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

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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.

904

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.

618

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

198

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.

37

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

40

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?

5

u/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

Then people drop the service. It's the circle of life.

113

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.

17

u/SubstituteCS Feb 03 '23

1 cent is a lot of money for some people. At four billion, you’d have to have some of those people.

13

u/Ok_Dog_4059 Feb 03 '23

Even once though. Imagine if you could get a penny on average from 4 billion people it wouldn't even have to be monthly to make a huge difference.

12

u/NotRoryWilliams Feb 04 '23

It would be a tremendous achievement to get a billion people to pay attention to you at a low enough cost that a penny each was profitable.

3

u/Anonymous7056 Feb 04 '23

Every little bit helps.

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6

u/DannyGarden Feb 04 '23

Why do you want to owe paypall billions of dollars?

2

u/mrslother Feb 04 '23

This kid's going places.

4

u/wasabipotaytoh Feb 04 '23

Oh, you mean Apple’s $0.99 monthly storage fee? Fucking bullshit you can’t even argue with it

3

u/Netlawyer Feb 04 '23

But you aren’t wrong - hey, it’s a dollar, man. Don’t you want all your photos and shit backed up?

Yes, Tim Apple, I would like to have my shit backed up automatically into the cloud can you provide a service that would do that?

No problem, how much secure storage do you need? Let me know and I can offer that - you want 200 GB, well that will be $2.99 a month.

$2.99? That’s $36 a year FOR 200GB - outrageous - obviously Tim Apple is off the reservation at this point. /s

$3 a month for 200G is literally a loss leader for Apple at this point. ✊

3

u/therealdeathangel22 Feb 04 '23

Could you explain loss leader for me? I swear I used to know what this was but I now think I may be wrong.....I thought it was a product that you sold at a loss but it gets people in the doors to buy other things?

1

u/chubbsazn Feb 04 '23

That's correct

1

u/Netlawyer Feb 04 '23

That’s how I meant it - by keeping storage at such a low price, it keeps people on the Apple ecosystem so they use other services that Apple offers.

1

u/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

Apples bullshit* move to a new os you'll be fine.

13

u/Pensato Feb 03 '23

You just described gym memberships.

1

u/wrath_of_grunge Feb 04 '23

Do it.

There’s still people out there paying for AOL subs. The world is your oyster.

1

u/nlewis4 Feb 04 '23

Are you going to exclusively show failarmy tv on this app of yours?

4

u/Talking-In-Tongues Feb 03 '23

Canceled all my subscriptions except for one. VPN

3

u/Ecyclist Feb 03 '23

The old planet fitness model. Get ‘em in, get ‘em subscribed for 10$ a month, then hope they forget they are subscribed so they just keep paying for an unused service.

8

u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

Planet fitness is a slightly different model. Cancelling a gym membership makes people feel guilty because it’s like they’re giving up on being healthy and looking good. Whereas cancelling a streaming service potentially makes people feel good because they feel like they’re making a responsible spending decision. Meaning netflix needs to keep much more quiet than planet fitness if they don’t want cancellations

6

u/Dethmunki Feb 03 '23

and they all want 10 dollars.

10 bucks sounds cheap. Pretty sure even the basic plan w/ ads for Hulu is more then that, let alone what the ad-free version costs.

8

u/TheMachine203 Feb 03 '23

$10 sounds cheap until you end up with so many subscription services that it ends up being equal to a regular ass cable bill

1

u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

That is a lot at that point. But I’d still rather it than have to watch commercial. Plus it’s on demand. Not saying it’s worth paying for all of those at once but I’d still rather this way than cable.

1

u/Dethmunki Feb 04 '23

I meant that I think everyone charges more than that

2

u/Good_ApoIIo Feb 03 '23

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

Literally it’s the selling point of subscription services and that’s why so many things are moving to that sort of model but these greedy fucks just can’t help themselves. Nothing is too big to fail / get bought and dissolved by some bigger fish but they just don’t care because it seems like either way investors and executives come out on top, playing with other people’s jobs and money.

