar and people just kinda accept it. Gladly it wasn't the case.

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u/simmeh024 Feb 03 '23

Positive by not loosing that many subs. If only 1% canceled, they would be like nah, lets continue. Apparently they saw their company going up in flames after announcing this lol.

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u/redvelvetcake42 Feb 03 '23

Less a look for positivity and more to see how angry the reaction would be. It was angry as hell and Netflix is making a mistake going into this year when they don't have anything not called Stranger things to get eyes. HBO, Amazon, hell even Apple TV have shows to watch right now or coming out that will at minimum grab eyes. Netflix is so desperate to just force a user increase that it will long term lose them. Businessmen are so very dumb when it comes to how to react.

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u/demonicneon Feb 03 '23

Last years emmys, Netflix STACKED the drama nominations. Better call saul, ozark, squid game, stranger things. 4/8 nominations. No win.

They only took 3 awards at an award show where they were heavily nominated, and this year they don’t even have any contenders imo. Everyone else does.

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u/InvisibleEar Feb 03 '23

Better Call Saul is AMC

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u/merien_nl Feb 03 '23

Is that really an English term? Proefballon is a Dutch word. Politicians do it al the time. Leak something to the media, if the response is positive of course it is policy in the making, is the response negative nobody knows how it got in the media and it was just an idea of a low level civil servant.

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u/Light_Error Feb 03 '23

It is indeed an English term. I looked around to see where we got it from, and it seems to just be a translation of the French “balloon d’essai”.

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u/r3dk0w Feb 03 '23 All-Seeing Upvote

They already sell in streams, where the normal package gets 2 streams and the premium package gets 4 streams.

Why do they care that 2 streams are used when that's what the package allows?

If they don't want password sharing, then limit the lower-end package to 1 stream. Then it doesn't matter how much password sharing is going on.

1.9k

u/Wildcard36qs Feb 03 '23

This is what baffles me. I'm paying for 4 streams, who cares where they are used?

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u/GeT_Tilted Feb 03 '23

They care about growth. They know that their sub numbers will reach a hard limit soon. So they bet on people using other's account may convert into a paying sub when the restrictions go live. They did not expect the public to call for cancellations or piracy so they changed course to appear better in the public's eye.

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u/RubberReptile Feb 03 '23

Anecdotally, my family shares a Netflix account, and the second that it stops working for my siblings we're cancelling it. Can't be the only ones who feel this way. We've paid for the service for nearly a decade, now.

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u/sarcasatirony Feb 03 '23

Have kids in college and we share 4 streams. Discussed last night that we’re not paying more for the exact service for which we signed and would cancel. Obviously Netflix was listening through the mics on our phones and reacted with this story.

Coincidentally, there’s a new over the counter drug for my ED and I can renew my car’s warranty so I’d call today a win.

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u/NHRADeuce Feb 03 '23

Same here. One kid in college and another about to be. I upgrade to 4 streams specifically to get 4 streams. The minute anyone kne of us is blocked, we're canceling.

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u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

I think Netflix is worth at most 12 bucks a month per household. I’d still cancel personally unless it was maybe 10 bucks a month. If they had wanted to go through with this new plan they would have needed to drop the cost a very significant amount.

I don’t see how they assumed that people would just be cool with the cost more than doubling. It’s laughable. I think most people pay for Netflix and then they share with someone who has hbo max, hulu or Disney. That way you have access to all of them. It’s not worth it otherwise.

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u/canrat Feb 03 '23

Agreed! Netflix already has to compete with 10+other streaming services (depending on which market). If all of them let me password share and Netflix doesn’t, why bother keeping Netflix?

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u/roboninja Feb 03 '23

They did not expect the public to call for cancellations or piracy

Then they are not as smart as people like to assume they are.

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u/UrbanGhost114 Feb 03 '23

I have found that just because they make more money, or have a "higher"position, they don't necessarily deserve either. It doesn't make them smarter, it makes them better bullshitters.

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u/TacoNomad Feb 03 '23

That means they need to find other ways to grow. Even if they do this, and somehow increase subscribers more than cancelations long term, they'll hit another wall. And then what? Pay for multiple accounts to use on multiple devices owned by the same user?

