My family shares our Netflix account. We live in different states, but all in the United States.
I used it yesterday and it was fine. But today it was not. I got the “you are not part of this household” message, with the three options being:
- make your own account
- make this location the household location
- I’m traveling
I watch a lot of random stuff, but mostly on different services. So, while it’s kind of a bummer to uninstall Netflix, I have plenty of options. It’s moreso just depressing that the enshittification has finally hit North America. Will probably see more of this stuff around on the internet soon, as I’m guessing I just got my number pulled before most people (which is doubly depressing since this we’ve had Netflix since like 2005 or something and were strong advocates of it when linear tv was still dominant - THAT’S CAPITALISM FOR YA!~)
Are you really that surprised netflix is finally enforcing its terms of service?
In a March 10, 2017, Twitter thread that was promoting its original series Love, Netflix wrote, “Love is sharing a password.” The single tweet in the thread garnered more than 15,000 likes and more than 4,600 retweets.
in 2016 Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that consumers sharing Netflix account information was “a positive thing.” Hastings explained at CES that people who share someone else’s Netflix account often go on to become paying subscribers themselves at a later date, CNET reported. “We love people sharing Netflix whether they’re two people on a couch or 10 people on a couch,” Hastings said. “That’s a positive thing, not a negative thing.”
I think people are surprised that the abilities of the service they signed up for have changed. Are you surprised people have a problem with Netflix simply having those terms of service?
Can you provide a source that indicates that Netflix’s account sharing was ever encouraged beyond a single household? My understanding is netlix has always been pro-sharing as long as all users that share a password are within the same household.
The original tweet
I understand that they’ve said that, and I’ll re-iterate, as far as I’m aware Netflix’s password sharing policy has always been for individuals living in the same household.
Here is the TOS back when the “Love is sharing a password” tweet happened: https://web.archive.org/web/20170306041322/https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse?locale=en&docType=termsofuse
The only reference to password sharing is this:
Which seems a little contradictory to the “love is sharing a password” tweet, but I think it can be reconciled as “The only way for you to retain exclusive control is if you don’t share your password so if you share your password and someone messes with your account, that’s your fault not ours. Also if you share your password definitely don’t share your payment info because then they could really mess your account up.”
No where in there does it say anything about only sharing within a household. The way back machine only has two snapshots of the page in 2018: one in January that doesn’t mention sharing outside your household and one in December that does. So it was added sometime that year, not sure what month, but that’s still a year or so after they tweeted that sharing is okay.
Is there a source showing that sharing outside your household was prohibited prior to 2018?