1

u/swheels125 Feb 03 '23

All these media companies that started their own streaming services late also pulled all of their brand’s content off of other streaming services to give themselves more exclusives to draw subscribers, which left Netflix with some pretty gaping holes in its catalog.

1

u/Netlawyer Feb 04 '23

“So I don’t think to cancel you”

That should be the mantra of every streaming service. How do I get you to subscribe and then quietly receive money from you every month in a way that you never think of cancelling.

1

u/Howunbecomingofme Feb 05 '23

Of all the streaming services Netflix should be the most scared of chasing customers away. They’ve been outpaced in almost every way at this point.

57

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.

8

u/KingBlumpkin Feb 04 '23

Good thing there are tons of different rule sets. Lots of great content being published out there. I still run D&D but that remains to be seen. I think a lot of people are going to stick with 5e and slowly move off to other games.

12

u/Apex_Fail Feb 04 '23

I recently bought the Pathfinder 2E rulebooks because of the whole OGL 1.Fuck situation in addition to canceling Dndbeyond.

Great thing about subscriptions, I can resubscribe if they turn out to not be total shitheads, but they can't guarantee revenue from me if they don't.

Consumers are in an interesting place with the current subscription market in that they hold A LOT of power to fuck with corporate forecasting, and need to flex that muscle when companies pull this shit.

7

u/kobold-kicker Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23

I’m still playing ad&d. The thing about rpgs is that the edition can stop seeing official support and go out of print, but as long as you have an imagination and an understanding of the base rules you can play new campaigns indefinitely.

RPGs can be played by two friends in any location no need for any equipment. If you need a random number generator write numbers on something, separate each number physically, stir on a surface and draw a number.

5

u/HitlersHysterectomy Feb 04 '23

D&D, what do you need? Dice and a graph paper pad. You can get some books if you want rules - old, new, doesn't matter. You just need some people who can write, some who can improvise, and Larry to bring the Doritos.

2

u/turtleman777 Feb 04 '23

That won't stop them from trying...

1

u/HitlersHysterectomy Feb 04 '23

those are my private Doritos, Larry!

1

u/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

It's D&D. I can literally play it without investing another penny into it.

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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.

6

u/Echo_of_Oryx Feb 04 '23

Seriously WOTC went full “fuck around and find out” and Netflix was all “hold my beer”.

5

u/comrade-linux Feb 03 '23

clueless executives

is there another kind? The closer I get to the C*O offices in my career the more I realise they don’t care, and don’t understand.

10

u/CursoryMargaster Feb 03 '23

I was just about to say "Haven't I seen this story recently?"

6

u/cptnobveus Feb 03 '23

PayPal?

7

u/CursoryMargaster Feb 03 '23

I was replying to the comment about Hasbro/WotC, so that's what I was referring to. I wasn't aware of something going on with PayPal.

1

u/cptnobveus Feb 04 '23

Got it, PayPal tried some bs last year and then similarly tried to play it off after backlash.

2

u/agriculturalDolemite Feb 04 '23

I think governments and corporations are both pathetically ignorant of how ready so many people are to just burn everything down right now

1

u/Thefrayedends Feb 04 '23

The price of my fuckin pepperoni has doubled, I'm looking at cutting back on luxuries. No, not the pepperoni, that's staying, it's the magic, netflixes and delivery that gets cut. But these schmucks think i'm gonna double my recreational budget in this financial climate? Even if i were to spend the same I'd just be getting less, so it makes it feel pretty shit, just cut it out entirely.

1

u/antonspohn Feb 04 '23

I split some of the streaming cost with a family member. If Netflix & HBO keep fucking around I'll drop them.

The only things I always use are YouTube (downloadable content is very convenient for my shitty jobs) & Dropout (very specific nerd related entertainment, which is also fairly audio-friendly).

Everything else is a podcast & pay what you want.

You might want to check to see if your local library has an app. Mine has an extensive audiobook library. Often local libraries have game systems, games, video players & vhs/dvd catalogues that you can rent from.

