>

I just don't understand the logic.  How does requiring the user to use their home network once per month stop password sharing?   If two people are sharing an account, then odds are they both will be using the app, which means the original user is using their home network.
Yes, it does seem like a PR stunt that wasn't well thought-out.
/u/Magemonster (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
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Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >

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. >

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. >

The question would be: why?
It's not like Netflix isn't unversally known. They constantly have controversies regarding their shows - they really don't need the additional attention, at the very least not at that price. >

The Why is easy, Streaming giants make more ads nowadays than ever now that there's so much competition, HBO max, Amazon prime etc, not even talking about the regional services, where i live there's at least 3 other competing services.
The same way everyone know what coca cola is, yet they still pump out loads of ads everywhere.
And this PR stunt didn't cost netflix a dime, they didn't go through with it, i don't think a substantial amount of people unsubscribed from netflix because they will remove password sharing in the future. i would think most of the people using this, including me would want to ride the wave to the end. >


And this PR stunt didn't cost netflix a dime, they didn't go through with it

I doubt that... I could see there being plenty of people for which this was "the final straw", even if it did not actually come to pass.

The same way everyone know what coca cola is, yet they still pump out loads of ads everywhere.

The major difference here is that ads at that level are aimed at improving the standing of the brand over other brands. If your standing worsens from your ad campaign, more people might switch to a competitor. >


I doubt that... I could see there being plenty of people for which this was "the final straw", even if it did not actually come to pass.

I do not agree with you on this. I don't think a substantial amount of people think like this.

The major difference here is that ads at that level are aimed at improving the standing of the brand over other brands. If your standing worsens from your ad campaign, more people might switch to a competitor.

I do agree that these are different kind of ads, but i don't believe all publicity a brand gets has to be positive in nature to gain a positive effect. >

Has there ever been a brand the size of Netflix to intentionally produce negative advertising aimed at themselves?
The fact that doesn't happen should put yet another nail on the coffin to the myth "there's no such thing as bad publicity" >

I think that negative publicity like this could be intentional and very well planned as well. One of the basic principles of gaining attention is to just rile up emotions in the audience, once they are emotionally invested then manipulating those emotions is much easier. 
Netflix could now come up with a bad plan or a price hike that initially would have garnered a lot of bad feedback but now people would be okay with the decision, why? Because people will now think "This isn't as bad as the thing that they were bout to do before".
TLDR: Negative publicity can be used for personal benefit if done rightly >

You're misinterpreting the link you've shared, saying "it's all off the table" isn't correct, the link you posted states that it was because "they aren't applicable to the US yet" but as far as we know the plan is still the same, and iirc the changes are live in certain markets
You say that "its a PR stunt", and that's where your view needs to be changed, its not a stunt it's just PR, until they fully backtrack we have nothing to show its not just bad PR
It's not a good decision, but the doesn't make it a stunt >


You're misinterpreting the link you've shared, saying "it's all off the table" isn't correct, the link you posted states that it was because "they aren't applicable to the US yet" but as far as we know the plan is still the same, and iirc the changes are live in certain markets

Surprised there isn’t more comments on this. I’m not interpreting that they’ve abandoned the idea at all. They could be tinkering with it so that they can sell a slightly neutered version and pretend it’s a “win” for subscribers, or they just are holding off to ride out the current negative reactions. Maybe they’ll delay it for a while longer in the U.S. but they can’t unring the bell that they’ve implemented it internationally and it’s the direction they want to go. >

Thank you! u/Magemonster is holding a view that is fundamentally incorrect and I want my first delta lol >

How can a company be so out of touch? Very easily. Companies constantly make dumb decisions which are motivated by greed. They hope they will be able to get away with it/people won't care 
Just look at wizards of the coast for their recent reversal in planned policy thanks to mass consumer protest and withdrawal of money >

How is trying to get people to pay for your service greed? That’s what all business do. 
People are freeloading, Netflix is trying to convert freeloaders to paid customers, simple as that. >


That’s what all business do.

Right, greed. >

So everything should be sold at cost? >


So everything should be sold at cost?

