In 2000, everyone I knew pirated content because official platforms were broken, and piracy was more convenient and worked better.
In 2010 everyone I knew paid their media tax through Netflix or a similar provider since paid services were more convenient than piracy, and things just worked.
Somehow, in the past 2-5 years, piracy is quickly moving back as the more convenient option.
The core problem with entertainment is you're paying for fun. Spending hours fighting with broken service is not fun. Increasingly, these services provide negative value to me.
So… I have 8 weeks of vacation a year… does this mean I won’t be able to use my account for 6 of these weeks? What about going to my vacation home during weekends? I do it multiple times a month… why should I pay more for accessing Netflix from a different address? If they start this bullshit in my country they will loose a 10 years loyal customer playing for premium 4K streaming. I have as well prime, Disney+ And Apple TV+… I can survive without them!
The endless pursuit of revenue to suit shareholders. Netflix can’t increase subs anymore as who would subscribe have already and luxuries are first to go in a depressed economy. So you look for the next low hanging fruit to launder.
> The endless pursuit of revenue to suit shareholders.
I don’t really understand these comments. Do you think Netflix is a charity? “Endless pursuit of revenue” is how they stay in business, employing people and yes, generating profits to shareholders.
Imagine turning this same thinking around at other groups I’d imagine you sympathize with like unionizing workers: “In their endless pursuit of revenue, workers have demanded pay increases”. Like wtf?
So they should hand out subscriptions for free and go out of business? Should the actors and set crew take pay cuts for the free accounts? Would you be ok with paying double so others can have a free account? What do you propose is a reasonable way they can stay afloat and address freeloaders?
Goodness. The number of products which explicitly discriminate against divorced families (or foreigners, for that matter) is astronomical. It's like pouring salt on a wound.
My wife and I live in the US. My kids spend the school year with their mom in Canada, and spend summers, vacations, and many weekends here in the US. We’re only about 100 miles away from each other, but it crosses an international border. For more than a decade, my kids have been on my account. All of their history and recommendations are attached to their profile in my account. If they want to move their profiles over to their mother’s account for the nine months of the year that they are in Canada, they can’t. They just use their existing profiles in my account at both homes.
In my case, nobody is “stealing” anything. My immediate family has had to deal with these international issues for about eight years, where the kids spend about three months in the US and nine months in Canada every year, crossing the border every 3-4 weeks.
I have no idea how Netflix’s changes are going to affect my family.
Taking another example: Disney+ and Hulu. Hulu is majority (but not entirely) owned by Disney (post-20th Century Fox acquisition). In the US, we have Disney+ and Hulu as separate services. In Canada there is no Hulu, but Disney+ offers something called “Star” which is more-or-less non-US Hulu. In other words, Disney is already getting 2 subscriptions out of me in the US for content that only requires one subscription in other countries.
But I don’t mind. Why? Because Disney has high quality content. Even if I don’t want to watch it, none of it is necessarily “bad”. Netflix, OTOH, churns out so much garbage. And most of their original shows get canceled far too early. I now avoid most new Netflix shows until it has a few seasons under its belt, because I’m tired of getting invested into shows that are canceled after a cliff-hanger.
Frankly, once I saw the prices rise $10/month -> $20/month I cancelled.
Plus, seeing shows like friends and breaking bad being replaced by big mouth and other Netflix content I find just gross (and not replacing it with content I enjoy). I cancelled. I was enjoying ozarks, and the comedy specials, but not at $180-$240/year and most of the comedy specials have become increasingly less interesting (when they came out at all — thanks lockdowns).
I think at lower prices they could honestly cover more niches because people were willing to pay for their interest (maybe 5% of the content). As the price increases more people don’t think that 5% is good enough for the price. And everyone has a different percent of content they like.
Imo this makes Netflix much more prone to lose customers when rising prices.
This is even more obnoxious because a lot of people who watch Netflix are younger. They travel, they go to school, etc.
How do they know where a home is? Are they going to require Location permissions? Are they going to do silly geoIP things which are worse than useless?
It sounds like they are using a combination of device fingerprinting and ip addresses. Will be interesting to see how many people get false positives from VPN's or just having their ip addresses cycled
> Make sure that the device is not connected to a VPN, proxy, or any unblocker service.
I think their goal is to remove non-paying customers which is reasonable thing to do from their business perspective.
I'm not sure how exactly this would affect 99% of their paying customers. People who travel all the time would probably watch it on their laptops/tablets anyway so it won't affect them.
I think that it’s a reasonable goal. However, strategically I think that it isn’t wise given their other reductions in service quality. I had Netflix pretty early on when the catalog was vast and they would send DVDs immediately. Once it became clear they were starting to throttle the amount of DVDs being sent, I stopped subscribing. I think that this new policy will inspire a portion of their customer base to leave.
It’s still unclear to me how they count the two weeks on a location. If I go to my summer house every weekend, does that count? Or do they count when you use Netflix at multiple locations at the same time?