1

u/joesii Feb 04 '23

A similar thing happened, but they didn't claim it was an error. It was a leaked draft, which while I'm sure they were planning to go forwards with, they specifically said they changed their minds— rather than covering it up like Netflix seems to be doing.

1

u/stevrock Feb 04 '23

They're not done with bullshit though, it's why they keep doing it.

This backtrack is temporary.

49

u/soyarin Feb 03 '23

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

113

u/CyberCurrency Feb 03 '23

Never forget what PayPal did

77

u/zimjimmy Feb 03 '23

I forgot already, what did they do?

-6

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

-55

u/Shinobi_Shark_ Feb 03 '23

PayPal is the precursor to Apple Pay and most current forms of electronic payment processing but yes. Musky man bad >:(

38

u/entitysix Feb 03 '23

Hasbro just did a similar move with Dungeons and Dragons

3

u/Chicken-Inspector Feb 03 '23

They did? I’m out of the loop

6

u/PrisonLove Feb 03 '23

Oh man, you’ve been missing out on some real “undermonetized” bullshit.

1

u/drocha94 Feb 03 '23

In what world does this work? How would it ever garner them more subscribers lol

1

u/lucimon97 Feb 03 '23

I dislike outrage culture, but apparently its the only tool we have at this point.

1

u/doomgiver98 Feb 03 '23

Haha just kidding... unless?

1

u/prometheus3333 Feb 04 '23

it’d be less of a mouthful if you just shortened it to Schrödinger’s dick move

1

u/majmusi Feb 04 '23

And if the backlash is really harsh they fire some poor employee and blame them for "posting a Tweet on their own"

1

u/oriaven Feb 04 '23

Not allowing password sharing, like we've known was coming, is not a dick move. Maybe they should lower sub prices and encourage more accounts, I don't know. But sharing accounts isn't something you can do with most services so changing it is just fixing an error.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

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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/

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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.

43

u/peakzorro Feb 03 '23

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

5

u/SilveredFlame Feb 03 '23

Yea they had other priorities come up that needed the sound stage so they said fuck it we'll just have to go to the moon for real!

4

u/JamieMadRocks Feb 04 '23

They tried to revive it in 1986 but it was scrapped shortly after launch

1

u/TheWalkingDead91 Feb 03 '23

No wonder they tried to convince me that an old man in a kids’ body did in JFK. I knew it!

2

u/jarillatea Feb 04 '23

I’m still confused, is Boluarte pro or anti Netflix?

3

u/TacoNomad Feb 03 '23

Yep. It's obvious because they keep saying that they plan to do so.

122

u/DonNotDonald Feb 03 '23

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

116

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.

73

u/dratseb Feb 03 '23

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

100

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

81

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.

25

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.

3

u/ABenevolentDespot Feb 04 '23

The high quality content HBO is a money loser, has been for a long time. The WB is currently not much better.

The very inexpensive to make trashy reality shows that are Discovery's bread and butter are a goldmine.

It's about the money, honey. No incompetence there.

4

u/draftcrunk Feb 04 '23

Sad but probably true. Just rampant and disgusting unbridled and unchecked greed.

2

u/SymbioteSpawn Feb 04 '23

Sure, but it's very short-sighted. People still want to watch The Wire and Sopranos over a decade later, I don't think anyone is going to be binging through 90 Day Fiance (or whatever, I have no idea if they make that show) in the same relative length of time.

I get that Zaslov will be gone and will have walked out with short term success, but anyone who is holding onto the company long should see this is a terrible plan.

1

u/ABenevolentDespot Feb 04 '23

Products like The Sopranos and The Wire will likely be around for a long time because they are HBO financed projects that they have access to forever royalty free (although the actors and some above the line personnel do get ongoing residuals).

The stuff they're removing is stuff they have to pay ongoing fees to retain because it's someone else's product, and their metrics tell them not enough people are watching to continue paying the product owner to leave it on HBO.