They should just work on finding other ways to grow revenue.

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u/AssicusCatticus Feb 03 '23

Or, you know, not expect exponential growth and be happy with the revenue they have. The constant need for more is ridiculous and insupportable.

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u/TacoNomad Feb 03 '23

Capitalism at its finest.

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u/Ratso27 Feb 03 '23

I think this is the answer. Even without the competition, there are a finite number of human beings on Earth who have access to the internet, the money to pay for Netflix, and the desire to do so. At some point you have to either radically alter what you offer to get the people who are already subscribed to pay for something else/appeal to a new demographic, or you have to accept that you've got about as many customers as you're going to get and just focus on maintaining them

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u/CleverNameTheSecond Feb 03 '23

But if not for constant growth how will the stonks go up even more?

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u/Sam-TheRaccoon Feb 03 '23

But that requires logic and reason and not being a greedy asshole.

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u/Deputy_Scrub Feb 03 '23

In Netflix's mind, they really hoped that those 3 people would get their own account.

But in reality the first person is either going to downgrade their account or cancel it outright, and the other 3 most likely won't get their own accounts.

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u/victorescu Feb 03 '23

Exactly and don't couple higher # of streams to 4k. I like 4k, i pay for 4k, i get more streams so I share those streams with family. If i can't share it with family then it isn't worth that insane amount. Then you need to give me a 4k tier with fewer streams.

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u/reddog093 Feb 03 '23

Especially when they used those additional streams to encourage password sharing.

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u/user_dan Feb 03 '23

Netflix has canceled season 1 of Password Sharing Rules.

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u/juju611x Feb 04 '23

The only show people were actually happy was cancelled after one season!

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u/az0ul Feb 03 '23

Damn, just cancelled my subscription by accident...and then added a torrent by accident...

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u/Cryptolution Feb 03 '23

I ordered a VPN by accident.

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u/lordMaroza Feb 03 '23

What was your accidental VPN choice?

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u/Cryptolution Feb 03 '23

Accidental mullvad

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u/DOMME_LADIES_PM_ME Feb 03 '23

I love accidentally signing up for accidental mullvad which accidentally doesn't ask for literally any information to create an account and just generates a random account number. You can also accidentally mail in cash to avoid accidentally providing information through PayPal or credit card details if you care that much.

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u/Wirehed Feb 03 '23

hah! Wild! The same thing just accidentally happened to me!

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u/GyrKestrel Feb 03 '23

Netflix really thinks we can't do without them.

Realistically, Netflix has like 2 shows that don't suck and won't get cancelled in the same week.

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u/megjake Feb 03 '23

Ugh I hate it when I accidentally pirate Netflix shows just the worst

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u/bytemage Feb 03 '23

Just like Hasbro's OGL?

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u/Stealthgecko Feb 03 '23

I was thinking the exact same thing. “Hey I’ve heard this one before!”

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u/Fernis_ Feb 03 '23

Those overly long, detailed, checked by Legal to be squeaky clean and law binding Terms of Service documents just keep writing themselves. What a silly whoopsie coincidink.

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u/kinglearthrowaway Feb 03 '23

“We rolled a 1 but also this was only a draft!” lol

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u/OptimisticSkeleton Feb 04 '23

D&D and Netflix are two things I’ve given up in 2023 and I’m not going back.

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u/yesitdooms Feb 04 '23

Hasbro already fucked themselves over. The new ORC being created by Paizo will set the new standard.

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u/brooksjonx Feb 03 '23

I cancelled my subscription yesterday and when asked for feedback I said this was the main reason, you’re all welcome.

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u/Wandos7 Feb 03 '23

I cancelled mine on Wednesday and said this and the lack of good content is why.

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u/boogersrus Feb 03 '23

Me too. I also said they should stop starting so many shows just to cancel them anyways. Quality over quantity.

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u/bostonchef72296 Feb 03 '23

I no longer start a Netflix original unless I know if it has been canceled or not.

