Netflix Password Crackdown Drives US Sign-Ups To Highest Levels In At Least Four Years (variety.com) 81
According to research company Antenna, Netflix's password crackdown in the U.S. has resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019, when Antenna first began tracking the metric," reports Variety. "On May 23, Netflix began notifying U.S. customers that users on their accounts who live outside their households would need to be added as an 'extra member' (or get their own subscriptions)." From the report: Based on the most current Antenna data available, Netflix average daily sign-ups reached 73,000 from May 25-28, a 102% increase from the prior 60-day average. That was more than the spikes in subscriber sign-ups Antenna recorded during the initial U.S. COVID-19 lockdowns in March and April 2020. Netflix U.S. cancelations also increased over May 25-28 -- a phenomenon the company told investors it expected -- but those were less than the number of sign-ups, according to Antenna. The ratio of sign-ups to cancelations since May 23 increased 25.6% compared with the previous 60-day period.
In the U.S., Netflix has told customers they must buy an "extra member" at an additional $7.99/month for anyone who doesn't live with them that currently uses their account. The streamer has said it will start blocking devices that attempt to access a Netflix account without having legitimate account access. According to New York-based Antenna, its estimates are based on millions of permission-based, consumer opt-in, raw transaction records, which are sourced "from a variety of data collection partners." The data includes online purchase receipts, credit, debit and banking data, and "bill-scrape data."
In the U.S., Netflix has told customers they must buy an "extra member" at an additional $7.99/month for anyone who doesn't live with them that currently uses their account. The streamer has said it will start blocking devices that attempt to access a Netflix account without having legitimate account access. According to New York-based Antenna, its estimates are based on millions of permission-based, consumer opt-in, raw transaction records, which are sourced "from a variety of data collection partners." The data includes online purchase receipts, credit, debit and banking data, and "bill-scrape data."
Sign-Ups vs Cancelations (Score:5, Interesting)
Record Sign-Ups is always a good thing for a company like this. I wonder what the cancelation rates are on that same 60 day average.
I've heard many say its worth it for them to share among a few households but not by itself. I'm wondering was that true or are they still signed up and paying?
Re:Sign-Ups vs Cancelations (Score:5, Informative)
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AHA! We're cancelling now since that family member can't use it.
Aha? That family member has to sign up to use it?
Whatcha getting at there? Now none of you will use it? Seems you're not hurting them.
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I can read public domain stories and get 99.9999% of "new" movies
I'm not familiar with that, is that piracy? If it is, did you just try to make a point that something has no value because you can steal it? Doesn't sound like it'll result in a very productive or creative world. E.G It's great to do something that benefits you at the cost of others until everyone else behaves the same.
If that's not what you are talking about then the reference is lost on me I don't know what public domain stories are.
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seems to be him just saying he can pirate stuff.
Public domain. Even FireFly, which I enjoyed, used plot lines found in public domain.
As to piracy, I don't see anything I'd trouble myself to take without paying for. I am not dishonest.
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What did you mean by the ability to get most new (actually for some reason you put it in quotes - "new") movies?
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TL;DR: Most of what we are getting as entertainment was written many hundreds, or even thousands of years ago. They simply change the names and details.
Longer:
If I tell you a story about a guy that gets eaten by a whale but don't call him Jonah, or a guy that took a "day trip" on a yacht not called Noah, it's not actually a new story. It's a few thousands of years old.
Much of the current output of entertainment depends on the fact that most people today are not well read in history. And no wonder when histo
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So... how are you getting all those movies? You didn't actually say it was free, so I'm not sure if you meant for free or just at all.
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Hm. I think I've confused people with "I get 'new' movies". My point is I don't need them,
I read the original material
or
I buy used when the entertainment industrial complex (EIC) doesn't get a cent from me.
Someone else paid them for it. So that is my fault for stating it ambiguously.
The EIC love things like streaming and Kendel. It's the "Eternal Landlord" in they can cut you off at any time and you have no recourse. Because every set of eyeballs has to pay and "first sale" is not operative.
