Netflix Chat

Wow lots of drama in here! :sweat_smile:

Why does it matter what the nuances of the rules are?

Keep sharing (or doing whatever it is that is concerning you) and if you get told off, either pay or cancel. It’s as simple as that.

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Cuz internet.

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I knew someone was going to draw this comparison at some point :joy:

Netflix isn’t a tightly regulated bank where there are strict laws they need to follow. There’s no justification for a policy that extreme in this context.

Edit: are anyone else’s notifications totally borked? I’m being spammed with old ones and not getting any new ones.

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It’s clearly leading to confusion online and people will be cancelling because of this, potentially when they don’t actually need to.

Your comparison with Xbox One is probably spot on. This policy might be nowhere near as bad as people think, but because of Netflix’s poor explanation, lots of people are complaining and confused, whether they are sharing a password or not. That is the opposite of what any business policy should be doing.

Think I might have replied to the wrong person, but hopefully it all makes sense. Anyway, I’ve said all I’ve wanted to on this.

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Yes! Glad someone else has mentioned this. It happened yesterday for me.

I have literally hundreds (if not thousands) of replies, moves, likes etc. Too many to view them all so I just had to dismiss the lot on mass.

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Not a direct comparison but use your noggin.

A business doesn’t create a policy or process and also tell everyone the fine print for people to work out how to get around it.

The same principle applies to both scenarios here, I’m sure I didn’t need to spell that out for you.

Regulatory or not, they are comparable.

Okay, let’s test it then.

Name another business ToS and policy, with as much obscurity as this that isn’t a consequence of laws and regulatory action.

Don’t patronise me Carlo! You’re better than that.

The fees Monzo introduced are probably more comparable.

If you do X, Y, Z you wont be charged. Sure there are lots of “what ifs” and edge cases but it should be straight forward for most.

Don’t like it? Complain and/or cancel. I’m sure they don’t care though otherwise they wouldn’t have introduced them in the first place.

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The only obscure part is how but that’s not relevant. They aren’t going to tell you exactly how they’ll know because they don’t want people getting around it.

I found if you click the filters down the side then it will accurately show you the latest notifications, albeit for one category at a time.

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Right. But they spell out exactly what you need to do to avoid fees. Netflix don’t spell out exactly how you need to be using their service in order to not need to pay for additional users.

It is to me. Every other streaming service very clearly explain how they limit the use of their services for shared households. There’s no obscurity, no guesswork, and they can’t be bypassed. It’s near enough foolproof. That’s how all other services I’ve ever signed up for and have used worked.

I think the how matters an awful lot. Especially as it deviates rather dramatically from what is otherwise a standard method of controlling and limiting password sharing everywhere else.

I don’t trust it on iota, so the argument don’t break the rule and you have nothing to worry about doesn’t wash with me.

Much in the same way it’s all well and good for folks to tell you that you don’t need need to worry about not having a tv licence if you don’t watch live tv or BBC iPlayer when you get monthly letters through the door telling you in rather unpleasant language that you’re breaking the law and about to be taken to court if you don’t pay for one now.

It won’t be that dramatic with Netflix. They’ll just hold the device trying to watch stuff to ransom until you pay (or complain?). It’s the same tactic though. How they’re trying to enforce makes me feel like the account is just meant to be for me, and me alone, even though it’s been explained that’s not the case, directly from Netflix themselves. But it’s too anxiety inducing because I don’t know the how and because they haven’t offered any assurances for those concerns.

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Shock horror, people don’t like change. I’m sure it won’t affect most of them.

What a silly question. It is almost certainly a proprietary algorithm they developed for internal use. They aren’t going to tell people how to game the system!

We live in hope! :wink:

Has anyone actually done any research into what users in other countries experiences are? There seems much outrage with not much to back it up.

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I tried a few Google searches earlier, trying to find reports of people who had been asked to pay the extra fee when actually all their watching was indeed one household. I’m not going to claim it was exhaustive, nor that I spent hours refining search terms; but I think it was a reasonable search and it only turned up one result where it looked like someone was reporting Netflix has caught them out unfairly.

Only for them to reveal in short order that the Xbox they weren’t allowed to use on Netflix… was at their girlfriend’s house :man_facepalming: At that point all the replies were “Take it home, authenticate it on your home network again, and then take it back to your gf’s place” but I think the OP had run away from the car crash by then.

tl;dr, I haven’t been able to find any reports of people being told by Netflix that they’re using devices across more than one household when they’re actually not.

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I’ve not researched it per se, but I have been observing the discourse on Reddit and these are my summarised observations:

  1. The vocal ones are cancelling (there’s a lot of em, that it drowns out almost everything else). They aren’t experiencing the change and how it might have impacted them.
  2. The trials (and there have been a few different ones with different approaches judging how folks have explained how it’s worked where they are) that have been ran in other countries are not what the rest of us are now getting.
  3. Because of 2, the comms from Netflix, in addition to being very vague and obscure have changed, contradicted, and flip flopped a lot in very quick succession.
  4. There are some reports from users who say they don’t share their account with anyone (outside their household) and they’ve been asked to pay for additional users.
  5. The user reports that I’ve seen on Reddit often lack proof. They’re just claims from allegedly impacted users.
  6. There was one guy a few months back who travels for work, and is rarely at home was asked to pay not once, but twice, for two additional users as a result.
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Are you able to add some links with sources for 4 and 6? I ask because I’ve tried to find reports like this myself (as mentioned above) and failed (as mentioned above).

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I can certainly try! I use the Apollo app without an account and there isn’t any sort of history to scroll or search through.

If I find the threads I’ll share em!

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It could be rudimentary checking at the beginning but there’s no end of things they can check on, ssid matching, lan device logging (against a known TV) and IPs.

Previous screenshots I saw was you set a TV as the primary location and it’s based off that, which may mean lan scanning via the apps even if you don’t actually cast, which would mean VPNing in always or once a month might not work unless you configured multicast etc properly which can be an issue.

It’s probably a ‘smart’ mixture of everything even if at the beginning it’s lax and as time goes on they’ll get better at it.

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Yes

In a major move to clamp down on password sharing, Netflix launched its highly anticipated crackdown in Spain in Q1 of 2023. The immediate result was a loss of over 1 million users of the service, causing an instant impact on the company’s bottom line.

Netflix's crackdown on password sharing results in over 1 million fewer users in Spain.

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I think we have all seen that. And to counter it, paid users went up in another country. I meant research about experiences of getting accounts blocked for sharing :+1:

This was from one of the trials IIRC and doesn’t sound like the version they’re pivoting to from the article @Lightning720 shared above.

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