>

I think you are confusing primary motivations with a silver lining. Sure, maybe the execs can comfort themselves with the idea that even after a failed attempt to squeeze more money from their customers at least people are talking about the platform. 
If you think they are rubbing their hands together while saying mission accomplished I would have to disagree.
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It wasn't to get people talking about Netflix, it was a trial balloon to see how the market would react to such a change.  They likely got the data they needed (cancellations, social media dunks, etc) and acted accordingly. >

This i can actually believe as an alternative. They was never going to go through with it, but as a test for future policies or a pr stunt is both believable !delta >

You jumped the gun.
Netflix already does this in multiple countries and has had plans in place for this for the last year. This is public information.
Nothing about this was a trial or stunt, it's a policy already in use being expanded. >

What countries is it already in use? >

Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. >

Thanks. I take it these are their test countries to see if it works >

Yup. He's saying "oh they already do it in those countries therefore this isn't a trial" as if them doing it in those countries hasn't been explicitly stated by Netflix to be trials to see how the policies work out. Why wouldn't they also do a test in other regions to see how they'd react before rolling out a finalized policy? >

They did it in countries where if it backfired it wouldn't hurt as much. >

Yes I'm aware. And then the policy leak earlier this week was them testing to see how people in larger more important markets would react to the change >

Completely agree. >

The unfortunate reality is that they were almost certainly entirely sincere about this, and this is a very common tactic with large corporations.  
1)  Come up with an idea that will make you more money, but will be unpopular.
2)  Announce the idea.  
3)  Observe the response.
4a) If the response is minimal, proceed with whatever exploitative bullshit you had planned.
4b) If there's public outcry/response that makes this idea cost more than it produces, cancel it and deflect to some excuse.  "This was posted in error"  "This wasn't the final product and was released for public feed back". 
Netflix would have happily implemented this change, had the entire community of users not raised such an outcry about it.  The idea that it's a PR stunt is just one layer of deflection from the fact that they were making a legitimate attempt to do this. >

While I didn’t cancel my account, I did change my plan to a cheaper one as soon as the news came out. I was originally paying extra for more screens to share, now they’re calling it the ultra 4k plan. No thanks. I wonder how many other people did also. Enough to make them backtrack I’m guessing.