Genuine question to commenters that are poopooing this: why? Price hikes are annoying, and the content quality has been decaying recently, but those are separate issues.
Why shouldn’t Netflix seek to clamp down on account sharing? This seems to strike a nice balance that makes it easy to continue sharing, and not disrupt existing profiles, etc whilst charging a small premium for the privilege.
They’re not really separate issues. On some level we’re supporting a company vision and direction. Right now that direction says “we’re going to try and eek out every last dollar and we don’t care about the quality of our content”. I think this would be a different story if most of their energy was focused on creating a compelling product. “Look at all this great media were building as part of a completing vision and we have to raise prices to accommodate is a different narrative than “everything sucks and we don’t care give us more money”
frognumber|3 years ago
In 2010 everyone I knew paid their media tax through Netflix or a similar provider since paid services were more convenient than piracy, and things just worked.
Somehow, in the past 2-5 years, piracy is quickly moving back as the more convenient option.
The core problem with entertainment is you're paying for fun. Spending hours fighting with broken service is not fun. Increasingly, these services provide negative value to me.
foogazi|3 years ago
Do you spend hours fighting with Netflix or Prime ?
How are the online media services broken for you ?
freedom2099|3 years ago
foogazi|3 years ago
Maybe they think you can afford it
sys_64738|3 years ago
qeternity|3 years ago
I don’t really understand these comments. Do you think Netflix is a charity? “Endless pursuit of revenue” is how they stay in business, employing people and yes, generating profits to shareholders.
Imagine turning this same thinking around at other groups I’d imagine you sympathize with like unionizing workers: “In their endless pursuit of revenue, workers have demanded pay increases”. Like wtf?
Justin_K|3 years ago
Nux|3 years ago
GeekyBear|3 years ago
Divorce is fairly common, and coming on top of another recent price hike, they are going to be shedding customers.
frognumber|3 years ago
foogazi|3 years ago
skyzyx|3 years ago
In my case, nobody is “stealing” anything. My immediate family has had to deal with these international issues for about eight years, where the kids spend about three months in the US and nine months in Canada every year, crossing the border every 3-4 weeks.
I have no idea how Netflix’s changes are going to affect my family.
Taking another example: Disney+ and Hulu. Hulu is majority (but not entirely) owned by Disney (post-20th Century Fox acquisition). In the US, we have Disney+ and Hulu as separate services. In Canada there is no Hulu, but Disney+ offers something called “Star” which is more-or-less non-US Hulu. In other words, Disney is already getting 2 subscriptions out of me in the US for content that only requires one subscription in other countries.
But I don’t mind. Why? Because Disney has high quality content. Even if I don’t want to watch it, none of it is necessarily “bad”. Netflix, OTOH, churns out so much garbage. And most of their original shows get canceled far too early. I now avoid most new Netflix shows until it has a few seasons under its belt, because I’m tired of getting invested into shows that are canceled after a cliff-hanger.
Ted Sarandos: I’m looking at you.
jesse_faden|3 years ago
Argentina: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/126602/ar
mbStavola|3 years ago
lettergram|3 years ago
Plus, seeing shows like friends and breaking bad being replaced by big mouth and other Netflix content I find just gross (and not replacing it with content I enjoy). I cancelled. I was enjoying ozarks, and the comedy specials, but not at $180-$240/year and most of the comedy specials have become increasingly less interesting (when they came out at all — thanks lockdowns).
I think at lower prices they could honestly cover more niches because people were willing to pay for their interest (maybe 5% of the content). As the price increases more people don’t think that 5% is good enough for the price. And everyone has a different percent of content they like.
Imo this makes Netflix much more prone to lose customers when rising prices.
This is even more obnoxious because a lot of people who watch Netflix are younger. They travel, they go to school, etc.
porknubbins|3 years ago
elric|3 years ago
mnahkies|3 years ago
> Make sure that the device is not connected to a VPN, proxy, or any unblocker service.
romanovcode|3 years ago
I'm not sure how exactly this would affect 99% of their paying customers. People who travel all the time would probably watch it on their laptops/tablets anyway so it won't affect them.
mirntyfirty|3 years ago
theshrike79|3 years ago
They're not gonna come first at the people who use Netflix from two addresses regularly, there's no point to start from there.
wdb|3 years ago
hotpotamus|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
qeternity|3 years ago
Why shouldn’t Netflix seek to clamp down on account sharing? This seems to strike a nice balance that makes it easy to continue sharing, and not disrupt existing profiles, etc whilst charging a small premium for the privilege.
moralestapia|3 years ago
If you raise the cost they will just leave, leaving Netflix with a total of $0 instead of a "small premium for the privilege" from them.
mikkergp|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
kyriakos|3 years ago
I switched to 5 countries still got the same message.
throwawayacc2|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
wdb|3 years ago
Wolfenstein98k|3 years ago
throwawayacc2|3 years ago