Zaslov was the exact wrong person to be involved with and given control over Warner Brothers and HBO. Even worse than AT&T, who were a complete fucking disaster. Everything AT&T touches turns to shit.

1

u/YouCanLookItUp Feb 04 '23

Until you realize it's an ideological posture, not a business one.

3

u/grubas Feb 03 '23

That's all Zaslav, he's got this literally nonsense plan that he can cut operating costs make every DC movie a superhit, and do 10x the business of Disney.

Right now the plan is at "get all the businesses turning a profit".

1

u/antonspohn Feb 04 '23

That doesn't seem to reflect reality considering the Batgirl cancelation & write-off.

Probably just claiming things to pacify shareholders while he plunders the company.

1

u/dablackviking Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23

To be fair, AT&t fucked them over on this. They unloaded $60bn in debt on the company during the spin-off. This mean they have to start paying off that loan soon.

This is causing the new CEO to make some cost cutting decisions. With a $60bn debt celling about to fall on you and only $2.5bn in cash, and only one of your films did well last year what can you do? I don't agree with what the CEO is doing and hate that he is destroying my childhood but AT&T but them between a rock in a hard place.

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u/Advent_Hades Feb 03 '23

Microsoft seems like a good contender

348

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?

154

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.

63

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.

27

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 03 '23

Yep! Our food is heavily influenced by Chinese cuisine. We call it “chifa”.

Best food in the world IMO! 😋

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

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u/Prying_Pandora Feb 03 '23

Hmm. Saltados aren’t usually served with sauce but if I had to guess, I’d guess it was huancaina sauce. It’s a mild fresh cheese sauce made with a yellow chili pepper called ají amarillo (literally “yellow chili”).

Ají amarillo is wonderful because it has that complex, almost fruity quality of super hot peppers despite being rather mild. So you get all of the flavor of a super hot with but much more manageable.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

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u/aqueezy Feb 03 '23

its probably not huancaina per se cuz thats usually incorporated into specific dishes, but just the standard aji amarillo/limo sauce you get with roast chicken etc, maybe rocoto

2

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 03 '23

Huancaina sauce is absolutely served as a dipping sauce sometimes! It has a devoted following.

Rocoto is usually more orange and waaaaaay spicier, but also friggin delicious! If it was really hot and more orange than yellow OP, then it was probably rocoto like this poster is saying.

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u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

Chifa was definitely my favorite food in Peru. Especially when you get outside the main cities it’s often the only option for variety

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u/Prying_Pandora Feb 04 '23

You have good taste.

4

u/mrfjcruisin Feb 04 '23

The Peruvian word for fried rice is essentially the pronunciation for it in Cantonese “chaufa” and “Chao fan”. And it’s definitely the best kind of fried rice

2

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 04 '23

HECK YEAH IT IS! Come over and I’ll make some!

1

u/Intrepid_Beginning Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23

Yup. Same with soy sauce. It’s called sillao instead of salsa de soya because of Chinese influence as well.

3

u/ItsAll42 Feb 03 '23

I need this in my life immediately

2

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 03 '23

If you lived near me, I’d make you some.

I’ve been selling Avatar: The Last Airbender themed desserts and drinks using the knowledge of Asian cuisines I learned from my Peruvian culture.

It’s been fun!

2

u/wasabipotaytoh Feb 04 '23

Peruvian food is sooooooooo ducking good omg

1

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 04 '23

NO LIES TOLD! The best. Great tastes! 💖

3

u/Da12khawk Feb 03 '23

that sounds heavenly

3

u/aurical Feb 04 '23

Fuck you now I want some lomo saltado.

3

u/Chicken-Inspector Feb 04 '23

Reading all these comments make me 2nd that. Fuck it all, I want lomo saltado right now!

1

u/mju9490 Feb 04 '23

You can’t beat chifa, my friend.

1

u/Intrepid_Beginning Feb 04 '23

All of Chifa is bomb. There are so many amazing dishes. And Nikkei is a related but slightly different cuisine, it’s Peruvian mixed with Japanese. Equally delectable.

