r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • 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

95% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

415

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

147

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?

54

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.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

That’s not really a red flag. I work in tech. Text is typically ran through a translation service and all translations are stored. These texts are referenced by some key.

When the code checks your language preference, it retrieves the text for that element using the key, and returns back the text translated for your language preference.

Text is generated for all supported languages generally.

0

u/Rolandersec Feb 03 '23

Your assuming they are that organized to be actually using a translation service.

3

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

Well, typically it’s done automatically during a pull request (code review). For example, at my job, whenever I make a pull request, the bot will automatically say something like, “I see you made changes to the text file. Comment X to request translations.”

And the pull request will NOT be able to get merged into prod unless the translation bot commits all the translations and approves.

I know you people would like to shit on Netflix - but that doesn’t meant they have incompetent engineers who’s not know how to use CICD or pipelines

Just because management can be incompetent doesn’t mean the engineers are.

4

u/radiokungfu Feb 03 '23

Because you're on an english site when you go to netflix.com unless you specify. Their articles are auto transcribed. It being in English isnt thr catch people seem to think it is. And working for their CS previously, ive seen support articles popup accidentally for issues that are fixed. Ive seen the vat article popup in nonvat locations. This could be them testing the waters(which theyre already doing in south america) or this could be an accident.

The fact that it was implemented in SA in the first place means everywhere's gonna get it at some point tho.

7

u/hateitorleaveit Feb 03 '23

Because you are looking at the page on a .com with ip address in North America and not a .pe

15

u/Deepspacesquid Feb 03 '23

This has to be the weirdest peasant rebellion yet

36

u/JadeSidhe Feb 03 '23

You're obviously not a part of the d&d community. Search ogl 1.1 and look at how badly Hasbro shot themselves in the foot last month . Their competition sold 8 months worth of product in two weeks and they might never get their customer base back

4

u/dj92wa Feb 03 '23

TL;Dr for this? Sounds intricate. I have never played d&d but have always wanted to nerd out and find a group to help me get into it. Maybe not anymore now :/

7

u/MoobyTheGoldenSock Feb 04 '23

Any tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) like Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) has a set of core mechanics at its core that make it function. Think of any board game: you have the board itself, dice, pieces, possibly tokens/cards, and other items along with a rule book, that all make it work. Likewise, TTRPGs all have rules and equipment that make them function.

In 1997, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) bought out a company called TSR, which owned D&D. In 2000, they released D&D 3rd Edition (3e.) At the time, there were two important considerations:

  • Courts had ruled you can copyright flavor but not mechanics. For example, you can copyright "Thor's Mighty Lightning Blast" but not "roll 3 dice and add up the total."
  • There were multiple competing TTRPGs with unique mechanical systems

Because of this, WOTC decided to create an Open Gaming License (OGL), which listed out all the non-copyrightable elements of the game in a System Reference Document (SRD.) For instance, it may release "Thor's Mighty Lightning Blast" as "Lightning Blast - Roll 3 dice and add up the total. Deal that much lightning damage to the target." As long as 3rd party creators gave proper attribution, they were free to borrow anything from the SRD without permission. Even though they could legally use this content anyway, this was a guarantee that they wouldn't have to waste time and money trying to win lawsuits: they could just simply use the mechanics and move on. They promised the community that they could use the OGL as long as they wanted.

This resulted in a growing community of 3rd party publishers who made content compatible with D&D, so the game's popularity exploded and a vibrant community of content creators developed. WOTC still published their official books, but players who wanted more could get endless content from unofficial projects as well. Pretty much everyone was happy with the system, and thought that WOTC was pretty cool for supporting the OGL.

Fast forward 20 years, where all the executives at WOTC's parent company, Hasbro, were replaced by video game CEOs who didn't understand the first thing about the D&D community. They whipped up a new, very restrictive OGL, that contained copyright restrictions that would probably not hold up in court, and included clauses requiring content creators to disclose all their finances to WOTC and pay royalties if they made over a certain amount. Crucially, it also included a clause where it deauthorized the original OGL, something WOTC itself had promised would never happen. They shopped this new OGL around to content creators, forcing them to agree and sign nondisclosure agreements.

It leaked. The community lost their shit. People started canceling their game subscriptions in droves. Their biggest competitor sold 8 months' worth of product in 2 weeks.

WOTC first tried to play it off as a draft, then tried to negotiate with the community, then tucked tail and rescinded everything, released the SRD under a creative commons license so they could never legally revoke it again, and announced they're keeping the original OGL as is.