That's hardly what I said. I just pointed out the fact that businesses are greedy. I didn't say anything about whether they're too greedy or whether that's bad, or whether they should entirely give up all forms of greed and become charities. I just think it's funny that you don't want to call businesses greedy when greed is their entire raison d'etre. >

The issue is, there is a difference between self interested and greed. Greed implies an immoral amount of self interest. Companies inherently look out for themselves, pretty much everything everywhere does too. The difference is a company that is greedy takes without providing extra value. Netflix is effectively doing theft and loss prevention, especially as the streaming game is squeezing companies like Netflix to spend insane amounts of money on new product to keep value intact. 
Airbnb for instance, had a net profit margin of 42% in Q4. That’s more like greed. The product has not changed or improved, but they’ve implemented new fees and raised existing fees (on both consumers and their property “partners”) without raising quality of service. In doing so, they’ve screwed over partners who take all the risk with their assets. >

I don't think I've ever met a company beyond a certain size, say a dozen workers maybe, that isn't greedy to the core. >

I’m honestly asking here, do you believe that there are no companies with more than 12 employees, that care anything at all about anyone? That’s your contention? All people who become very successful are greedy people? >

More or less, but to be clear, I just randomly threw out that number for demonstrative purposes, but you seem to be taking it as some empirical claim. I'm also not saying 100% of all companies are like this, that would be silly, it's just that 99.9% of them are, and I don't think the difference between the two values is meaningful.
Also note my original phrase was not "there are no companies", it was simply "I've never seen a company". I really don't know why you're trying to pin this down to some sort of extreme and implausible empirical conjecture when it clearly isn't. >

I completely understand It was merely to throw out a figure for the sake of argument. There are just so many business owners I know who invest so much in their employees and their communities. I guess I’m lucky enough to see it all up close, but I also know way too many companies that are exploitative. My industry has far more than their fair share of exploitative, brokers and team leaders.
I just don’t enjoy blanket statements, and I wanna be nuanced with my verbiage. I reserve the word, greedy for someone that harms others with their self interest, or genuinely doesn’t care about the consequences of how they accrue their wealth. >

If it was just a PR stunt, then why have they actually been implementing this in countries like Costa Rica for years now? This isn't new, they have been trialing it for literal years and I'm sure that the ultimate goal was bringing it to larger countries like the US and UK where most of their market actually is. 
Source: I'm from Costa Rica >


and then after a while you see that they say "it was a mistake" Link And now it's all off the table.

Did you read the article? did you even read the comments from people that actually read the article?

Though the new password sharing rules are only being tested in select countries, they are expected to launch in many more regions by the end of March 2023.

In March is when the changes for password sharing are coming through, they've said that already
the error is that people were informed those changes were happening now, but they're not, because they're schedule for March
it's not off the table, nothing has changed so far. you were mislead by a click bait article shared by someone wanting some karma which ended up make you think its a PR stun as you continue making others think it's not longer happening >

Jokes on them, I actually cancelled my Netflix subscription. Customer of 15 years. Shared my account with my parents (in their 70s) so the grandkids can watch the kids channel twice a year when they visit. I can't remember the last time I actually used it. 
RIP- nobody will notice when you're gone >

So your thesis is that they created a lot of bad press and lost some subscriptions to generate PR?
What PR would netflix need?  What show is being released right now that they want PR?
Who doesn't know of netflix such that they'd need to generate PR? >

It's not a stunt. They are a public company and are held to the standards of a growth stock by their shareholders. 
They've already grabbed about as much market share as possible in terms of viewership, so now they have to find a way to make more money per viewer. >

Netflix had seen that their economic numbers weren't what investors liked so they had to do something. Netflix stock price where falling like a rock. >

Turns out that perpetual growth isn't sustainable... Who would've thunk it... >

You can change your own view by just taking a few minutes to think about it yourself. The only thing they're gonna be gaining this, is a certain percent of their users cancelling their account. No one in their right mind will suddenly see the situation and go "Wow, that company just made it slightly awkward to use their service, i should totally go sign up to use it".
The "bad PR is still PR" thing doesn't actually work in this case as it brings nothing positive back to the company. Yes, people are talking about them, but they're shit-talking and it's causing them to lose customers, not gain them. It honestly seems more like Netflix was testing the waters for a new rule and failed at it. >

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what's actually going on here.
As far as I know, Netflix are still planning to roll out the limitations of account sharing globally.
The mistake they are referring to is that the account sharing rule changes were posted publicly on their web pages before being finalised, and thus the rules have been removed as they were posted in error / too soon. They have said that they would never simply update their web pages with new rules without making an actual announcement to the users in that country. 
However, I believe they are still intending on rolling out the account changes during 2023. >

