L4sBot200,000 users abandon Netflix after crackdown backfires
AidinthelI guess the lesson is that Netflix was always doomed the moment the companies that actually produce and/or own all the content realized how lucrative streaming could be. They were only as successful as they were because they had no competition.
ShustOneThis article is cherry picked. They added millions more of subscribers because of this change.
Making it accessible in more countries must’ve had absolutely nothing to do with it. Zilch, nada, nothing. It was all about cracking down on password sharing. /s
SMITHandWESSONBut the thing is it actually did work and Netflix has seen a boost in revenue and the companies stock price.
Netflix can’t implement three different changes to its business model and then cherry pick one of those changes as the reason for the increased revenue. Well, maybe not can’t… They’re certainly trying to, and some folk are eating it up, apparently.
If the tire is flat on my car, and I:
- give the roof of my car a kiss
- pray to [deity] to fix it
- use an air compressor to inflate it
… I shouldn’t go around telling folk God fixed my flat tire.
Cool, but that analogy doesn’t work with how companies are valued.
The only thing that matters to the stock market is growth. It doesn’t matter how you get there (most of the time), as long as you’re posting positive numbers and your outlook looks good.
That’s not the argument you were making.
Ah, my apologies… You’re not the original commenter. Point still stands, though… It’s not the argument the original commenter put forth.
Netflix can’t implement three different changes to its business model and then cherry pick one of those changes as the reason for the increased revenue.
Bro it’s not a guessing game they release this information in thier quarterly financial statements…
ir.netflix.net/financials/…/default.aspx
Tackling account sharing between households has been another focus as it undermines our ability to invest to improve Netflix for our paying members and grow our business. In May, we expanded paid sharing to 100+ countries, which account for over 80% of our revenue.
The cancel reaction was low and while we’re still in the early stages of monetization, we’re seeing healthy conversion of borrower households into full paying Netflix memberships as well as the uptake of our extra member feature. We are revenue and paid membership positive vs. prior to the launch of paid sharing across every region in our latest launch
Feeling a bit like a broken record. Alrighty, bro… You explain to me what metrics Netflix is using to differentiate the impact their password sharing policy changes made opposed to the other changes they made. I read over their documentation, and didn’t see it.
You could be right and seem to be implying the new territories are the main reason but do you have a source for those metrics? You’ve been calling into question how Netflix is counting this so which counts are you using?
On top of what ShustOne said, I would argue that they have know this for over 10 years and was the reason they created Netflix originals starting with House of Cards.
The business articles about how companies like Disney and others that “that actually produce and/or own all the content” are struggling to compete kinda suggests otherwise though.
1bluepixelThis 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.
I was going to post the same, thank you. I hate it but this has caused dramatically more signups
Bri Guy wow, surprising in a way but i guess people just want easy access to content to binge
Cable cost hundreds and still had ads, people won’t give a fuck over 20$ if that means relative ease of watching season 57 of Big Mouth
The only people down voting this are people who haven’t been on cable in years and have no idea how bad it is.
It costs less to add a household than it does to have two subscriptions. Netflix was at least somewhat smart about it.
It was always going to work, it’s kind of weird everyone expected it to backfire. There was never going to be a mass boycott because normal people don’t see “you have to pay for it to use it” as particularly unreasonable.
Say I shared my account with 4 other people. Even if all 4 decide not to sign up, Netflix don’t lose anything and they save 80% of their server costs. They only lose money if I quit as well, and why would I when I’m getting the same service for the same price.
Some people are motivated to help others.
iirc, they launched in new countries at the same time, skewing the result quite a bit. Probably intentional to say “see? it worked”
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 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.
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 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, 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
Yep. Plex (and Crunchyroll and Hidive) is basically all I need these days lol
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
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.
I shared my account with my entire family… everyone got prompted once but once they figured out how to get around it, it hasn’t been a problem. My subscription is part of my tmobile service, so at most I’ll lower my subscription to what is “free” instead of paying the extra $7 for more screens and 4k
poppyCan 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.
KairuByteAs 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/pol, 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 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.
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?
the ad supported subscription cost less, so I wonder if they are still making as much money
Supposedly, Netflix makes more from the ad tier:
In Q2, as in the previous quarter, Netflix’s advertising tier generated higher average revenue per user (ARPU) overall than the Standard ad-free plan ($15.49/month), implying more than $8.50/month in ad revenue per subscriber, Neumann said.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the ad supported tier made more money than the cheapest ad-free tier. Ads are a huge business.
FartsWithAnAccent“Yes, I’d love to pay more money for even shittier service. Thank you!”
-People apparently
BlaiddAnd yet their stock dropped massively after revealing the 5 million gain because investors realize that it was a one time boost that won’t help them in the long run.
They essentially showed the market their firm cap for revenue, and the market was like ‘uhh thats it?’
None of that is based on reality anyways.
The gains were all in cheaper markets.
Dropped massively?
Are you looking at the gains in the past three years because what you’re saying versus reality isn’t true at all.
MagisterYes, and Disney+ said they will do the same
Jo MiranI live in multiple places with each stay lasting about three months. So far Netflix has not given me shit about it. It just asks me if I want to movey home address. As long as it continues to let me move around, we’re cool. The moment it decides that I have to open a separate account per home, I am out. I watch Paramount+ the most anyway.
I have a similar lifestyle thanks to work and Netflix did exactly what will make you cancel. Whatever you do, don’t set it up on your home smart TV because that’s the thing that screwed up my account. Suddenly, I had to create new accounts for every random hotel I was living in for months at a time or go home every 30 days to reconnect to my home WiFi. I cancelled as soon as the account I paid for, that I didn’t share outside my household suddenly stopped working. As an aside, I wonder how this effects other traveling people: truckers, military families, traveling nurses, or air crew.
Every time Netflix was in the front page of reddit, I’d check my Netflix stock.
My Netflix stock keeps increasing. The first so called “massive exodus” took it from $140 to $220. It’s currently over $400.
So… Yeah.
beanMaybe. It’s just the start right? How many will keep those subscriptions? What about when they raise costs again? I’ve had a Netflix account for a really really long time. I was even grandfathered into a plan at one point. Eventually was forced into coughing up more and more money, getting less and less for it. It wasn’t just the password sharing. It was the way they keep running their business, and how it’s going across the whole streaming system.
On top of this all: 🤬 ads. I’m so sick of being bombarded literally everywhere. From Products I buy and bring home, to being outside of the house. I’m sick of being a cash cow and getting ’trickle down’ wages and dealing with inflation. So yeah. 🖕 Netflix.
I hate to say it, but the crackdown worked exactly as intended.
Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it? It’s not like anyone is thinking “oh my grandson’s friend can’t use my account for free anymore, I’m going to cancel my subscription now!”
Didn’t the analysis of europe and the US show an increase in subscriptions?
Also:
Telsyte notes there is also resistance to the new Netflix ad supported model, and concerns amongst consumers over the increase in cost of living. As living expenses balloon, the majority of video-on-demand users have accepted that streaming fees will too, according to Telsyte.
Is almost definitely what it was. I know I cancelled my netflix a few years back because the price of everything kept going up. Now I get a month when there is sufficient new content to watch and then cancel it again.
Which also aligns with
That could signal comfort with a price increase. Half of those surveyed called subscription services ‘vital’ to meeting their entertainment needs. And they are budgeting accordingly. Telsyte says that on average, Aussies are now willing to allocate $36 per month to streaming services.