3

u/AppliedTechStuff Feb 03 '23

One of my teammates--league soccer--is Peruvian.

Great player and great person!

3

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 03 '23

Get them to cook for you. Peruvian food is among the best in the world. You wont regret it!

2

u/sushisection Feb 03 '23

i have a Peruvian friend... hes Indian.

1

u/Prying_Pandora Feb 04 '23

Does he cook? 👀

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

Well, from my experience as a software engineer, the text is ran through a translations service, generated, and stored for retrieval later.

The code will check the users language preference and return back the translated text for that preference.

Typically, all translations are generated for all supported languages. So it explains why an English version exists.

33

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!

142

u/Latyon Feb 03 '23

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

6

u/freedomofnow Feb 03 '23

I'm wondering why they aren't happy being the absolute big dick swinger and just keep people instead of keeping growing. There are only so many people.

141

u/gaybraham-lincoln Feb 03 '23

Too late, we already canned our subscription

54

u/historynutjackson Feb 03 '23

April 2022 for us. No regurts.

23

u/silversatire Feb 03 '23

Not even one little 🏴‍☠️?

28

u/historynutjackson Feb 03 '23

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

36

u/madbamajama1 Feb 03 '23

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

2

u/originalrocket Feb 03 '23

I have Paramount soley for StarTrek. But Halo has my attention and Tulsa King is fantastic... wait a minute guess its not just for StarTrek anymore.

1

u/radiocate Feb 04 '23

Yeah you're really showing those subscription services, by just subscribing to a new one.

This is going to lead to market consolidation. In 5-10 years we're all gonna be pirating because Disney will own everything (again) and they're going to just milk the people foolish enough to keep subscribing because there won't be any other options.

2

u/rickster555 Feb 04 '23

Market consolidation would be great. Remember when Netflix had everything? Those were the good times.

2

u/tuisan Feb 04 '23

It was great because they still had competition with TV so they had to keep it cheap. Also, nobody cared about giving streaming rights to them because they didn't think it mattered so they could also afford to keep it cheap. If one player has all the power, they can do anything and will most likely price gouge, stop innovating and just plain stop caring.

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u/madbamajama1 Feb 04 '23

No, I'm just over Netflix. It costs too much, and their content has gone downhill since the studios that started their own streaming services took their content off Netflix. 1-2 decent shows and 3-4 decent movies doesn't justify staying with them, when I can pay 1/4 the price for another service that offers better content.

1

u/butter_milch Feb 04 '23

Is there are good reason to do it proactively? I'm just waiting to get hit with some form of repercussion before leaving...

1

u/Howunbecomingofme Feb 05 '23

Dropped ours as of this month. I Think You Should Leave (ironically) might bring me back for a month but that’s about it. Where I live all the other streaming services are amalgamations of different content studios but Netflix is just Netflix…

81

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.

22

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.

7

u/DemonOHeck Feb 03 '23

Did you notice the exception? It was the company that offered other services than just shitty streaming. Prime also figured out how to avoid the account sharing already. Just directly link your prime video account to the amazon shopping account as far as billing goes and poof! Nobody wants to share the right to order crap off amazon off of their dime with anyone else.

3

u/MillianaT Feb 03 '23

Yeah, and if you do share it with your college student (Amazon household), they only have to be in the same country, not the same physical building.

2

u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

Apple TV is basically the same. People don’t want to share their apple accounts.

1

u/Netlawyer Feb 04 '23

But Apple includes Apple TV as part of Family Sharing - along with Apple Music, Apps etc.

Assume you haven’t looked into Apple Family Sharing.

1

u/FullofContradictions Feb 05 '23

My friend shared her apple tv with me. She just logged me in though, so I don't have her PW or anything.

1

u/Netlawyer Feb 04 '23

Yeah - I have my mom’s kindle on my account, but I really don’t need her to be able to see my Amazon order history. She has her own Amazon account for shopping.

1

u/DemonOHeck Feb 04 '23

Imagine if a Kindle could access amazon.com for shopping directly. Would that kindle still be there on your account? I know u said your mom, so she might be trustworthy enough anyway but anyone outside direct family members? And yeah, even your mom really doesn't need to see/shouldn't see everything you buy.