They've been piloting this for at least 9 months in South America. Source. Also, they're explained the issue to their shareholders source 2 It would be illegal to lie to their shareholders about what they're doing. I'll take that delta please. >

Paging u/magemonster Hey, I'm waiting on that delta. You were incorrect, as shown again here.  Per the rules of the sub you are required to make yourself available for top level comments. If you want to debate, go ahead. >

no it wasn’t. source: my friend works at netflix >

Maybe I'm missing something but why is it even a big deal?  Seems to mee the only ones who would be mad are the ones who were getting the service for free.  Want to watch Netflix? Pay for it.  If I'm wrong or misunderstood, please enlighten me but be nice >

Netflix loses a ton of money on this.
You assume sharers won't get their own passwords, but what is that based on? It's like the people who steal music and other media all claiming either they wouldn't buy it anyway so no loss, or that they're tooootally gonna buy it in a minute, they just want it for free first. 
It's all just trying to rationalize normalizing theft. 
Netflix is going to crack down because a decent portion of hanger-on accounts will convert and they'll stop having to pay out for endless people watching one account. How do I know that? It's what they're doing elsewhere and they're not stupid. Internet whining isn't reflective of reality. See the "raid on Area 51." >

Netflix doesn’t offer anything unique from any other streaming service. 
The conversions of the few people who get their own account won’t near cover the amount of people who cancel it entirely. >


Netflix doesn’t offer anything unique from any other streaming service.

...of course they do. Aside from the stuff they hold exclusive rights to for whatever period, they have a ton of original programming. If they had nothing unique, people would opt for cheaper streaming services exclusively.

The conversions of the few people who get their own account won’t near cover the amount of people who cancel it entirely.

What are you basing that on? Because first, when did cancelling come into the conversation?
Second, Netflix obviously believes it'll benefit them financially, and they're not going by what they think. >

I know 3 family groups who split costs/services and will not continue their Netflix subscription after nixing password sharing. Including my own 17-year account. I pay for it because I share with people who share other services with me. I do not need it for just myself/my household. >


I know 3 family groups who split costs/services and will not continue their Netflix subscription after nixing password sharing. Including my own 17-year account. I pay for it because I share with people who share other services with me. I do not need it for just myself/my household.

Ok? Even if they all do cancel, which ... that doesn't mean Netflix is going to lose money. How manty people are streaming off those three accounts? 
You thikn NONE of the people leeching will actually just buy their own? Cmon.
An anecdote does not statistical reality make. >


because the people using others netflix (which the original person is paying extra for) just wont watch netflix, and the original account holder can downscale his account

It's really hard to guess what people will pay for something theoretically eventually you just have to actually try to sell them it. I don't think you have any evidence that some of these moochers wouldn't get their own accounts. 
Also even if these moochers simply stop streaming that lets  Netflix save a lot of money on servers streaming that content.
Don't see why you think proposing unpopular policies is good pr. That's the opposite. >


It's really hard to guess what people will pay for something theoretically eventually you just have to actually try to sell them it. I don't think you have any evidence that some of these moochers wouldn't get their own accounts.

Yes this is true, we or netflix for that matter has no idea what will happen, but i think most of the people will just not use netflix.

Don't see why you think proposing unpopular policies is good pr. That's the opposite.

I think they are now seen as the "reasonable company listening to their users" when they reverse their stance on this unpopular idea. >

How is that preferable to being seeing as "reasonable company" who...doesn't do dumb stuff in the first place? >

My theory is that they are getting ready to scrap it for parts. Hastings took the cash and ran now that the market is so saturated with other services. >

Considering how many really successful shows got the boot lately, I would rather believe the management is out of touch with reality. >

Netflix has reached their peak amount of users, everyone that could have any interest in using Netflix is already watching. Their subscriber count is stalling and on many areas dropping, this is making investors unhappy and puts a lot of people responsible for their financial situation under a lot of pressure.
The only way for them to increase their revenue is to make more money on the people that are currently using their service, the two ways to do that is by increasing their subscription price and to get more subscribers out of the current users by restricting password sharers >