I don't insist o
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The percentages don't matter... the absolute numbers do. TFS reports that average daily signups during a four-day window were 73K, but only says the cancellations "were less than the number of sign-ups". People should note they aren't providing the actual number of cancellations, though - so it's quite likely they're obfuscating in some manner or even lying.
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The percentages don't matter... the absolute numbers do. TFS reports that average daily signups during a four-day window were 73K, but only says the cancellations "were less than the number of sign-ups". People should note they aren't providing the actual number of cancellations, though - so it's quite likely they're obfuscating in some manner or even lying.
73,000 people signed up per day, which is a 102% increase over the previous norm. So the norm is 36,139 signups per day, and this change gave them an extra 36,934 signups.
One news story claimed that 3.6 million people cancelled in one quarter in 2022. I don't know if that's typical, but if so, that's about 39,000 per day. So a 25% increase would bring that to just shy of 50k per day, or about 10,000 extra people dropping their subscriptions, which is a little less than a third as many people as they adde
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A year?? Who cares, what about this quarter?!
- Wall Street
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Meaningless without knowing the actual numbers...
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No, it says sign-ups increased by 102%, while the *ratio* of signups to cancellations increased 25.6%.
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"The ratio of sign-ups to cancelations since May 23 increased 25.6% compared with the previous 60-day period."
Literally in the summary.
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Sign-ups vs cancellations vs downgrades - why pay for more screens if you aren't using them? I suspect that a lot of accounts are dropping down a tier or two, rather than outright cancelling.
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Not just cancellation, but what about subscription level downgrades?
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I wonder what the cancelation rates are on that same 60 day average.
Less than the signups. I know it's some fever dream that Netflix is committing suicide here, but this change was very cautious, trialled in limited areas, data analysed, trial widened, western countries added, data analysed again, and a lot of steps were gone through before this hit the USA.
You can bet your CEO salary they are seeing a net benefit here or they wouldn't have made it this far.
I wonder (Score:3)
How do you plan to figure out who uses my netflix account in my "household", which is physically a couple of houses distributed over a couple countries, even, but technically all coming from the same VPN endpoint.
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't plan on figuring that out. And they don't particularly care. The number of people in your situation is spectacularly low.
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I'd assume a far more common scenario would be customers that watch Netflix through cellular-connected devices. Although it's possible Netflix is taking the type of device into consideration, so if the client is a smart TV or streaming box, access from multiple IPs would be considered more suspicious than access from a smartphone or tablet.
Probably won't get Netflix to spill the beans on their detection algorithm though, because then someone would find a way to exploit it.
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Whatever it is, they're erring on the side of minimal false positives. The less egregious your sharing, the more likely you are to be ignored. Certainly borne out in my experience.
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on their detection algorithm though
Some variant of browser fingerprinting undoubtedly. Why re-invent the wheel? They already do this for ads and tracking even when people turn on "private browsing" and other measures.
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Exception is not the rule. If they can get most people to stop sharing it with people, and get their own accounts, it's the success even if there are exceptions.
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Don't worry, if they think it will increase their share price they'll start banning (known) VPNs. You'll have to set up your own VPN egress in one of those households. Would you do that to save a few bucks?
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I already have a VPN system in place, so it's not like I have to go out of my way to install one.
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How do you plan to figure out who uses my netflix account in my "household", which is physically a couple of houses distributed over a couple countries
That's not your household. I know you think it may be, but it's not according to the definition in the Terms of Service. Go ahead an cancel. They know about people like you and don't care. You represent a tiny rounding error in their formula and are insignificant.
It sounds cold and is hard to hear I'm sure, but you have to understand that companies don't have feelings and they don't give a shit about you or I.
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That's ok. I neither give a fuck about companies or their TOS either.
Bill scrape data? (Score:2)
How many false positives? (Score:2)
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Pretty sure Netflix has something a little smarter than a 10 year old copy of prtg and awstats to do their analysis here.
