Netflix announced that it's password crackdown "exceeded expectations"
I am so disappointed in you, US consumer.
I canceled my Netflix when this happened. I wasn't really using it, but friends and family were. At least three of them created their own accounts when I canceled mine.
Same.
Of course they're going to say that. They won't provide hard data to prove it, but by saying it they can keep doing it and make it look like a positive PR move.
They're a publicly-traded company, of course they're going to provide hard data to prove it: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001065280/62b73aad-65fc-436d-9ab9-d622dc3eb462.pdf#page=12
I cancelled after the last hike, and my family has access to my plex server with great quality and reliability, and a simple request system. But they barely use it. They just got their own Netflix after I cancelled the one we shared that I was paying for.
Finally got fiber at my home and created many accounts for my family on my emby server. Wanted to give them access to my overseer server but I don't trust it's very secure. I will just let them access it and make requests when they visit.
Either they blatantly lie about the outcome of the password crackdown or they see no issues at all to showcase how mind-bogglingly greedy they are. I think I've read this week they claim that subscriptions increased by 6 million worldwide. You'd think that is enough increase in revenue for a while, but no, let's increase prices now. Weird timing imo, unless they're testing how far they can go
Netflix announced that starting today, users on its $9.99 per month Basic plan will now have to pay $11.99, and those paying $19.99 per month for Premium will have to pay $22.99
That's insane. The only way those price hikes could possibly be justified is if the majority of movie/show creators had their catalogues available on Netflix. But they don't because everyone and their mother wants their own fucking streaming service, ruining streaming for everyone.
No thanks. I got a library card and access to my entire county's book/audio-book/movie/show catalogue for free through Libby and Hoopla. As for everything else I can't find there... Yarr.
I always upvote library advocacy
“As we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,”
But you're not doing the first half, so you can't do the second half..
Adding 100 shows that no one is gonna watch is apparently "adding value". Incidentally, this new season of Love is Blind is fucking garbage. Very clearly scripted with actors.
Bye bye Netflix. Onward to the high seas.
The only reason I keep it is because my son watches Number blocks and other educational videos there. But I did downgrade from 4K to HD and I’ll likely downgrade again at the next price hike.
Or you can download all of your kids shows and host it on a Plex or jellyfin server for them.
Piracy is always a service issue. It never went away, and it will never go away. Why should I spend the little money I have on a service that repeatedly jacks up prices, while also killing your favorite shows, or losing licences to stream other content?
Management every time they increase the price.
Netflix, what are you trying to do? I can't cancel my subscription in protest if it's still cancelled from the last time you did something boneheaded.
Could always call and demand they cancel even harder.
Join, and cancel the next day.
I have herd you will get the money back and one month free.
While pretty useless it will show up in the churn metrics.
I've probably been subscribing to Netflix for a decade now, but this is the largest price increase they have ever done on the basic plan, and this is the first time I have seriously started to consider cancelling.
I need to go through my list and figure out what I really want to watch, and then just binge it. (I have never binge watched anything, but this is giving me an actual incentive to)
Or... Just... 🏴☠️
I canceled four years(?) ago and haven’t looked back. The quality to crap ratio of their originals was so high and the back catalog was evaporating. Everything I wanted I could get on DVDs at thrift shops and rip to my Plex library or watch on Hulu (which is provided free with my cell plan).
Another reason I won’t be returning as a customer.
Yarr intensifies
tap... tap... tap... what's that sound approaching?
Just me peg leg, matey
Cue all the "that's it, I'm out" comments. Seems like no one actually ever leaves.
About to set up a Realdebrid account and get kodi running on my pc, brb
Anyone who complains about this: If you didn't cancel your acccount back when they cracked down on account sharing it's your own fault.
They saw that they made more profit this way and now they gonna keep squeezing as much as possible.
It's not too late tho but i doubt enough will jump the ship to make a change
Oh hey. Another reason to no go back to pick up a Netflix account.
RealDebrid with Stremio or Kodi.
