Netflix Has Big Plans to Crack Down on Password Sharing

After losing subscribers for the first time in a decade, Netflix will soon crack down on password sharing between separate households. In a letter to shareholders Tuesday, Netflix executives revealed they thought password sharing was one of the main reasons behind the decline in subscribers.

“This is a big opportunity as these households are already watching Netflix and enjoying our service,” the streamer wrote in its letter. “Sharing likely helped fuel our growth by getting more people using and enjoying Netflix. And we’ve always tried to make sharing within a member’s household easy, with features like profiles and multiple streams. While these have been very popular, they’ve created confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared with other households.”

Netflix ended the quarter by losing 200,000 subscribers compared to the end of Q4 2021.

Last year, the streamer announced plans to test technology that would identify accounts being shared, and subsequently charge accounts more, between $3 to $4 extra per month.

“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans,” Chengyi Long, director of product innovation at Netflix, wrote in a blog post about the experiment. “While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”

The blog post added, “We recognize that people have many entertainment choices, so we want to ensure any new features are flexible and useful for members, whose subscriptions fund all our great TV and films. We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world.”

Earlier this year, Netflix raised the prices for its packages, making the streamer’s best packages just under $20 per month.

What streaming services do you currently use? Have you dropped Netflix yet this year? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!