Since Netflix’s arrival in Australia, a lot has changed. It’s helped to coin the overused term ‘Netflix and chill’ and it’s allowed many of us to see the true nature of our stingy familiars. But the streaming giant might finally be doing something about your freeloading friends and family who enjoy the benefits of your subscription without sending you a cent.
Netflix’s chief product officer Greg Peters has said in an interview the service is “continuing to monitor” users who are sharing their password with multiple people rather than setting up their own accounts, as reported by 7News. Right now, Netflix allows up to four individualised users on a single subscription across six registered devices. Depending on the plan you’ve chosen, up to four screens can be streamed at one time.
“We’ll see those consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that,” Peters said.
“We have no plans to announce at this point in time, in terms of doing something differently.”
While there doesn’t seem to be any immediate plans to burn off your Netflix leeches just yet, it’s possible Netflix will go down a similar path to Spotify, which recently began vetting Family account users to confirm they all actually lived within the same address.
But how will my friends possibly piggyback off my subscription payments now?
If you’re happy with your status as a streaming Santa, then Netflix isn’t actually doing anything about it yet. It’s just said it knows what’s going on and it’s probably a little mad about it.
But if and when Netflix begins its crackdown, you can simply set them up as a registered account so they don’t mess up your algorithm anyway. If you’ve already got too many accounts set up, maybe consider politely requesting they pay for their own account.
Or just change your password.
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Wait… what? What’s the point of having four concurrent users if not for sharing with my family? Just because they don’t all live in the same house doesn’t mean they’re not my family… I thought this was intended use. That’s why they all have their own user profile on my account. I’ve never seen anything about child accounts that can have their own passwords but still make use of my subscription… this is confusing, to me. Netflix has done a very poor job of presenting their preferred use cases, here.
I assume that the thinking is traditional mother, father & a couple kids living together. Not four people living in completely different houses, even if they are family. The logic being once you’re an independent adult living in your own place it’s time to get your own account.
That said, I don’t know how you can monitor or police different addresses because there are legitimate uses – address one is home, two is the holiday house, three is Dad’s work, address four is Mum’s work, address 5 is school/uni. Could all still be family and all living together but could easily view netflix in a variety of locations.
I also think that not only is Netflix completely aware of people sharing accounts (not just with family but with friends) and they see it as a win. Logically they miss out on some subscriptions but they probably gain more in good will than they lose from account sharing. It’s also effective advertising for them. Friend lets you leech their connection for awhile, you enjoy it and decide to sign up. May not have done so without that “free trial”.