There’s a saying that negative attention is better than no attention. That saying absolutely does not apply to companies in the public eye. I don’t believe that Netflix intended to do this as a PR stunt, because the amount of (easily predictable) negative PR generated was immense. That translates to greatly reduced customer confidence, cancellation of services that have just been left running, etc. It was the next best thing they could do for themselves to say that it was all a mistake. >

I cancelled netflix because of this. Also because the price was going up so, I think it wasn't a PR stunt. PR stunts generally aren't negative.
If the price had just been going up, I'd have probably not cancelled, but since my friends (same house) and in laws were using it I figured it was best to avoid the password issues and just say I was cancelling it due to the price. >

I agree >

No. That doesn't benefit them.
It was to see if they could get away with it, nothing more. And they'll do it again once the blowback dissipates. >

They've already done it in Latin America as a test run. Their business model is currently unsustainable. They don't make enough money to keep up with their massive debts.  They will do it because they have precious little choice.  They need more revenue and this may be a way where people are less likely to cancel their service (just because grandma suddenly can't use it for free on their account) than if they just do another price hike.  
They will wait as long as possible so that we are as used to the idea as possible by the time it actually happens . But it will happen. It's inevitable. >

I honestly just think it was to make more money. I live in a town where barely anyone had their own Netflix account and was sharing with an actual account holder instead... it literally was the norm to try to share with someone before actually signing up yourself. Now it's a different ball game >

I deleted my account and I’m not going back so 🤷🏻‍♀️ >

It normalizes it.  Some people who only view on one screen were fine with it, and think that others who share logins are cheaters.  Or think their sharing is ok, while others are cheating.  So when they eventually roll this out people will be more likely to accept it.
They definitely will be limiting based on the locations of the main account holder and the locations you are viewing from.  I am pretty sure it will not use a 'check in with the home network of the main account holder' but it will be a 'pay per viewer' or only so many streams kinda thing when they do implement the change.  Maybe have to register each viewer save viewing history and allow access?
I hate how some providers do not save the viewing progress myself.  I had a subscription to Paramount+ from my phone company and could not stand that they would not let me start up where I left off, or even keep progress of which episode.  I pirated the show I wanted to watch and canceled the 'free' subscription because I was so frustrated.
Some, like prime will constantly want me to watch the credits, starting with a couple minutes left in the previous epoxide, because that's when I stop watching, so I pirate the shows from prime instead of watch through their interface. >

PayPal used this exact same technique. It didn't work. >

Netflix is losing revenue.  They spent a gold mine on new content and didn’t get the revenue projected so they are hoping to see a cash infusion by forcing password borrowers to pony up. >

I think you (as well as many others) might be misreading some of the events. They announced they would be making this change. They have already introduced it in some countries. At one point they updated the terms of service on the web site to indicate that these rules are now in effect in the USA. They said this was a mistake and reverted the change to the web site. All indications are that this was truly a mistake and they did not announce this change for the USA. They have not backed down or taken it off the table. They are still planning to continue to roll this out until the new rules are in effect worldwide. >

And yet here we are talking about it. >

Maybe, maybe not.  I believe Netflix is stupid costs way to much and going to take themselves down.  Their content isn't all that great, they're targeting a very small niche audience rather than the majority.  They're over priced and their are better streaming services cheaper with better content.  I have like 7 services and  actually password share all of them, I use my moms password for Netflix.  Funny because it still hasn't stopped me or charged me (well her, but idk if this policy has been actually put into effect yet or not) prolly cause I litterally almost never watch it and only have her password and the app because of stranger things otherwise I'd just delete the whole app and not miss it.  Odd thing is she barely uses it too, but keeps it for like 1 show also. >

Netflix has a serious problem: it has reached saturation in almost every market in which it competes. The only realistic way for them to grow subscribers is to crack down on account sharing. It has been part of their corporate plan for at least a couple of years to introduce it everywhere. It's a simple miscalculation: They did not anticipate the level of backlash they received. >

yeaa no i dont think they tanked their stock as a pr move >

There is a YouTube video by magnatemedia who tells Netflixs story. I watched it today. Pretty interesting stuff. Once the CEO of blockbuster sent the Ceos a kitchen sink, after an interview. That arrogance was met with Karma. Supposedly blockbuster laughed the og founders out of the boardroom. I liked that part of the story.