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u/datgenericname Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 04 '23

Yeah, bullshit.

It’s a common tactic these days with corporations. Run out a real shitty policy or change and then let the public react to it. When they react negatively to it, you then effectively say ‘lol my bad’, then retract it back to a point where the public stops reacting poorly to it, but still gives the corporation something.

WotC did this recently with the OGL for Dungeons and Dragons. They put a ridiculous change into it saying they can claim the money off of anything created for the game, the public got extremely pissed off, and now they retracted it to change that part of the policy.

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u/sparky8251 Feb 03 '23

Actually, the OGL thing resulted in WotC walking back fully and even giving ground... They are back to using the license they tried to kill and published the materials the OGL covered under the Creative Commons as well so they can't just pull the rug out from under people in the future again.

Doubt it'll help them recover trust though, but that just shows how far they were pushed by their community. Legit lost ground after trying to pull stupid.

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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock Feb 03 '23

Plus, WOTC’s biggest competitor (Paizo) announced they were making their own public license anyone could use, and then put all their books on sale for 25% off (the same royalty WOTC wanted to charge.)

They sold 8 months’ worth of products in 2 weeks.

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u/sparky8251 Feb 03 '23

Paizo also promised the license would be owned, overseen, and governed by a 3rd party entity made up of all the WotC competitors in the space so that no one company could ever pull the stunt WotC did again and one day unilaterally change the license terms to benefit them at the exclusion of everyone else.

WotC fucked up real good.

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u/Yog-Sothawethome Feb 04 '23

Which makes sense since the people who founded Paizo were former WoTC employees; some of which had a hand in writing OGL 1.0. Hell, I think I read that one of their lawyers was the actual guy who wrote the original text.

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u/datgenericname Feb 04 '23

Honestly had no idea that the community forced them to go back that far.

Real talk, with what they have done with MtG and what they tried with D&D, they deserve whatever losses come their way. The dedicated fans that play those games don’t deserve this treatment.

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u/kirlie Feb 03 '23

My partner and I we talking about this when I first heard about it. We can't figure out how it would work even just for our household. If we are only allowed one home location, what happens when we watch Netflix at work during breaks? We can't reasonably bring the breakroom TV home to connect to our WiFi. What about if we're on vacation for longer than a week? This plan doesn't seem very well thought out.

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u/DiscombobulatedElk93 Feb 03 '23

We travel full time in an rv for work, we don’t have a “home” Wi-Fi. We’re between 4-5 states all year and use hot spot and park Wi-Fi. We won’t be able to use Netflix anymore.

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u/kirlie Feb 03 '23

This would be the case for alot of retirees. I live in South Texas, Winter Texans are here for about 4-5 months out of the year. I could see this causing alot of issues for them.

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u/Throwawayaccount_047 Feb 03 '23

Netflix is built into every Tesla out there too. How the fuck did they plan to reconcile with that? Am I supposed to send them an email a week before I go for a drive?

Fuck Netflix. I will cancel at the end of the month now regardless of what they do.

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u/Nya7 Feb 03 '23

I mean this is how hulu liveTV already works. Yes, it’s a horrible service

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u/Takeurvitamins Feb 03 '23

I teach high school and my students tell better lies than this.

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u/neverwhisper Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23

I'd be curious to know the cancelation numbers. I canceled mine yesterday.

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u/Fealieu Feb 04 '23

I cancelled mine today and said it was because of the password sharing rule and the fact that they cancel shows after one season too much.

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u/DrProfessorSatan Feb 04 '23

I bet it’s ugly.

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u/PauI_MuadDib Feb 04 '23

Too bad the juicy stuff is never publicly released unless it's a disgruntled employee leaking info.

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u/redacted-user-01 Feb 04 '23

I did too lol

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u/mikeyeli Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23

This was already implemented in a part of Latin America, the backlash was humongous and they lost tons of subscribers so they back peddled on sharing fees but kept the password sharing restrictions. I'm going to guess it's going to go about the same way for these next countries, I wonder if Netflix has ever heard what the definition of Insanity is.

