Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

So they lost 300k users and also lost 700k promoters of the service. At the cost of scaled server costs?

But note that it correlates to a loss of paying users too. "Only" 2/3 of those users were sharing a password.

There's another danger here for them, and that is cultural. Currently e.g. my girlfriend users my password. It means we both watch the same things, and talk about things that are on Netflix, and that serves as a reason for me to keep watching Netflix too. A whole lot of my Netflix watching is down to her. If she were to, say, spend her time on Disney Plus instead and talk to me about series there, I might end up spending more of my time on Disney Plus, and value my Netflix subscription accordingly lower. Do that to enough users and you'll start losing them.

As long as people keep watching Netflix they have a chance to convert them to paying users, but even if that fails, at the very least they have a chance to prevent those people from converting their paying customers to users of other services.

If I was Netflix I'd think long and hard about less invasive means of doing this, such as e.g. putting restrictions on additional household that might nudge them towards paying (e.g. limiting number of profiles so people need to share profiles; putting ads for Netflix in front of shows on "secondary" locations etc.) without outright pushing people off the service.

> I think the issue is that people who are paying for an account they are sharing are likely to keep the account active so their family members can continue watching. When the family are cut off, they cancel.

That's the case for me indeed. I myself basically stopped watching Netflix, somehow the content doesn't do anything for me anymore.

But I shared my account with family and they watch it. If this gets to us, and I'm the only one who can watch it, I'm for sure cancelling. The family members with whom I'm sharing the account are very unlikely to get their own account either.

(Sharing accounts is a great form of stealth giving to family members who would otherwise not be able to afford such "luxuries". It's much easier to say "hey, I got one free account on my Spotify plan, would you like to use it? Otherwise, it will go to waste" as opposed to awkwardly offering money directly)

If they were smart they'd realise they could launder their overall viewer figures in the stockmarket and (ponzi-style) have the latest shareholders pay them* for inflated 'low rent' users instead of scaring away those users and trying to turn a profit on a shrinking viewer population tolerating higher fees.

* via SBC with SP maintained by higher viewer figures.

I wonder how much this affects the public not talking about the shows and this leading to less engagement. And thus snowballing into even less users, as there is less people to promote shows etc.