Three Latin American countries will be the first to experience a couple of new Netflix features, not without controversy.
The American company announced that Chile, Costa Rica and Peru will be the test countries of a new feature that will limit users from sharing the same account in different households, something Netflix has turned a blind eye to until now.
In a statement, the company said that while multi-device streaming and profile separation features have been popular on its service, “they have also created some confusion regarding when and how Netflix can be shared.”
So they will put will apply a charge to allow it.
The function “Add an additional memberl“ will make users with standard and premium plans add “subaccounts for up to two people they don’t live with.”
Each of these “guests” will have their own profile, username and password for a cost of US $ 2 (The company did not specify if the charge is monthly, weekly or daily).
Another feature is called “Transfer profile to new account”, which will allow users “who share their account” to copy history, favorites list and customizations to an additional profile. That will allow users to continue viewing your content without affecting others.
Chile, Costa Rica and Peru will see these changes “In the next weeks” before they are implemented in other countries.
The US firm says it is doing so to avoid damage to its investments in new TV shows and movies.
Discontent
The news has not gone down well with some users of the streaming service that has more than 220 million subscribers worldwide.
“One of my daughters and my mother use accounts that I pay for on Netflix and they don’t live with me. Why would I pay anything extra if I already pay for a family plan?” a message on Twitter read.
Others used the tag #ChaoNetflix to express their discontent, threatening to cancel their subscription.
Anticipating criticism, Netflix said it will seek to ensure “that new features are flexible and useful to members, whose subscriptions fund all of our great TV shows and movies.”
“We will work to understand the usefulness of these two functions for the members of these three countries [Chile, Costa Rica y Perú] before making changes anywhere else in the world“.
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