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Netflix is a cautionary tale of Wall Street growth-at-all-costs mixed with Silicon Valley hyperoptimization. Their tendency to cancel popular shows because they

Netflix is a cautionary tale of Wall Street growth-at-all-costs mixed with Silicon Valley hyperoptimization. Their tendency to cancel popular shows because they become more expensive to produce doesn't bode well for their value proposition. Compared to the other streaming services, Netflix will get dropped long before even Apple TV+ in my household. Adding ad-supported tiers is fine, they just better never add ads to the current paid tiers. Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. They already limit the simultaneous streams and that seems fair. They shouldn't be wasting time and effort figuring out if logins are coming from different households.

philliphaydon 4y ago
If you ran a business and it cost $10 per month and I signed up. Then shared my password to all my friends and family. People who don’t live with me. Would you be ok because it shouldn’t matter what I do with my account as long as I pay?
- ABeeSea 4y ago
  They implicitly allowed it for well over a decade because it was good for their growth. We had a friends group with multiple Wiis using the same Netflix account when I was in college.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Microsoft implicitly allowed pirating Windows for over a decade, and for the same reason. Eventually they switched to an activation model when there was no growth left, just squeezing more out of the same userbase. This is not a new trick.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Even explicitly: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_sr...
- tyingq 4y ago
  If I had some equivalent of the Netflix very limited concurrent streams leverage, yes. Also, they encouraged it, and not in a wink/wink way...explicitly: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_sr...
- abnry 4y ago
  It really feels like you should be paying for streams, not where you are streaming to. Max out your 4-streams at a time? Well, then, pay more. Seems fair.
  - tangotango2 4y ago
    This sound like a good idea, I like it
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vegardx 4y ago
  I think Netflix is coming out as the bad guy here, but it's the whole industry that is broken. They seem to expect every single household to subscribe to 10 different streaming services. This obviously creates a market for password sharing, and I suspect it will bring a resurgence to piracy. Just as a personal anecdote: I have Netflix, Paramount, HBO Max, TV2 Play, Paramount, Viaplay, Discovery+ and Disney+. And probably some that I'm forgetting. I don't really watch that much TV, and the only way I could justify this was by sharing the accounts with close family. The problem is that we're not in the same household. The moment this stops being a viable option we're likely just going to cancel the subscriptions. You can rent a lot of movies for $150/month. The amount of subscription services are getting out of hand. Even my car has one, and the only value proposition it provides me is not having to connect my phone as a hotspot (which is kind of pain with an iPhone) and real-time traffic data. For $15/month.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    > You can rent a lot of movies for $150/month. So do it. It takes seconds to cancel and subscribe. If you want access to everything all at once, then pay $150 per month. If you cannot afford $150 per month, then spend an extra minute or two per month canceling and subscribing. I find it to be very convenient, and more convenient than it has ever been in my life.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    > They seem to expect every single household to subscribe to 10 different streaming services. Oh absolutely, it's frustrating. And whats even more frustrating is that some of those services refuse to have their content on other services but don't provide their service outside of the US. I wanted to watch Dragon Ball Z last week. It's on Funamation and AnimeLab. Well neither of those services are available in Taiwan, so, only option is to pirate it. I want to watch Star Trek - Strange New World. Not available on any service in Taiwan. So I pay for Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, and PrimeVideo. HBO is available in Taiwan but you need Taiwan credit card... so I can't register with my Singapore card. Paramount, Hulu, not available here. Sometimes I dont mind paying for these services but they don't want my money. But at the same time I'm paying for 4, I don't want to pay for 10. We are at the point of the priacy hat meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/bcdlbf/hello_old_friend_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/bcdlbf/hello_old_fr...
