Netflix: the time has finally come to fire the ex who takes advantage of your account

It was expected, it’s now official: in a press release released yesterday, the Netflix streaming platform announced the implementation of restrictions on account sharing outside the same household. Subscribers from France will also have to pay €5.99 if they want to add an additional subscriber to their account. Explanations.

An announcement and many outstanding questions

The debate agitated the editorial staff this morning, some outright shouting out loud and accusing the platform of having “reached the last stage of capitalism” Favoriting “always more individualism”. The reality is a bit more complex, but account sharing should still be heavily restricted in the future.

If the overall recipe is a little vague, however, we know that Netflix will rely on information such as the IP address to determine the devices that belong to the account holder or his relatives. This will therefore hinder account sharing, for example, within the same family where people do not live under the same roof. Your sister living in Dunkirk will have to connect at least once a month to the wifi network of the family home in Quimper to continue to benefit from the holder account. A major problem, moreover practically insurmountable if the account is connected to a television.

If said sister cannot connect regularly to the family network, she will therefore be forced to subscribe to her own subscription, or to charge the additional €5.99 to the account holder. In the first case, note that it is possible to request a profile transfer.

Netflix wanted to reassure those who travel often: “You can easily watch Netflix on the go or while traveling, on your personal devices or on the TV where you are”. But here again, a certain vagueness reigns over the methods of verification. If you’re traveling for three months, isn’t there a risk that your device will be disconnected after some time away from home? Will Netflix need to be notified of a temporary address change?

The great misunderstanding on social networks

Inevitably, the announcement went very badly with subscribers. On Twitter, Internet users castigated Netflix’s decision, especially since the price of subscriptions has continued to increase in recent years. Questions have also multiplied about the terms of this new policy, given the few details provided by the company in its press release.

In Spain, a similar policy was implemented a few months ago. Result: about a million people unsubscribed during the first quarter of the year. A termination all the more simple as the platforms have multiplied in recent years (Disney, Amazon, Paramount, etc.).

The only benefit of this new policy seems to be the eviction of unwanted squatters, like that ex-companion who continues to use your subscription in his new apartment, and who is finally going to be thrown overboard.