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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667

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! (?)

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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/neon_overload Feb 04 '23

"So I can get 4 people watching at once on different screens?"

Netflix: "Yep"

"And the screens can be anywhere?"

Netflix: "Absolutely. Even mobile! We have an app."

"You got yourself a deal sir"

[5 years later]

Netflix: "Hey, about that conversation..."

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '23

It spins quite well when people get outraged, claim to be canceling their account, but then still have Netflix 2 years later because said company retracted an accidental statement.

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u/teleprint-me Feb 03 '23

Surprisingly, lots of people. There's such a thing as Choice Paralysis

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u/flyingace1234 Feb 03 '23

Yes but the thing is they are actively making the experience worse. This was not a simplification of the service. If anything it’s a complication for the many customers who would’ve run afoul of the “31 day login” thing.

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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/tangojameson Feb 04 '23

That's when you just start every conversation like a scratched CD. "Mr Smith, Mr Smith, Mr Smith, what can I help you with today?"

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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/NGGJamie Feb 04 '23

I have a friend that worked for a dollar store that walked out. The entire store was him plus 3 women, and the women were all a clique. So the woman he was usually paired with would walk outside for a break and disappear for hours at a time. Manager was part of the clique so he'd get in trouble instead for complaining.

One day she went out there and left him alone for a long time. He said screw it, clocked out, went home, and left the place unattended without looking back.

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u/rastilin Feb 04 '23

This is the way. There's abuse for high pay, and there's a great working environment with low pay. But if you're being abused for low pay then just walk.

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u/NGGJamie Feb 04 '23

What a great value proposition. We want to sell these candy bars that cost the store a few cents, but we're going to mark them up to like $2. This employee lost us $5 in profit that we voluntarily gave up through a ridiculous policy.

Anyway, he's unemployed now. Time to spend a few hundred more dollars hiring and training a replacement.

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u/imagineaworld Feb 04 '23

Try thousands. Hiring staff isn't cheap and the amount of time and money that goes into training is quite high.

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u/makos124 Feb 04 '23

I remember working in telemarketing for a month or so, many years ago. That place was full of psychopaths in management. They all had perfect smiles and tried to act friendly towards you, but the moment you didn't sell enough, it was mental torture. Playing back your calls and pointing out everything you did wrong. Meetings with the leader, telling you, in a worried tone, to get better at selling or else you'd be fired. And the techniques they taught us and told us to use were so fucking predatory, I felt sick to my stomach having to use those lines with an actual person on the other side of the phone. My gf works in retail and it's full of the same people in management, and sometimes even little psycho manager wannabes in the lower ranks. And I'm not even from the US, that corporate culture is a virus spreading all over the world.

Now I work in a factory where I know my boss, and it's infinitely better.

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u/hostile65 Feb 04 '23

"We have restructured password management so it will be isolated to a single address or IP address at a time. With this correction on our part we hope to cut down on illegal password use and scams. This will help keep your account safer and more secure. We hope you find our hard work on this problem helpful and easy to use!"

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u/sup_ty Feb 04 '23

At that point why isn't management on the floor shoving an inventory list in every customers face.

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u/ScarsonWiki Feb 04 '23

That’s a beautiful catch-22. Absolutely beautiful.

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u/mis-Hap Feb 04 '23

Netflix does try to frame this as a positive for the customer. They say it will give them the funds to bring great content.

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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/LesbianCommander Feb 04 '23

Depending on how strong the brand is, sometimes it's a benefit.

Like, 1% will get mad, call it shitty, and the remaining 99% will take that as a personal attack against them, and then they'll double down. Maybe pay for extra ones just to spite the 1% who made them feel bad. And in total, they'll get more money.

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u/DropsOfLiquid Feb 03 '23

I think they probably care most about cancellations not necessarily backlash. My guess is way more people cancelled than they expected.

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u/The_Condominator Feb 03 '23

It is a literal impossibility for them to offer a better product than they were 10 years ago.

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u/Extra-Ad5925 Feb 03 '23

My guess is they knew it would be negative…. But the sense they were looking for was how negative. What they saw must have been apocalyptic

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u/Cyber-Cafe Feb 03 '23

Positive, by not being negative or noticed by a high number of people. Not actual “we thought this was good”.

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u/crank1000 Feb 03 '23

Public companies never do anything for the user. It’s always for shareholders.

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u/THE0RIAN Feb 03 '23

Positive wouldve been less people complaining and ignoring it

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u/SooooooMeta Feb 03 '23

It was always going to be negative, but how negative and did people actually start cancelling? Maybe the CEO went to a party and all his yes men couldn’t protect his reality shield and he was actually told to his face it was a dumb idea.

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u/cstrand31 Feb 04 '23

It’s not that were necessarily looking for a “positive” reaction. A neutral reaction is what their going for. Not positive, but definitely not negative. If it’s negative then it was a “mistake”. If it had gone unnoticed then it would just be.

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u/blue60007 Feb 03 '23

It's probably more neutral vs negative. I don't like it, but it wouldn't affect us from what I could tell.

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u/Robenever Feb 03 '23

Minimal backlash. So the analytics will tell you how many unique accounts mentioned keywords. Netflix knows it would get backlash but didn’t expect that much. they decided to just say.. jk lols.

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u/wongrich Feb 03 '23

Not positive just 'not bad enough to cancel'. They want screw you just right

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u/trainiac12 Feb 04 '23

Positive is relative. They had to know this would be unpopular, but there was almost certainly a threshold for how bad they expected it to be that it broke through.

I.e. if Netflix raised the price by a dollar, they could probably assume some people will leave, but they are banking on the number of people staying, and as a result paying the higher fee, will be worth it. Netflix is happy at the expense of everyone else being slightly annoyed.

I imagine Netflix thought people wouldn't unsubscribe due to this move, but rather people who bummed other accounts would stop using them. Once they saw people pulling the plug in significant numbers I'm sure they hit the panic button.

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u/ahnslaught79 Feb 04 '23

Yeah I had the 4 stream plan and have been a subscriber since 2010 but cancelled. like you said, the high cost and steady price increases sort of built in the sharing (at least in my mind), but more nickel and diming like this was the last straw. Pretty much my wife only ever used it anyway, and my sister and sister in law didn’t care and i haven’t seen a thing on it in over a year. I think that they overestimate their importance and quality of content more than pretty much any other media company nowadays. Oh well.

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u/desiderata1995 Feb 04 '23

A "positive" reaction in this circumstance wouldn't have necessarily been that people welcome the policy, but rather they are seemingly unbothered by it and just ignore it.

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u/rotenbart Feb 04 '23

I assume the positive would be, at the least, breaking even. They knew nobody would like this.