A few days ago, streaming giant Netflix announced in its earnings report that it lost nearly a million subscribers in the second quarter but it’s far less than the two million that was forecast during its first quarter report in April. But there’s more. Netflix is a good example of how a big company can get back on track easily. Free lunches are not possible forever, similarly, there needs to be a clamp down on password sharing, which Netflix appears to be handling well.
The company has announced that it will begin testing a new “add a home” feature to charge users who share their account with others in select countries — Argentina, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
What exactly are we looking at? The answer can be found by scanning the support page for Netflix in Honduras. It states the test will ask users to pay an additional fee if they use an account on a TV or TV-connected device at a location outside their primary household for over two weeks. Each additional home will cost an extra 219 pesos per month, per home in Argentina ($1.17), and $2.99 everywhere else.
The last 15 years have been spent build a streaming service that’s easy to use but password sharing has become a headache for the company. “Today’s widespread account sharing between households undermines our long term ability to invest in and improve our service,” Chengyi Long, director, product innovation, wrote on the company’s blog.
How is the solution being deployed? Netflix doesn’t rely on location-based data, like GPS. It’s about leveraging the same information it uses to provide its service today to its end users, including an IP address, device IDs and other information about devices signed into the Netflix account across the household, says TechCrunch. Through this method, Netflix can identify when there’s persistent sharing taking place outside a household.
