Over 100 million Netflix users are freeloaders, and the company’s coming for them in 2023
Netflix has been very public about its plans to crack down on password sharing. Aftera number of tests in South America, Netflix is all but set tostart charging for password sharing in 2023— users who wish to share their login with someone else can expect to soon start paying a fee on top of their existing subscription. As we’re nearing the end of 2022, that change is closer than you may have thought, and now, we have some info about why the company is doing this, and why it has taken so long to get this right.
As per a new report byThe Wall Street Journal(viaXDA), there are more than 100 million Netflix viewers who are currently watching shows and movies on the platform using a login they’re borrowing from someone else. Given that there are around 223 million paid Netflix subscribers around the world, this means that roughly a third of Netflix’s viewer base is not paying for the service at all.
Researchers inside the company have identified this as a problem since at least 2019, but with the COVID-19 pandemic bringing in new subscribers, it didn’t feel a need to act on it immediately. With subscriber countsnotably dwindling this year, though, Netflix feels like now’s the time to get serious about cutting down on password sharing — or at least get money out of it.
It’s a big number, though, and it also means Netflix needs to think seriously about how to implement a change like this while also not alienating that viewership. This is why instead of outright forbidding sharing a login, Netflix wants to charge a small fee instead. The streaming service also notably launched an ad-supported tier in order to make it easier and cheaper for users to pay for their own accounts if they want to do so.
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