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.
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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.
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