- LanceH 4y ago
  I sign up for 2 concurrent streams, then upgrade to 4 concurrent streams. My kids move out and now with the same account they tell me I can only use 1 stream in my 4 stream package...
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    Netflix licenses and resells content not streams. I think a lot of people in this thread are too fixated on the idea of “streams” and they have lost the plot. Netflix is a content producer and licensor. The streams are just a means to deliver that content.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      That sounds like a netflix problem. They advertise it in terms of streams. Whatever business arrangements they have with their providers is irrelavent to me as a consumer. It'd be like if you went to an all you can eat buffet, and people started saying its not fair if you eat too much because the grocery store is charging the resturant per item not per person. It is totally irrelavent ti the person eating at the resturant.
- bawolff 4y ago
  Its a business arrangement. If either side is unhappy they are allowed to terminate it. That said, very openly turning a blind eye to something and then suddenly not is essentially unilaterally altering the terms of the deal. If i ran a business and suddenly changed the pricing scheme, that's my right, but i would understand if x% decided the value proposition no longer made sense and left. I certainly wouldn't be offended - its just business.
paulcole 4y ago
> Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying This summer, YC is funding a news service that only has 1 subscriber by design - the login is shared worldwide. Database architecture was dead simple and can scale easily to other planets. Cost of the subscription is pegged to the GDP of the Earth so profitability is not an issue.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. This mindset is baffling. The contract was always that a subscription was for a single household. The fact that they were flexible about access for many years is irrelevant. You’re not buying the right to share (or resell) your account to whoever you want. You’re buying the right to stream within a single household. It doesn’t make sense to get so upset when they simply hint at enforcing the agreed-upon terms of the contract more actively.
- afavour 4y ago
  The OP did address that though, via the fact that you can only have X number of simultaneous streams. That's a sensible, easily enforced limit. Single household opens up a whole can of worms. If I watch on my iPhone at home: easy, yes. If I watch via my cell connection: OK, maybe let's just whitelist all cell connections. If I watch on my friend's wi-fi: uh oh. Is that legitimate? Is hotel wi-fi OK? How will they know what's hotel wi-fi and what's another person's home? What about an AirBnb? If Netflix starts cracking down on things like that it's just going to get really irritating for customers.
  - denimnerd42 4y ago
    That's what I found irritating about youtubeTV. the media companies must be really giving youtube a hard time because I found it a pain in the ass to use while traveling and when I was subscribed at an earlier point it wasn't that bad.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > The OP did address that though, via the fact that you can only have X number of simultaneous streams. I feel like everyone is forgetting that Netflix is licensing content, not just selling access to streaming bandwidth. The content licensing is based on the idea of accounts as households, not the idea that a single login can be used infinitely by as many people as long as an arbitrary simultaneous stream limit is enforced. > Single household opens up a whole can of worms. If I watch on my iPhone at home: easy, yes. If I watch via my cell connection: OK, maybe let's just whitelist all cell connections. If I watch on my friend's wi-fi: uh oh. Is that legitimate? Is hotel wi-fi OK? How will they know what's hotel wi-fi and what's another person's home? What about an AirBnb? Several streaming services already have mechanisms to check account sharing. It’s not new. There’s no indication that Netflix plans to go full draconian and limit to a single IP with zero flexibility, despite what people here seem to be assuming. The account sharing detection logic used in other platforms is quite forgiving, and honestly it’s not terribly difficult to detect long-term patterns where two separate locations are constantly using the same account with users never returning “home”.
zerohp 4y ago
