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200,000 users abandon Netflix after crackdown backfires
(www.forbes.com.au)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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This article is specifically about Australia. Globally, Netflix added 5.9 million subscribers after their password-sharing crackdown.
I hate to say it, but the crackdown worked exactly as intended.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66240390
iirc, they launched in new countries at the same time, skewing the result quite a bit. Probably intentional to say "see? it worked"
Edit: can't quite find a source for it. Might have been somthing I misread. Take with a grain of salt
Not to mention that they did start with the narrative that they start enforcing this on a certain date, but it took me 2 months over that to receive the warning/being locked out. I remember seeing people from Canada (one of the countries in the first wave) that still had not been forced off 4 months into the date they had set.
They appear to be taking it slow (not booting off everyone at the same time) to build this narrative that it's working fantastically so to not get a massive drop off in users (stock price drop) and waiting out for their competition to also move forward with this change. All of this while also adding more markets, dropping the prices in others and removing the cheaper plans.
Yeah, it's not like people quit because Netflix said they'll crack down.
They'll quit after Netflix hassles them a couple times for it.
I quit when they announced it, their announcement made me dust off my raspberry pi, got a 1tb SSD, and install Plex media server.
Their content has been in a free fall for ages, along with non stop price increases.
I only kept it because my mum and brother also used it, and it was convenient, now they just ask me to download the shows and movies they want and watch it from my Plex server.
Not everybody knows how to use a Pi+Plex or has a friendly familiy member who knows that and is willing to share.
So it makes sense that most people just kept hanging on until they got booted, rather than preemptivelly dusting off their old wooden leg and eye patch and once again hoisting the Jolly-Roger...
Yeah I get that, it's a shame because it's super cheap and the guides online make it easy as hell to set up. But I understand that terminal is scary for some
Yep. Plex (and Crunchyroll and Hidive) is basically all I need these days lol
They will quit when they notice it on their bills. I find it hard to believe most people will just eat the additional fees and do nothing about it.
I quit Netflix because all of the shows I wanted to watch left their service. I literally paid for the service to watch one show by the time i cancelled my subscription. Not worth it.
I cancelled pre-emptivly as soon as I heard. But I was probably too early to count since that was January. I also ticked the box for "too expensive" despite writing in the account sharing as the reason and now they keep emailing me about the ad supported plan.
Can you share how they got around it? My dad shares my account and he just said it told him he couldn’t watch any more. I couldn’t get him to tell me what the screen said exactly so I could help.
As far as I’m aware, our account for the notification once, my wife exited it without doing anything, and everyone is still able to access it to this day.
I vaguely remember seeing somewhere that Netflix will automatically charge you more if you keep using it in that way. But I could be misremembering. Double check your recent bills.
Nah, it’s been sitting at $21.09 for quite a long time now, and I’ve got a spending limit on that card to kill any attempts over $22 within a month.
It probably did work though. We had some relatives piggy-backing off of our top tier 20 year old account when we got shut down last August in what must have been beta testing for the program. We cancelled our account. I'm not sure how many of the relatives ended up getting their own accounts but the poorest and least able to afford an additional monthly charge went and signed right up, so they were at at least a net zero change in subs there (though they signed up for the cheapest option).
People are just disappointing.
There's probably a reason they're the poorest
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, because you're not wrong. When you're struggling with money monthly fluff should be one of the first things trimmed, not added.
I've found fedis to have some weird echo chamber opinions. With the trend of blaming the boomers for the economy (which I agree with, don't get me wrong), many seem to think that it absolves them of any personal responsibility whatsoever for their own finances
Any forum can be an echo chamber; there's nothing specific about the fediverse. For example: Reddit, Facebook groups, 4chan, etc.
Well, pretty sure 4chan is run mostly by the Russian FSB these days.
It's so easy to manipulate when you don't even have to fake a backstory for different users.
I was looking at sky sports in the UK and the majority of their packages had “free Netflix” offers included. I wonder if enough of those signs ups would have influenced the numbers?
I don't know about launching in new countries, but a lot of the new subscribers were added in countries where Netflix is cheaper so while they did add a lot of subscribers the revenue increase wasn't large.