We all knew the day was coming, but it’s almost upon us. The era of Netflix password sharing is soon to be over.
That’s according to a report from The Wall Street Journal (via Screen Rant). You might remember that earlier this year, Netflix began rolling out a new system to add “extra members” who live outside subscribers’ households for an additional fee - it first landed in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru back in March as a way to stop people from sharing accounts at no extra cost.
Wednesday has taken Netflix by storm - take a look at some bloopers below.
Obviously though, these countries were just the first of many - Netflix has now hinted that the company will be putting a complete stop to password sharing in 2023. When exactly in the year this will be done by is another matter - it’s also not known if the same “extra member” system will be used to deal with this, or if there are other plans in the works.
Earlier this week, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) warned that password sharing in order to “access copyright-protected works without payment” might be considered illegal, so that might also dissuade some from jumping onto a friend’s account.
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Netflix recently rolled out a cheaper ad-supported tier for subscribers to choose, offering a less pricey option for those who still want to watch their favourite shows for less. However, it’s not proven to be a popular choice at all - apparently, only 9% of subscribers have gone for it. As well as around five minutes of ads for every hour of viewing, the ‘Basic with ads’ tier has a maximum picture quality of 720p, doesn’t allow users to download content to watch offline, is missing some licensed content, and only allows for streaming on one device at a time, so maybe these additional factors have proven to be dealbreakers.
Topics: Netflix, TV And Film