NEW Netflix rules announced Tuesday will mean that users are charged for sharing their passwords between households.
But is login lending banned by the platform, and how much extra will those in cahoots pay under the new plans?
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Can you share a Netflix login?
Netflix has turned a blind eye to password sharing for years but on Tuesday revealed plans to crack down on the practice.
In an earnings call, the company claimed that an estimated 100million households had broken its rules on the practice.
As it stands, all users with access to an account are supposed to be within the same household.
They may watch on multiple screens within that household, including on different screens simultaneously.
However, if you share a password with someone who lives elsewhere, Netflix doesn’t take any action against you right now.
Netflix boss Reed Hastings said Tuesday: “When we were growing fast, it wasn’t a high priority to work on [account sharing].
“Now we’re working super hard on it.”
Hastings said that Netflix will begin to charge accounts an additional fee if they are deemed to be sharing a login between households.
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When and how much will I be charged for password sharing?
It emerged last month that the streaming giant was already testing the additional charges in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru.
Users who share passwords are forced to cough up around £2/$2.70 in addition to their monthly subscription fee.
During its first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Netflix said that it will expand its test to other countries, including the US, next year.
The tech titan stressed that it would continue to test the feature over the next 12 months before rolling it out more widely.
“Frankly, we’ve been working on this for about almost two years… a little over a year ago, we started doing some light test launches that…informed our thinking and helped us build the mechanisms that we’re deploying now,” explained Netflix Chief Product Officer Greg Peters, on the earnings call.
“We just did the first big country tests, but it will take a while to work this out and to get that balance right.”
How will the new system work?
Under the latest crackdown, billpayers will be able to add sub-accounts for up to two viewers who live elsewhere.
Netflix said it has to curb the issue somehow so it can continue to invest in new big-budget TV shows and movies.
As part of this new move, the company has announced that subscribers will also be able to transfer profiles to a new account or extra member sub-account.
This means they’ll be able to take all their viewing history, favourited shows and personalised recommendations with them.
“We recognise that people have many entertainment choices, so we want to ensure any new features are flexible and useful for members, whose subscriptions fund all our great TV and films,” said Chengyi Long, Netflix’s director of product innovation.
“We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world.”
Why is Netflix cracking down on password sharing?
Netflix is hunting for ways to boost its revenue after subscription numbers skyrocketed during Covid-19 lockdowns.
Rising subscription costs and increased competition from the likes of Amazon Prime and Disney+ are taking their toll, however.
On Tuesday, Netflix revealed that it had lost subscribers for the first time in a decade.
Netflix ended the first quarter of this year with 221.6million subscribers, slightly less than the final quarter of last year.
The company blamed the quarter-over-quarter erosion on the suspension of its service in Russia due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Silicon Valley tech firm reported a net income of $1.6billion in the recently ended quarter, compared to $1.7billion in the same period a year earlier.
Netflix shares were down some 25 per cent to $262 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings figures.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
