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
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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.

902

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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

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

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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/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.

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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.

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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.

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u/Anonymous7056 Feb 04 '23

Every little bit helps.

0

u/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

If 1 cent is a lot of money they shouldnt be subbing to it to begin with lmao

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u/Daos_Ex Feb 04 '23

Yes. That’s their entire point. They’re saying getting 4 billion people to subscribe to anything, even at one penny, is potentially impossible, but at least very difficult.

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u/DannyGarden Feb 04 '23

Why do you want to owe paypall billions of dollars?

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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

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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. ✊

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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?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/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.

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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.

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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.

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u/turtleman777 Feb 04 '23

That won't stop them from trying...

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u/HitlersHysterectomy Feb 04 '23

those are my private Doritos, Larry!

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u/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

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

-2

u/turtleman777 Feb 04 '23

Good for you

1

u/AzraelTB Feb 04 '23

My point being you don't need to quit just stop buying new shit. But I'm glad you could get an asinine comment out.

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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/Echo_of_Oryx Feb 04 '23

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

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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.

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u/CursoryMargaster Feb 03 '23

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

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u/cptnobveus Feb 03 '23

PayPal?

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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.

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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/CyberCurrency Feb 03 '23

Never forget what PayPal did

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u/zimjimmy Feb 03 '23

I forgot already, what did they do?

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

[deleted]

-56

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 >:(

36

u/entitysix Feb 03 '23

Hasbro just did a similar move with Dungeons and Dragons

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u/Chicken-Inspector Feb 03 '23

They did? I’m out of the loop

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u/PrisonLove Feb 03 '23

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

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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.

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u/doomgiver98 Feb 03 '23

Haha just kidding... unless?

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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"

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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/morfgo Feb 03 '23

He meant to write "Schrödinger" as a reference to the "Schrödingers cat though experiment"