5

u/sparky8251 Feb 03 '23

Basically, WotC tried to change the license for core D&D materials even though the license says its irrevocable and thus they cant change it for already licensed things. The replacement license required revenue AND activity reporting for basically anyone that makes and distributes anything D&D (new spells, new stories, new lore/history, minis, tabletop boards etc etc) all while claiming this was solely about stopping racist and other bigoted kinds of content, that it wasnt meant to change anything for average D&D creators, etc.

This license change was leaked, WotC claimed it wasnt and it was just a draft (despite already having others in the community come out and claim they had been approached months prior to sign the new license proving it false). Made stupiud jokes about them rolling a 1 on charisma and that they promise theyd do better.

Round 2 comes out and the OGL 1.2 is shown (as a draft for real this time!) but the license is even weirder than the prior one. No more money reporting, but builtin mechanisms to revoke anyones right to the license at any time for any reason and a blanket ban on VTTs doing anything a WotC VTT product does (like, if WotC implemented a feature where spells had animations, all VTTs with D&D support would have to disable support for spell animations when playing D&D rules, etc). Claimed it was solely about "replicating the table top experience" and not letting it become a video game, despite their own VTT product already being advertised as having all these features (and even being based in Unreal 5!).

This was eventually walked back too and WotC promised to release all new content under the OGL 1.0a they tried to fuck over recently AND retroactively published the system reference mats under the Creative Commons as well to show they really meant that they would not suddenly revoke the materials from under creators again like they just tried to do.

There's more to this, lots more... But I think this is a decent outline of the stupid that transpired.

2

u/Daggmaskar Feb 04 '23

Yeah I've never played D&D in my life and even I knew all about it because it had so many people I'm friends or acquaintances with speaking out on social media.

2

u/voiderest Feb 03 '23

I mean wizards' mtg fans aren't happy either.

And they're trying to get people on a subscription model for various things. I think the only reason they gave up is because the community was losing their shit over it and competitors were going to release an open license thing to replace OGL completely.

No one trusts wizards anymore. The suits running the show ruined decades of goodwill in a matter of weeks and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

2

u/AlphaAlex1_ Feb 04 '23

Happy cake day

11

u/quantumfucker Feb 03 '23

Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

19

u/TheToastIsBlue Feb 03 '23

What if they're acting malicious because they're stupid?

1

u/quantumfucker Feb 04 '23

Hello Socrates. It’s possible, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re just ignorant or mistaken. I’m an optimist, that way.

31

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

1

u/GeologicalOpera Feb 03 '23

is that the right possessive?

You’re correct.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

2

u/GeologicalOpera Feb 03 '23

Same here on both counts. I just take it as a ongoing learning opportunity, because English will always have something new to show me when I least expect it.

1

u/quantumfucker Feb 04 '23

Well it seems like they did intend to publish the changes but only in certain countries. It seems very possible that the content itself was approved but for the wrong set of countries, and while people were careful to check the former, the latter might’ve been an oversight.

7

u/M365Certified Feb 03 '23

Been in the corporate world decades, stupidity happens all the time. Thats WHY there are so many time wasting checks and balances, and it still happens.

3

u/Khaosgr3nade Feb 03 '23

Yea not when we're talking about corporate greed mate. Malicious 100%

2

u/Charlielx Feb 03 '23

Agreed, I'd say Hanlon's razor almost never applies in reference to corporations whatsoever

0

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

Yes because companies have never messed up. The reality is, all these tech companies are managed by multiple software teams of people like me and you who make mistakes.

It could’ve been a misconfigured feature flag by 1 engineer who was supposed to ensure the web change or request wasn’t returned back for specific locations.

I work at big tech in an app used by millions of users. I admit even I have misconfigured feature flags and some UI rendered in the app that wasn’t supposed to (I forgot to add minimum version requirement). Luckily, these value changes update in real-time so whenever the app retrieves the feature flags again, the UI updates appropriately.

Pushing to production isn’t the issue. The issue is misconfigured the feature flag. There are many features in apps that you’ll never see because they might be locked behind a feature flag yet unreleased. The website works by fetching data from predicting endpoints. Endpoints that also utilities flags.

Was it an accident? Maybe - it’s not impossible. Likely? No.

1

u/GroundbreakingTap786 Feb 03 '23

“Pushed to prod” LOL hello fellow stem brethren

1

u/Realistic_Depth3617 Feb 05 '23

Yeah, I run internal deployments and we have to check every change (esp. newly released pages) on three different environments before we deploy. Netflix probably is much stricter