I've been a Netflix customer for 20 years. I have two residences in separate states and occasionally someone else will stay at one and use my Netflix. If they ever flag my account for simultaneous streaming that will be the last straw. I don't see how pissing off paying customers will increase revenue. Netflix needs to figure out how to make content to keep the current ones.
- seesaw 4y ago
  I have been a Netflix customer since the DVD-only days. My wife & me watch a show in the living room, while my son gets his weekend allowance to watch a cartoon in the bedroom. This used to work fine, until Netflix decided we can’t play two streams like this. There were other reasons to cancel, but this made the decision easier.
coconut08 4y ago
>Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. this applies to literally no service you have ever used. doesn't apply to steam. doesn't apply to microsoft office. doesn't apply to photoshop. why should it apply to netflix? using your logic we might as well just have 1 account and share it with every single person on the planet. the only reason that netflix is getting flack for it is because they were super lax with it for such a long time and now everyone feels entitled to it for some insane reason.
- hericium 4y ago
  > this applies to literally no service you have ever used. doesn't apply to steam. doesn't apply to microsoft office. doesn't apply to photoshop. why should it apply to netflix? Does any of those services have "multiple simultaneous streams" plans? I'm paying Netflix for 4 simultaneous streams (their naming: "Number of screens you can watch on at the same time") and they should not care where I utilize their offer.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    Nope, you’re paying Netflix for a single household license with up to 4 simultaneous streams. You’re too fixated on this stream limit. It’s not the only limit of the contract, even if you wish that was the case.
    - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
      The household license is dumb and customers are reacting to such dumbness by canceling and shutting down the company.
      - skinnymuch 4y ago
        Any proof at all that customers are reacting this way? HN and Reddit being edgy doesn’t count
Spooky23 4y ago
I think you are correct. The one thing I would add is that the hyperoptimization is not really appreciated. From my vantage point as a customer and observer, they are a company that really had first mover advantage with a quality client anywhere. But the experience stagnated and the focus of the company flipped to consuming/wasting as much time as possible. IMO they got fat and happy when the main competitor was Amazon Prime Video, which is a flawed service in many ways. Now there are competitors who are really good. Disney+ is a superior experience (on Apple TV, anyway) with a better catalog and better features like search. Peacock is pretty good too.
- Spartan-S63 4y ago
  They had first mover advantage when it came to streaming video on-demand. They did see the writing on the wall that they needed their own catalog, but I think they hyperoptimized for quantity over quality. Netflix has a deep bench of originals, but so few are actually really good. Compare and contrast that with a service like Apple TV+. They have a smaller catalog, but their content, to me, is typically higher quality (Ted Lasso is a standout, For All Mankind is spectacular, etc). They lost the plot when they decided they couldn't just be a distributor but also a creator. They went too hard too fast and they don't have compelling content.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    Agreed - and it's worse than that. The user-hostile environment makes it impossible to see the actual catalog. I routinely learn about potentially interesting shows from things that aren't Netflix. The Disney+ model is so much better. They suggest stuff, but I can wander and discover in the library of thousands of Disney titles if I so desire.
scarface74 4y ago
Netflix is a cautionary tale of the “DropBox Problem”. Streaming is a feature not a product. All of Netflix’s competitors consider streaming video as one channel for their content along with over the air, video on demand, theaters, etc. Apple and Amazon just want to make their bundle more attractive.
missedthecue 4y ago
I mean if a popular show is expensive enough that it doesn't make financial sense, I'd say it should probably be canceled.
ilaksh 4y ago
Netflix is not a cautionary tail for anything in the overall context. Almost all companies over-expand the way they did, and almost all companies are feeling the shock of the economic downturn. They have every right to crack down on password sharing. The fact that people think they are a bad actor for this is evidence of the total lack of moral compass in our society today.