1

u/Netlawyer Feb 04 '23

Yeah, if my mom could order from Amazon.com off off her Kindle or see my shopping history rather than just having access to our shared Kindle library, she would definitely need to use her own account.

5

u/NotRoryWilliams Feb 04 '23

They’re desperate for growth in saturated markets.

That will be the justification for walking into a profitable company that produces a good product that people are happy with, that returns reliable income and employs myriad people, and basically parting it out, because it’s failure to achieve continued tech-bubble-pace growth is proof that the company has failed.

3

u/glizzler Feb 04 '23

corps think exponential growth is sustainable. Pretty dense.

1

u/11B4OF7 Feb 03 '23

Is basic in 4K?

3

u/Timmyty Feb 04 '23

No, and that's part of the problem.. if u want 4k, u need 4 screens, so you password share.

2

u/11B4OF7 Feb 04 '23

That’s exactly why I’ve been password sharing. I only need one screen but want 4k.

2

u/DropsOfLiquid Feb 03 '23

Ya it seems like they should put out a bunch of really good shows before a move like this. So people feel compelled to get their own subscription instead of everyone just reevaluating how much they REALLY use Netflix.

1

u/RandomWhoMe Feb 04 '23

I’m with you. I get HBO MAX for “free” with my ATT cell phone plan. And I decided to try out Hulu Live as a splurge because I get tired of updating my “media library” online. But I heavily use Plex also. Anyway, if it wasn’t for the wife and daughter who are conditioned to scroll through Netflix I’d have already cancelled. Time to start ripping that bandaid off.

43

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

4

u/ekaftan Feb 03 '23

Chilean here. My kids go every weekend to their grandmother's, so her TV has my netflix account.

I now have to pay the additional fee.

4

u/vicemori Feb 03 '23

Netflix... Realmente un ctm

5

u/popstar249 Feb 03 '23

If you can afford it, a dedicated IP from a VPN provider should make Netflix think it’s all one network.

6

u/Ultramiki Feb 03 '23

Not worth the time for the crappy content we get in south america

2

u/twelveparsec Feb 04 '23

Welcome aboard

37

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.

10

u/SeaweedSorcerer Feb 03 '23

That is actually super easy to do since these kinds of content database sites are run from the same engineering systems and content database, and the content usually starts in English written by a single publishing team to be translated into N global languages based on the target region(s).

3

u/Practical_Law_7002 Feb 03 '23

Didn't know that, thanks for the info!

5

u/bdone2012 Feb 03 '23

Yeah I mean I could see someone making this mistake fairly easily. People are often incompetent. And there’s always weird scenarios.

I for instance used to be in charge of making 15 different sites across the world in various languages. They’d get sent out to millions of people so likely more than the amount of people looking at a Netflix help site.

I did Spanish, and Italian for example. Both of which I speak enough of that I felt fairly comfortable with it. Even for languages like German I didn’t feel too bad about it because the alphabet is the same so I was less likely to make a mistake. But the Japanese site for example always really concerned me since the alphabet is different. If I put copy in the wrong place it was hard to notice.

I wasn’t doing the translations just placing the copy. So if the Japanese translator sent me a translation but at the top in Japanese wrote “this isn’t the final copy, please don’t post” I would have put that on the website and it would have gone live. People in Japan would then see that and wonder how we were so stupid. I did complain about it and would ask for a Japanese speaker to read it but they often wouldn’t get around to it.

So in all I think it’s somewhat possible that Netflix didn’t mean for it to go live yesterday. But they’ve absolutely been planning this for a long time. And just because it’s possible they didn’t mean to post it yesterday my gut is that they probably did. The fact that it was posted in English as opposed to the other direction makes me assume they meant to.

3

u/nice-and-clean Feb 03 '23

Strangely it was already affecting people in California though. And they couldn’t log in. They were told to wait an hour and the issue would be fixed. Then they told Netflix never mind - cancel . And somehow the issue was fixed then.

