Netflix Cracking Down On Password Sharing
Netflix will crack down on password sharing next year — here’s how it will work
Netflix Inc. executives on Tuesday detailed their plans to crack down on users sharing their accounts on the streaming service, which is expected to arrive early next year.
We’ve landed on a thoughtful approach to monetize account sharing and we’ll begin rolling this out more broadly starting in early 2023,” the letter reads. “After listening to consumer feedback, we are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create subaccounts (“extra member”), if they want to pay for family or friends.”
The approach sounds similar to tests Netflix has been running in Latin America after executives announced earlier this year that they would seek to put a stop to password sharing. That test gave viewers the ability to watch Netflix in one designated home, but subscribers were forced to pay an additional $2.99 for each new home in which someone would be streaming through a given Netflix account. Netflix executives have long acknowledged the reality that consumers share their passwords, allowing others to access the streaming service without paying, but said they were not worried about the practice. That changed earlier this year, after the company reported its first year-over-year decline in subscribers — executives said at that time that they expected roughly 100 million households were accessing the service without paying, while the service at the time had roughly 222 million paying subscribers.