philliphaydon 4y ago

If you ran a business and it cost $10 per month and I signed up. Then shared my password to all my friends and family. People who don’t live with me. Would you be ok because it shouldn’t matter what I do with my account as long as I pay?

ABeeSea 4y ago
They implicitly allowed it for well over a decade because it was good for their growth. We had a friends group with multiple Wiis using the same Netflix account when I was in college.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Microsoft implicitly allowed pirating Windows for over a decade, and for the same reason. Eventually they switched to an activation model when there was no growth left, just squeezing more out of the same userbase. This is not a new trick.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Even explicitly: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_sr...
tyingq 4y ago
If I had some equivalent of the Netflix very limited concurrent streams leverage, yes. Also, they encouraged it, and not in a wink/wink way...explicitly: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?ref_sr...
abnry 4y ago
It really feels like you should be paying for streams, not where you are streaming to. Max out your 4-streams at a time? Well, then, pay more. Seems fair.
- tangotango2 4y ago
  This sound like a good idea, I like it
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vegardx 4y ago
I think Netflix is coming out as the bad guy here, but it's the whole industry that is broken. They seem to expect every single household to subscribe to 10 different streaming services. This obviously creates a market for password sharing, and I suspect it will bring a resurgence to piracy. Just as a personal anecdote: I have Netflix, Paramount, HBO Max, TV2 Play, Paramount, Viaplay, Discovery+ and Disney+. And probably some that I'm forgetting. I don't really watch that much TV, and the only way I could justify this was by sharing the accounts with close family. The problem is that we're not in the same household. The moment this stops being a viable option we're likely just going to cancel the subscriptions. You can rent a lot of movies for $150/month. The amount of subscription services are getting out of hand. Even my car has one, and the only value proposition it provides me is not having to connect my phone as a hotspot (which is kind of pain with an iPhone) and real-time traffic data. For $15/month.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > You can rent a lot of movies for $150/month. So do it. It takes seconds to cancel and subscribe. If you want access to everything all at once, then pay $150 per month. If you cannot afford $150 per month, then spend an extra minute or two per month canceling and subscribing. I find it to be very convenient, and more convenient than it has ever been in my life.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  > They seem to expect every single household to subscribe to 10 different streaming services. Oh absolutely, it's frustrating. And whats even more frustrating is that some of those services refuse to have their content on other services but don't provide their service outside of the US. I wanted to watch Dragon Ball Z last week. It's on Funamation and AnimeLab. Well neither of those services are available in Taiwan, so, only option is to pirate it. I want to watch Star Trek - Strange New World. Not available on any service in Taiwan. So I pay for Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+, and PrimeVideo. HBO is available in Taiwan but you need Taiwan credit card... so I can't register with my Singapore card. Paramount, Hulu, not available here. Sometimes I dont mind paying for these services but they don't want my money. But at the same time I'm paying for 4, I don't want to pay for 10. We are at the point of the priacy hat meme. https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/bcdlbf/hello_old_friend_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/bcdlbf/hello_old_fr...
LanceH 4y ago
I sign up for 2 concurrent streams, then upgrade to 4 concurrent streams. My kids move out and now with the same account they tell me I can only use 1 stream in my 4 stream package...
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Netflix licenses and resells content not streams. I think a lot of people in this thread are too fixated on the idea of “streams” and they have lost the plot. Netflix is a content producer and licensor. The streams are just a means to deliver that content.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    That sounds like a netflix problem. They advertise it in terms of streams. Whatever business arrangements they have with their providers is irrelavent to me as a consumer. It'd be like if you went to an all you can eat buffet, and people started saying its not fair if you eat too much because the grocery store is charging the resturant per item not per person. It is totally irrelavent ti the person eating at the resturant.
bawolff 4y ago
Its a business arrangement. If either side is unhappy they are allowed to terminate it. That said, very openly turning a blind eye to something and then suddenly not is essentially unilaterally altering the terms of the deal. If i ran a business and suddenly changed the pricing scheme, that's my right, but i would understand if x% decided the value proposition no longer made sense and left. I certainly wouldn't be offended - its just business.

paulcole 4y ago

> Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying This summer, YC is funding a news service that only has 1 subscriber by design - the login is shared worldwide. Database architecture was dead simple and can scale easily to other planets. Cost of the subscription is pegged to the GDP of the Earth so profitability is not an issue.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. This mindset is baffling. The contract was always that a subscription was for a single household. The fact that they were flexible about access for many years is irrelevant. You’re not buying the right to share (or resell) your account to whoever you want. You’re buying the right to stream within a single household. It doesn’t make sense to get so upset when they simply hint at enforcing the agreed-upon terms of the contract more actively.

afavour 4y ago
The OP did address that though, via the fact that you can only have X number of simultaneous streams. That's a sensible, easily enforced limit. Single household opens up a whole can of worms. If I watch on my iPhone at home: easy, yes. If I watch via my cell connection: OK, maybe let's just whitelist all cell connections. If I watch on my friend's wi-fi: uh oh. Is that legitimate? Is hotel wi-fi OK? How will they know what's hotel wi-fi and what's another person's home? What about an AirBnb? If Netflix starts cracking down on things like that it's just going to get really irritating for customers.
- denimnerd42 4y ago
  That's what I found irritating about youtubeTV. the media companies must be really giving youtube a hard time because I found it a pain in the ass to use while traveling and when I was subscribed at an earlier point it wasn't that bad.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > The OP did address that though, via the fact that you can only have X number of simultaneous streams. I feel like everyone is forgetting that Netflix is licensing content, not just selling access to streaming bandwidth. The content licensing is based on the idea of accounts as households, not the idea that a single login can be used infinitely by as many people as long as an arbitrary simultaneous stream limit is enforced. > Single household opens up a whole can of worms. If I watch on my iPhone at home: easy, yes. If I watch via my cell connection: OK, maybe let's just whitelist all cell connections. If I watch on my friend's wi-fi: uh oh. Is that legitimate? Is hotel wi-fi OK? How will they know what's hotel wi-fi and what's another person's home? What about an AirBnb? Several streaming services already have mechanisms to check account sharing. It’s not new. There’s no indication that Netflix plans to go full draconian and limit to a single IP with zero flexibility, despite what people here seem to be assuming. The account sharing detection logic used in other platforms is quite forgiving, and honestly it’s not terribly difficult to detect long-term patterns where two separate locations are constantly using the same account with users never returning “home”.