3

u/Atello Feb 03 '23

probably just testing the water

They literally did that already once when they announced plans to add features like this. This was the second proverbial toe in the water.

"If we just announce/launch it and the losses aren't too bad, we'll keep it in."

Guess the losses were too bad for them. They'll accidentally push an update at the end of the year, maybe we'll be more accepting then.

4

u/ThirdWorldWorker Feb 03 '23

They rolled it out on Dominican republic too. We cancelled. Haven't checked if they rolled back, I'm happier without them. This post may imply they did, but it was expected, piracy is cheap, easy, and they can't undercut the kid from the other street.

3

u/ButtholeCandies Feb 04 '23

I’m waiting for someone to finally release a report on how many searches for piracy went up on the same day they saw a peak for “how to cancel Netflix”.

They prepared for this announcement for months now. They primed the market and their customers for it. Everything was in place to measure the impact in advance. This was a bigger trial ballon than they are letting on

2

u/rtowne Feb 03 '23

Awesome. /s

My in-laws are in Peru. I'm happy to pay for extra screens to let them share our Netflix account. Plus, we like to go there for decent chunks of time during the year. Back the the bay I guess🏴‍☠️

1

u/Odd-Frame9724 Feb 03 '23

We apologize for the inconvenience. We have fired Bobinte Rnoops who was not familiar with the posting process.

1

u/Putininyourheart Feb 03 '23

I'm from Chile and I'm sick of Netflix fucking us over.

1

u/IAm-The-Lawn Feb 03 '23

English, of course, being the official language of Chile, Costa Rica and Peru. Makes sense how those rules were accidentally posted for the US.

1

u/iGoalie Feb 03 '23

There are only two things I hate

People intolerable of other races

And

Peruvians ….” -Netflix

1

u/bnogo Feb 03 '23

As others pointed out, why was it posted in English if this is for majority Spanish speaking nations?

1

u/maecillo123 Feb 03 '23

I’m from Costa Rica, everyone’s cancelling Netflix here and just rushing to Prime Video and Disney…..

1

u/Aldarionn Feb 03 '23

No, they likely would have let it stand had there been no outcry and subscription cancellations.

People following this story might want to check out what happened with Wizards of the Coast (the company that makes the game Dungeons and Dragons, for those who do not know) and the OGL debacle. Very similar tactics being used here, both in the way the changes were delivered and the way the company reneged on them. Netflix cannot afford to let what happened to WotC happen to them, so they had to shut this down quickly once they saw it wasn't going to go unnoticed.

"Whoops! It was all a mistake guys. Haha! No, of course we didn't mean you too! Just these three other countries...guys...guys? We swear it was a mistake! Please don't go!"

1

u/cruuks Feb 04 '23

“Sorry, our mistake it was for poor countries only”

1

u/Diegobyte Feb 04 '23

It makes sense with the international rules cus some places have little content and a way lower price

1

u/rezelscheft Feb 04 '23

what a bunch of jabronis.

1

u/zman0900 Feb 04 '23

only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru,

Then why was it in English instead of Spanish?

1

u/comeallwithme Feb 04 '23

Tldr of your tldr: "Oh we're not screwing everyone over, just Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru."

1

u/ninthtale Feb 04 '23

I always get downvoted for this but I love Netflix's content and I wish they wouldn't be massive douchebags about this

1

u/mightylordredbeard Feb 04 '23

Too late. I already cancelled my subscription and have zero plans of going back to paying them anything.

1

u/WSJinfiltrate Feb 04 '23

so they are going to apply this in my fucking country?? fuck off lmao

1

u/Jerthy Feb 04 '23

People have predicted this exactly - they'll withdraw it saying it was a mistake and then adapt new, less restrictive rules that they actually wanted but with much less outrage.

1

u/CapitalSimplyCapital Feb 04 '23

Fucking over the more poor countries first.

1

u/makinoatorie Feb 04 '23

As a chilean, this sucks.

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