As the number of Netflix subscribers continues to lose, the official determination to crack down on “password sharing” seems to be getting stronger and stronger. Previously, a test program was launched in three specific countries, allowing users to add additional members, but I don’t know if it is It didn’t work very well, and another method was recently introduced in Latin America, requiring an additional fee whenever a user was detected outside their place of residence for more than two weeks.
Netflix finds new way to crack down on ‘password sharing’ that costs extra for use outside of your home for more than two weeks
According to Bloomberg, Netflix is currently testing a new program in five Latin American countries: Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, where users who live in their primary residence Using your Netflix account outside of your home country for more than two weeks now has to pay extra. I don’t know how to charge this extra fee, and it will be deducted directly from the next month’s bill? Or is it not possible to use it outside of the place of residence without additional payment?
Although this is to combat “password sharing”, two weeks still feels a bit short, and a long trip may be more than three weeks.
But the good news is that this beta program is currently limited to TVs, and Netflix says users can watch Netflix movies on smartphones, tablets, or computers at no extra cost. Whether that will change in the future Not clear.
The additional fees are similar to the previous ones in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, with a maximum charge of $2.99, which will actually vary from country to country.
Netflix has previously stated that “password sharing has undermined our long-term ability to invest and improve services”. It can be seen that Netflix really wants to solve this situation. Although it has expanded to more countries this time, strictly speaking, the conditions have been relaxed. Smartphones, tablets, and computers are not subject to this limitation, so it is doubtful whether it will work well.
Netflix also explained why it chose Latin America this time, because password sharing in these regions is particularly high, so it would be better to make users pay extra than delete these accounts.
Having said that, the number of Netflix subscribers has decreased. Officials have always believed that it was caused by password sharing. Although this is indeed one of the reasons, there must be other reasons. For example, the price is too high for individual users. If you want to watch 4K, the highest For the quality of the picture, you must choose the advanced plan of NT$390/month. Although you can watch up to 4 monitors at the same time, individual users do not need so many screens at all. One is enough, and one plan only has 480p resolution. Now who can Accept this video quality…
This is also the main reason why more and more people share passwords. If Netflix is willing to launch a personal 4K picture quality exclusive plan, I believe it will also be of great help to the number of subscriptions, rather than simply cracking down on password sharing.
In addition, there are more and more video streaming services on the market now, such as Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, HBO Max and Disney+, as well as local services in various countries, and the epidemic is slowly easing everyone is going out, Netflix Fewer subscribers are actually quite normal.