They probably
1) have identified large CGNAT pools already
2) can do a little deeper packet analysis than src.ip == w.x.y.z - like dig into src port ranges etc that likely represet different groups of clients
3) they control the clients (to a degree) so they can probably do some cooperative stuff similiar to the likes of STUN/TURN/ICE to determine if there is more than one NAT occurring and
All talk? (Score:5, Insightful)
So much for the hoardes of outraged Netflix users who swore that they would be cancelling their subscription when this change was announced.
Many may have done so.. but even more have simply accepted the diktat and signed up.
A "net" win for Netflix.
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more have simply accepted the diktat and signed up.
That's all the people who don't know what torrents are.
Re:All talk? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:All talk? (Score:4, Insightful)
As they say on Reddit after the results of election come out and there's a lot of surprised Pikachu faces: the internet isn't real life.
Billy McFloridaman doesn't know how to get an Android TV box and install Kodi on it, then configure it to access the NAS with all his pirated shows. He'll just open up his wallet and give Netflix more money, until it really starts cutting into the beer fund.
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The loudest people were just the ones complaining about losing their free access, or getting their netflix for 4$ a month as others pitched in. They were a minority, as usual it's the few who are the loudest for their self serving purposes, and the majority could care less.
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So much for the hoardes of outraged Netflix users who swore that they would be cancelling their subscription when this change was announced.
Many may have done so.. but even more have simply accepted the diktat and signed up.
A "net" win for Netflix.
If my numbers above are in the ballpark, probably about a quarter of people who got that message dropped service immediately, and the rest added accounts. For now. How long they'll keep them remains to be seen. After all, password sharing prevents people from joining and binging for a month or two and then dropping, because you never know if the other person wants to use it. There's a real chance that it ends up causing a huge net loss in the long term. It mostly depends on whether people were cheating
They're selectively enforcing it (Score:2)
$8/mo per household is tolerable. $25-$32 isn't.
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A "net" win for Netflix.
The long-term impact has yet to be seen. I know I shared an account and as a result, I stopped watching Netflix and they downgraded their subscription for fewer simultaneous streams. This an anecdotal and therefore non-representative but it points out that having more members could still result in less income. Frankly, it's just been too short of a period to know for certain.
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So much for the hoardes of outraged Netflix users who swore that they would be cancelling their subscription when this change was announced.
This was always predictable. The idea that Netflix was suiciding despite going through very cautious trials and staged rollouts was nothing more than some feverdream for most.
Gambled and won, so far. (Score:4, Insightful)
So people are voting with their feet... either by cancelling or not. So far it looks like it was the right thing to do for Netflix. I'm ambivalent. Neither the money nor the need to make a philosophical point about the whole thing is important enough for me to waste any time worrying.
I'm more ticked off that butter went up $2 a brick last year.
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They didn't gamble anything. This has to be one of the slowest and most carefully staged policy changes of any tech company this past decade. Their approach was data driven every step of the way. The USA didn't even get to be part of the trial that's how risk averse they were about pissing off their primary customer base.
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False. Don't screw with the English language inappropriately. You can say "everything regarding the future contains risk" which would be correct but that isn't the same as gambling. When you have data to predict an outcome you are no longer gambling. Gambling implies either a game of chance or taking a large risk. Netflix did neither. Their rollout was very calculated and risk averse.
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I don’t understand.. (Score:2, Troll)
Why are people pissed off about having to pay for something they should have been paying for in the first place? This is in line with the current entitlement culture. They want everything for free.
Re:I don't understand.. (Score:2)
This line of reasoning is tired and incorrect.
Nothing was being taken that was supposed to be paid for. The account was being paid for. The increased number of screens was being paid for. Netflix tacitly (and in some cases more overtly) encouraged families to share accounts, and to upgrade accounts to allow for more sharing across more simultaneous devices.
Netflix changed their rules to increase profits and now people are annoyed. Nothing illegal has happened. You might argue that something unethical was ha
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This line of reasoning is lively and correct. “Screens” does not mean “users”. Netflix did not intend for you to give your login to all your family members who live all over the place. This was intended to be used in the same household, as in living in the same domicile.
