It’s the end of an era. Netflix officially bans account sharing

Account splitting is one of the biggest issues facing the platform. According to the site’s calculations, more than 100 million people avoid paying for their subscription thanks to password sharing. In early 2023, Netflix announced that it would make major changes due to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. The platform was to finally deal with the sharing of accounts outside one household. Currently, the Polish terms of service read: “A Netflix account can be shared with people living in the same household (with people who live in the same location as the account owner). In order to use Netflix, people outside your household must create their own account “

It’s official. Netflix will ban account sharing

So far, however, verification of Polish Netflix users in terms of location has happened sporadically. The situation was different in Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal, where the platform launched paid access to accounts for people outside the household. Netflix shared the results of the report from the last quarter and declared that they are satisfactory enough that the solutions will also be introduced in the United States and other countries.

“In Canada, which we believe is a reliable predictor for the United States, our paid subscriber base is larger than before the introduction of paid password sharing, and revenue growth has accelerated enough to exceed that recorded in the US,” the report quotes Netflix. reports that American subscribers will have to start getting used to the new rules by the end of June at the latest.

So far, we do not know which specific countries will be covered by the new rules. Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters stated that “the new policy will be launched in the second quarter of the year and it will be very broad. It will cover the United States and many, many other countries.” The company explains that it abandoned the changes at the beginning of the year to devote a little more time to them and make the transition from free to paid account sharing as smooth and understandable as possible for the platform’s subscribers.

Netflix emphasizes that the service cares about making the most reasonable decisions, knowing what agitation new reports about the costs of using the platform cause. The company expects customers to lose their competitor when forced to pay occurs, but the introduction of subscription price increases has taught management that mass cancellation of the service is only the initial reaction of users.