Netflix extends its password sharing crackdown to some countries
Delhi : Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain are the additional four nations where Netflix is imposing restrictions on password sharing.
If customers in those nations want to share their subscription with friends and family who don't live with them, they must pay an additional fee. The move, which will take effect in the UK by the end of March, comes in response to a crackdown on password sharing in South America.
The number of shared accounts worldwide, according to Netflix, is 100 million.
The company claimed that Netflix's ability to invest in new programming content was being hampered by the loss of revenue from the shared accounts. It has stated that it intends to expand the new strategy to more nations in the upcoming months.
In a blog thread on Wednesday, it stated, "Over the past year, we've been investigating various approaches to address this issue in Latin America, and we're now ready to roll them out more broadly in the coming months, starting today in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain."
It has previously been simple for subscribers to give their login information and password to friends who live outside of their home.
When it tweeted, "Love is sharing a password," in 2017, Netflix even seemed to be supporting the behaviour. However, increasing customer subscription cancellations due to rising living expenses and increased competition in the streaming market have forced Netflix to concentrate on increasing its revenue.
The company claimed that allowing accounts to be used by multiple people in a single household had "created confusion" regarding who could share what and how.
Members in Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and Portugal, according to the announcement, will now be required to establish a "primary location" for their accounts and control who has access to them. Both on their own devices and by logging in from other locations, like a hotel, members could still watch Netflix while travelling, the company claimed.
Gregory Peters, Netflix's COO, acknowledged last month that the changes would not be "universally popular" and forewarned investors to anticipate some cancellations. He stated that the business anticipated recovering those losses in the future.
Netflix saw a sharp decline in its subscriber base during the first half of 2022. To offset rising costs, it cut hundreds of jobs and raised prices.
So in the final quarter of 2022, the company saw a higher-than-anticipated increase in user numbers, up 7.66 million, bringing its total paid subscribers globally to almost 231 million.
It launched a less expensive ad-supported option in 12 nations in November, including the majority of Europe, the UK, and the US.