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u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

Im fairly sure what was happening in Argentina was actually better than what they were trying to just pull. It would have allowed you between 2-4 home networks. That’s actually fairly reasonable. The bullshit they tried to pull yesterday was not reasonable

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u/bakoryebread Feb 03 '23

Netflix: Will you go out with me? Everyone: No, never. Netflix: Sorry that was just my cat walking across my keyboard.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

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u/Rolandersec Feb 03 '23

Not only did it get published. Maybe by accident, but I still wonder, why was it in English if none of those countries speak English?

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u/ddhboy Feb 03 '23

I mean, no one region locks languages. Netflix probably has a core set of languages that all copy gets translated to regardless of the market it's for.

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u/notsureifxml Feb 03 '23

they learned from Hasbro with the D&D open gaming license debacle I see

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u/Smarpar Feb 03 '23

There’s a big trend lately of these type of companies forgetting that they’re optional.

Unlike housing, food, and gas, which we can be upset over but can’t really go without, we don’t need them, they need us.

The dnd thing was especially confusing as their main product is more or less inspiring people to use their own imagination (which can be found for free basically everywhere). It’s honestly been kind of amusing watching them confused pikachu when they realize how insignificant they are.

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u/thoggins Feb 03 '23

D&D thing was just executives hired from other industries thinking they could monetize a tabletop game the same way they would a video game. Idiotic but unsurprising when company leadership are all just jumping from company to company without regard for what those companies actually do.

I'm sure Netflix understands their position as a luxury that can be discarded, they just don't know what to do to stave off their inevitable death as a growth stock so they're throwing shit at the wall to see if any of it sticks.

There's no good solution for Netflix and I'm sure they know that. They can never regain their position now that the properties are so divided between the many streaming services. Even if they weren't constantly shitting the bed with their original content, they could never produce enough good material to replace all the rights they lost when everyone and their dad decided to do their own streaming. The whole reason they could grow the way they did was because there was no competition and they didn't have to pay to produce the material, just license it. Now they are just modern blockbuster without most of the new releases.

Maybe they can stave off death the same way mom-n-pop video stores tried to. Start licensing porn.

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u/OptimusSublime Feb 03 '23

What? Did they reverse course?

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u/notsureifxml Feb 03 '23

yeah OGL 1.0a is here to stay and the entire 5.1 SRD is now creative commons

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u/Komnos Feb 03 '23

When you crit fail your attempt to lock down your content.

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u/Fearless_Example Feb 03 '23

Shit...I just accidentally cancelled my Netflix subscription in error. Whoops!

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u/Thuck_My_Ballth Feb 03 '23

Lmao, my family immediately canceled our subscription yesterday when we realized what their changes were going to be. I wonder how many other accounts did the same.

We really only kept Netflix, at such a high price point, because we had 3 different residences using the account (mom & dad at their house, brother at his apartment, my fiancé and I at our apartment)

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u/AbeLincoln30 Feb 03 '23

Your comment perfectly illustrates the impossible dilemma facing Netflix: multiple households sharing one subscription -- but preventing the sharing doesn't gain Netflix any subscriptions, it costs them the one.

It's kind of hilarious to see a mega corp caught in such a bind

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u/Thuck_My_Ballth Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23

Yeah, I mean the plan we sign up for directly advertises 4 screen watching at once. It’s literally my nuclear family so why do we all have to be under the same roof?

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u/sziehr Feb 03 '23

What bind. You pay for streams of content. The sub is just a container. The sharing made them money as the sharing had people get 4 streams of 4k cause they could justify it and it would mostly sit dorment. They were fools and greedy and now they pay the cost of hubris.

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u/thesaltybreadstick Feb 03 '23

I cancelled so fast, my mum was crying about her “Netflix exclusives” (she doesn’t even watch Netflix since she has cable so idek what she was so upset about)

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u/StrngBrew Feb 03 '23

I don't even share my password and these rules would have locked me out on at least one of my devices.

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u/nazrad Feb 03 '23

The problem with this logic is that US based customer support were fielding questions all day about how it impacts customers. They were able to handle these questions because they were already trained for it. You don’t train your staff to handle questions about policy changes that don’t effect that country.

