The time for living off of friend’s and family’s Netflix accounts is officially over. The streaming giant is cracking down on password sharing.
Virginia Tech economics professor Jadrian Wooten says it’s been a long time coming.
“I think they knew that they needed to do it. They were seeing flattening. They weren’t growing subscribers,” Wooten said.
But complaints are growing around the country.
Grad student Camden Phillips used his family’s account for years, but he just received word he can no longer access an account.
“‘This device is not a part of your household, and you’ll either have to create a new account, or make this the primary household,’ and my mom still uses it back in Grayson County, so I wasn’t going to make this the primary device,” Phillips said.
Netflix is offering a secondary account for $8 a month.
“It’s a little frustrating, but then at the same time remembering it’s not that you’re necessarily buying two accounts, you’re sort of getting like one and a half accounts,” Wooten said.
Phillips said the new restrictions are unfair to college students, who are simply out of the house for school.
“In college, we don’t have a lot of disposable income, and we’ve been using that account forever and it’s never been an issue, so why is it an issue now,” Phillips said.
Wooten says the extra money Netflix receives from the new accounts goes mainly toward show and movie production.
“Netflix has transitioned from a platform that hosts other people’s content to developing their own content. And the content that gets developed today is very different from the content that was developed 15 years ago,” Wooten said.
While many people thought Netflix would see a further drop in numbers, they have already added several hundred thousand new accounts.
“It’s really hard for people to give up things that they’ve been doing, especially if it’s something they’ve been doing for ten to fifteen years of their life,” Wooten said.
No other streaming services have implemented a password-sharing policy, but Wooten says they won’t be far behind.