zerohp 4y ago

I've been a Netflix customer for 20 years. I have two residences in separate states and occasionally someone else will stay at one and use my Netflix. If they ever flag my account for simultaneous streaming that will be the last straw. I don't see how pissing off paying customers will increase revenue. Netflix needs to figure out how to make content to keep the current ones.

seesaw 4y ago
I have been a Netflix customer since the DVD-only days. My wife & me watch a show in the living room, while my son gets his weekend allowance to watch a cartoon in the bedroom. This used to work fine, until Netflix decided we can’t play two streams like this. There were other reasons to cancel, but this made the decision easier.

coconut08 4y ago

>Furthermore, cracking down on password sharing is reason enough to cancel - it shouldn't matter what I do with my account as long as I'm paying. this applies to literally no service you have ever used. doesn't apply to steam. doesn't apply to microsoft office. doesn't apply to photoshop. why should it apply to netflix? using your logic we might as well just have 1 account and share it with every single person on the planet. the only reason that netflix is getting flack for it is because they were super lax with it for such a long time and now everyone feels entitled to it for some insane reason.

hericium 4y ago
> this applies to literally no service you have ever used. doesn't apply to steam. doesn't apply to microsoft office. doesn't apply to photoshop. why should it apply to netflix? Does any of those services have "multiple simultaneous streams" plans? I'm paying Netflix for 4 simultaneous streams (their naming: "Number of screens you can watch on at the same time") and they should not care where I utilize their offer.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Nope, you’re paying Netflix for a single household license with up to 4 simultaneous streams. You’re too fixated on this stream limit. It’s not the only limit of the contract, even if you wish that was the case.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    The household license is dumb and customers are reacting to such dumbness by canceling and shutting down the company.
    - skinnymuch 4y ago
      Any proof at all that customers are reacting this way? HN and Reddit being edgy doesn’t count

Spooky23 4y ago

I think you are correct. The one thing I would add is that the hyperoptimization is not really appreciated. From my vantage point as a customer and observer, they are a company that really had first mover advantage with a quality client anywhere. But the experience stagnated and the focus of the company flipped to consuming/wasting as much time as possible. IMO they got fat and happy when the main competitor was Amazon Prime Video, which is a flawed service in many ways. Now there are competitors who are really good. Disney+ is a superior experience (on Apple TV, anyway) with a better catalog and better features like search. Peacock is pretty good too.

Spartan-S63 4y ago
They had first mover advantage when it came to streaming video on-demand. They did see the writing on the wall that they needed their own catalog, but I think they hyperoptimized for quantity over quality. Netflix has a deep bench of originals, but so few are actually really good. Compare and contrast that with a service like Apple TV+. They have a smaller catalog, but their content, to me, is typically higher quality (Ted Lasso is a standout, For All Mankind is spectacular, etc). They lost the plot when they decided they couldn't just be a distributor but also a creator. They went too hard too fast and they don't have compelling content.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Agreed - and it's worse than that. The user-hostile environment makes it impossible to see the actual catalog. I routinely learn about potentially interesting shows from things that aren't Netflix. The Disney+ model is so much better. They suggest stuff, but I can wander and discover in the library of thousands of Disney titles if I so desire.

scarface74 4y ago

Netflix is a cautionary tale of the “DropBox Problem”. Streaming is a feature not a product. All of Netflix’s competitors consider streaming video as one channel for their content along with over the air, video on demand, theaters, etc. Apple and Amazon just want to make their bundle more attractive.

missedthecue 4y ago

I mean if a popular show is expensive enough that it doesn't make financial sense, I'd say it should probably be canceled.

ilaksh 4y ago

Netflix is not a cautionary tail for anything in the overall context. Almost all companies over-expand the way they did, and almost all companies are feeling the shock of the economic downturn. They have every right to crack down on password sharing. The fact that people think they are a bad actor for this is evidence of the total lack of moral compass in our society today.