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u/N3KIO Feb 03 '23 edited Feb 03 '23

ERROR?

Things like this take months or even a year to plan, you have meetings, you need approvals from the management and the higher ups, this just dosnt happen in 1 day, it takes months and months of planning to make such a change in the company and its infrastructure.

Do you really think people are this stupid lol

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u/Waterrat Feb 03 '23

Why yes they do.

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u/flashingcurser Feb 03 '23

They were testing to see how many people stopped watching and based on that decide if they want to implement it.

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u/JadeSidhe Feb 03 '23

I just saw this movie last month starring Hasbro. They lost tens of millions in twenty days and cut off there future revenue

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u/spc_salty Feb 03 '23

A lot of "errors" coming from Netflix these days. It's almost like....nobody is accountable for anything anymore.

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u/Marchello_E Feb 03 '23

The error: It didn't stick, the stock went down, we didn't get more subscribers, people just went to another streaming service, Should have been A/B-testing,

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u/AlpineVW Feb 03 '23

people just went to another streaming service

I was waiting for my mother-in-law in FL to tell me she couldn't log in. At that point I'd have canceled Netflix and subscribed to Parmount+ then given her the password.

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u/Longjohnpotato Feb 03 '23

ITS JUST A PRANK BRO.

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u/John_Doe4269 Feb 03 '23

I swear I thought I was looking at an Onion headline:
«Netflix's head of PR has a response to the password-sharing backlash: "haha jk, unless?"»
[insert pick of freshman with fuckboy hairdo tapping on his phone]

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u/leeharrison1984 Feb 03 '23

Amazing how many companies are posting highly controversial TOS by accident (Netflix, WOTC, PayPal, etc) and then immediately pretending like they totally didn't really want to do that.

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u/jenksy Feb 03 '23

There’s no way wording like that moves it through all of Netflix’s development processes - resilient to the infamous “chaos monkey” - accidentally.

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u/The_Brojas Feb 03 '23

Press (x) to doubt. When I called to ask about these rules and how it affects Netflix in cars, the support rep said “we didn’t hear anything about that in our training session about the new rules”

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u/Luke5119 Feb 03 '23

More like they were testing the waters to see the response. Surprise, surprise, everyone hates the idea!

Problem is they're trying to back pedal implementation and they're going to lose A LOT of subscribers as result. Had they put stricter policies in place when they started transitioning from the mail-in DVD service to streaming, it wouldn't be as big a deal.

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u/rayinreverse Feb 03 '23

Haha. Let’s drop this, see the reaction, then we can walk it back if we need to.

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u/mkbloodyen Feb 03 '23

..... only because of the backlash.

Don't kid yourself everyone.

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u/count_datboi Feb 03 '23

This feels a lot like the DND OGL debacle

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u/Flamingpotato100 Feb 03 '23

Omg they pulled a PayPal lmao. Remind me in 2 weeks when they get ballsy again and try to do this shit again. Get outta here Netflix is malware

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u/InsomniaticWanderer Feb 03 '23

Don't care. Already cancelled.

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u/LastOfAutumn Feb 03 '23

"For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries," a Netflix spokesperson told the publication. "We have since updated it."

Only for them, in English, in 3 Spanish-speaking countries? Right.

Netflix, I pay for access for X amount of people. Their location doesn't matter. If you prevent them from accessing their paid access just because they don't live with me, I will drop Netflix in a second.

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u/herpderpomygerp Feb 03 '23

In other words Netflix has announced and I quote " we fucked around and found out"

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u/fuckyouinparticularX Feb 03 '23

How stupid do they think people are?

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u/Available-Elevator69 Feb 03 '23

Oooops people don't like what we are saying. "It was posted on accident"

Surrrrreeeeee

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u/Back_In_Cork Feb 03 '23

The ONLY reason I still have Netflix is that my kids watch it when they are being cared for in my In-Laws. I, honestly, think that the last season of Stranger Things was the last time that I actually used it.

I'm a day one cancellation, once this is unleashed in Europe