The day of reckoning has finally arrived: After months of warnings and testing in select countries, Netflix is tightening its belt and ending password sharing. In a first step toward the streamer’s announced plans to implement “paid sharing,” Netflix is politely informing subscribers that, to call Marlo Stanfield of The wirethe price of the content goes up.
“A Netflix account is for use by one household,” reads one blog post Netflix published on Tuesday, about her new policy. Those for whom the description doesn’t apply (siblings, friends, parents, etc. who don’t live with the primary subscriber of a Netflix account) have two options if they want to continue watching Netflix: transfer their account to a new paid membership, or let the Netflix subscriber add an “additional member” to their extended “household” for an additional fee of $7.99 per month.
Failure to comply with this process will result in a catastrophic system crash killing everyone connected to the Matrix, which, combined with Zion’s eradication, will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race. (Just kidding. That’s a quote from Reload the Matrix. We love to have fun here.)
Image: Netfix
A support page linked to the bottom of the email describes “additional members” as users who have their own unique passwords and profiles, paid for by the primary subscriber. Additional member accounts must be activated in the same country as the primary subscriber, can only view and download content on one device, and cannot create additional profiles for the account themselves. These restrictions are undoubtedly intended to discourage account sharing and encourage anyone who watches Netflix to create their own account. (At the time of writing, there is currently a Netflix account $9.99 per month for the “Basic” tier, with additional tiers going up to $19.99 per month. Additional users cost $7.99 regardless of original account tier.)
Netflix plans to enforce its shared account policy by identifying the IP address of the device used by the primary account holder. To change that location, users can confirm or update their household through the Netflix app and respond to a verification link sent to the account holder’s email address or phone number.
Netflix understands that this decision will result in backlash. According to a Variety Report, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters stated during a Q4 2002 earnings call that the company expects a “cancellation reaction” among Netflix users in response to this change. “This won’t be a widely popular move,” Peters said, comparing the response to paid sharing to the response to previous subscription price hikes.
Ultimately, whether potential customers choose the “additional members” option on a family account or pay for their own account depends entirely on whether a particular customer values a Netflix subscription in the first place.