For anyone looking to bail - get a nice VPN and sail the high seas instead! I use protonvpn for $120 per 2 years ($5 per month) they also have free servers you can try out but they're super slow. Another good one is mullvad for €5 per month (doesn't get cheaper with longer plans, but €5 a month isn't bad). Be wary of vpn reviews though because I know a lot are sponsored.
Protonvpn and mullvad are based in Switzerland and Sweden, respectively, and both countries have great privacy laws. Been using protonvpn for a while and haven't had any issues personally.
For getting into torrenting, I definitely recommend the arr suite (radarr for movies, sonarr for tv, some others for other uses) and qbittorrent for actual torrenting. Also very good idea to stick everything in docker containers, you can route them through a gluetun container that uses your VPN so even if you shut your VPN down systemwide those are still protected. The arr suite helps with managing what you get, getting better qualities, automatically getting new releases, etc.
Plex is great for viewing your content and such, can either do one time purchase or a subscription, $120 for lifetime which is the same as paying for 3 years of subscription I think? You can also use Kodi which is free and open source but imo more annoying to setup and has a worse layout.
There's plenty of guides online for setting things up, but make sure to never torrent without a vpn unless it's non-copyrighted
Obligatory Jellyfin > Plex recommendation and TRaSH-Guides plug
Jellyfin is a completely self-hosted Plex alternative that works really well. Plex has been around longer and thus has more dedicated apps, but Jellyfin can't ever disable your account or block the server you pay to run it on .
I've been using Jellyfin for over a year and have no complaints.
It's almost like streaming models aren't sustainable for anybody involved. ;)
Thanks for the heads up. I just cancelled my subscription. I had premium but $23 per month is ridiculous.
Oh, you're still paying for Netflix? Well... sucks to be you!
I am nearly giddy at the thought of finally cancelling my subscription. It's been like 13-14 years for me I think.
I cancelled last year after watching Stranger Things. It was literally the only show I'd watched on Netflix in over two years. I'd been paying for a service I wasn't even using, and even though nobody was sharing a password for my account, the price hikes and sudden change of password policy were enough for me to stop paying them. Obviously I haven't missed it, since I wasn't watching it, but I may not have cancelled if not for the price going up each year.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Netflix last raised its prices in March 2022, bringing the Premium plan to $19.99 and the Standard tier to $15.49.
The streamer stopped offering its $9.99 Basic ad-free plan to new and relapsed users in July, forcing them to fork out more to avoid ads.
“As we deliver more value to our members, we occasionally ask them to pay a bit more,” Netflix writes in its letter to shareholders.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported the streamer would raise the cost of its subscription a “few months” after the Hollywood actors strike ends, and now it’s happened even though the actors are still striking.
Last month, the Writers Guild of America ended their strike after reaching a deal with services like Netflix to provide streaming data, higher minimum pay, and better residuals.
Meanwhile, the service is also debuting its Squid Game reality show and Scott Pilgrim anime in November, while also adding Across the Spider-Verse later this month.
The original article contains 294 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Lol glad I canceled yesterday and sent an account deletion request.
I think the issue is that Netflix always had a lot of debt and thought they could grow a lot more. They had a really solid income, then suddenly their catalog was shrinking thanks to the million other streaming services while they simultaneously started declining in subscriptions right when the cost of debt skyrocketed (even if some of their debt is still at lower rates).
Not that I'm cheering on the price increase by any means, nor am I currently a subscriber. Still though in some way I can see why they're doing it and have a feeling we're just at the tip of the iceberg in how bad tech corporate services are going to get for a bit.
On an unrelated note, VPNs and/or I2P are cool things to check out.
Edit: One thing too to bring up is that password sharing may still be a breeze. If you set up a VPN - not a commercial one but you setup yourseld on either on a VPS or on your home network - as long as anybody is on it they'll look like they're from the same household.
Their content turned fairly bad. Witcher and Stranger Things were the only reasons to keep it. So why keep it?
Haven’t had it for a while. It was cool in the 00s, started to go bad in the 10s. Inertia can only take you so far.
Hell, even AppleTV free run had more decent content for 3 mos.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