People will piss away their money on all kinds of stupid shit but then complain they have to pay $15 for something they get a lot of use out of.
Shut up and pay.
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Their terms of service explicitly mentioned that this was allowed, with the restriction that the account should be used mostly within the country of residence.
Then they changed it.
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Their terms of service explicitly mentioned that this was allowed, with the restriction that the account should be used mostly within the country of residence.
Then they changed it.
I bet if you really read the Netflix EULA closely it might have some words saying that they can change the terms at anytime.
Maybe they notify you with an email or maybe not. Maybe they notify you with a UI popup or maybe not. I have never been a Netflix subscriber so I would not know.
But if you ignore ANY notices that they send...then only you are to blame for that ignorance.
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They do. That phrase actually invalidates the contract where I live.
It's also irrelevant. The OP said:
This is untrue. Netflix intended to charge based on the number of simultaneous streams, to be used how you liked, then they changed it, as I said. That's fine, they're allowed to reduce their service if they want to. But dumbshits on the Internet seem to want to make it into a moral issue along the line
It's not a crackdown (Score:5, Interesting)
Add to that a lot of people finishing up shows they were already hooked into and you can expect to see cancellations go up from that.
That said I don't think they'll back down from this I think they'll just continue selective enforcement.
Pathetic lesser troll (Score:1)
I will grind your bones into dust and use them to pave the floor of my cave.
How about some real numbers, not percentages (Score:4, Funny)
The new religion I just made up is the fastest growing religion right now, 100% growth year over year!
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That's disgusting!
Which ones?
Temporary (Score:4, Insightful)
The numbers are temporary as people sign up to finish up binging whatever shows they were watching.
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The numbers are temporary as people sign up to finish up binging whatever shows they were watching.
They are finishing watching for half a year? I know you're desperate to see the company fail, but at this point they have hard data about people's viewing habits after the crack down from multiple countries around the world spanning many months. If there was a trend of people just watching to the end of their show only to cancel afterwards it would have shown up in the data before the change was rolled out in the USA.
Face it, they have hard data, you have nothing more than hopes and dreams.
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And overall, except for in the US, they are still on a downward trend in the countries where they pushed these policies previously. So, yeah, I know it's temporary and Netflix will end up losing more customers in the US as people wise up.
They gave me the 3rd degree (Score:3)
My young children went to another state to visit their sister for 4 days. They took their devices with, Netflix bugged me the whole time about password sharing. When I travel for work are they going to hassle me as well. If it gets too annoying I'll end up cancelling.
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If it gets too annoying I'll end up cancelling.
And yet you haven't. It just shows how tolerant people are. It's all loud noises on the internet. You're just another statistic of the many people making threats, but not actually having any meaningful impact.
Re: They gave me the 3rd degree (Score:2)
So far I just had to click a button saying we were all in the same household. That wasn't very onerous. So no I haven't yet. If that starts to happen more often than once or twice a year, I'll take my money to HBO or Hulu.
Netflix should charge by the streaming-hour (Score:3)
If Netflix were to charge per hour of video streamed, rather than a flat monthly fee, then it wouldn't matter how many people were on each account.
You could add as many people to your account as you like, you'd just end up paying for any video they streamed while logged in as you.
Of course the downside would be that people might start thinking about the quality of the video they are watching (and whether it's worth paying for), rather than just mindlessly binging for as long as possible. That might get awkward for some of the more marginal content.
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If Netflix were to charge per hour of video streamed, rather than a flat monthly fee, then it wouldn't matter how many people were on each account.
That's true, because the company would go down in flames almost immediately.
I suspect this is going to get really annoying (Score:2)
I thought the idea of streaming over the Internet is you can take it with you, and it's not tied to a location like cable TV. I don't watch a lot of Netflix at home, it's usually while traveling. Never the same IP twice in a row, and more often on my partner's laptop than my own (because she takes it everywhere). If this becomes a problem, it's just not worth it to keep subscribing.
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Good Luck... (Score:1)