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Vancouver hospital patient loses Netflix access due to password crackdown
- andrewstuart 4y agoI had a Netflix account for a long time and eventually cancelled after I realised I spent more time surfing the menus than watching anything. Conversely, I watch YouTube all the time and somehow have not spent the money to get rid of ads. The other service I pay for is Britbox - good value. For movies, I just order the DVD from eBay - it costs or 4 bucks and arrives in a day or two.
- eurticket 4y agoI felt the same way when I had it. Netflixs engineering blogs were always really well documented, I wonder why their search was always so bad. Does anyone have an idea? Also this made me wonder how many people on HN don't actively use an ad blocker. Is there a reason why you don't use one?
- andirk 4y agoNetflix had a hack day and one guy made a really cool and simple keyboard shaped in a circle with the cursor in the middle. Every letter was one joystick movement from the center. They buried it. That and other UI blunders convinced me the difficulty searching for things is by design so you give up and watch their absolute shit piles of "original" content where the title and thumbnail tell the entire story. I pay for OK Google mainly so it will play Youtube library music tracks. It also includes no ads and some sort of payment for content creators.
- readthenotes1 4y agothere was a recent comment thread on why recommendations are so bad and the most likely reason seem to be product placement and other monetary considerations.
- andrewstuart 4y ago>> Also this made me wonder how many people on HN don't actively use an ad blocker. Is there a reason why you don't use one? I’d rather pay.
- sp332 4y agoIt's hard to run an adblocker on my Tivo where I watch most of my youtube videos.
- oaththrowaway 4y agoSmartTube Next?
- heavyset_go 4y agoIt's a way to hide the lack of content, especially if they lack whatever it is that you're searching for. They're hoping that you'll settle with their catalog, anyway.
- baron816 4y agoI pay for YouTube. Definitely worth it.
- sergers 4y agoI had a family plan... 25$ cad monthly. Seems alot. Just canceled last week
- noahtallen 4y agoI know, it’s pretty ridiculous compared to other streaming services! It’s $23/mo for two people. Which is more expensive than practically everything else out there. That’s the same cost as the Apple One family plan, which includes cloud storage and games! (And if you get YouTube premium with the Apple tax, it’s $30/mo…) And here are some other plans which support multiple people: - HBO Max is $16 - Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ together is $20 - Netflix is $16 - Amazon Prime (huge list of benefits) is $15 This is the main reason I don’t have it. As streaming / bundle services go, its value add is pretty small. If it included cloud storage, maybe. I don’t get how google one doesn’t include it.
- baron816 4y agoYes, but I watch YouTube more than all the others combined.
- kqr2 4y agoI wish Netflix would integrate IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes ratings and allow you to filter.
- tshaddox 4y agoThe value I get from YouTube Premium is enormous compared to the other streaming services I pay for. I’ve been paying for YouTube for a long time, since it was released as YouTube Red (in 2015, I believe?). Whenever I happen to see someone watch a YouTube video with ads I just can’t imagine how they can tolerate it.
- shortcake27 4y agoI just whip out my phone to check socials. Probably a bad habit TBH. But I always let < 2 minute ads roll to support the creator. I cancelled Netflix as soon as that password sharing stuff was announced even though they backpedalled in most countries. So I’ve been thinking about getting YouTube Premium. The offline feature would actually be quite useful to me as I’m often without signal.
- ttul 4y agoNot to mention being able to listen to videos. I can’t imagine losing that feature…
- morelinks 4y ago>I spent more time surfing the menus than watching anything. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Bm2WUYBxU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Bm2WUYBxU
- andrewstuart 4y agoOh lord.
- yieldcrv 4y ago> "The amount is not huge, but the principle is because I don't feel the policy is well written or they didn't take in all the additional circumstances," if a hospital transplant patient recognizes that and subscribes, then I'm buying calls because otherwise, this is not news
- defrost 4y agoThe story here, from a technical and management perspective, is the incremental cost, in both engineering resources and company PR image, of handling edge cases. * Are 'edge cases' < 1% or are they ~ 20% (say) of usage. * Is there a significant downside to ignoring the tricky stuff. etc.
- kmeisthax 4y agoThe thing is, these aren't edge cases, Netflix's requirements are just extremely stupid. Refusing to sell your service to someone who does not live in one household is moronic.
- bentcorner 4y agohttps://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-e... Sounds like Netflix needs a "Falsehoods programmers believe about families" list. Trying to shove societal concepts into SQL tables never ends well.
- cuteboy19 4y agoThey talk about households not families. So two friends living together will be no problem for them
- em-bee 4y agothat article comes up with weird ideas about the definition of a household. a household is one building, maybe everyone sharing the same kitchen. anyone who does not live at that location, even temporary, is not part of that household. this does not only apply to netflix, but also to my taxes and benefits. a german public tv license is per household too and would not include the hospital patient either. and of course, they get plenty of complaints about edgecases as well. if netflix wanted to sell to families, they could do that by somehow letting you specify who the familymember is, and how they relate to you and limiting it to a number of people.
- krisoft 4y ago
- photonbucket 4y agoBye netflix. Some of us have to travel.
- testTED 4y agoSome do not want to be tracked.
- mproud 4y agoTHINK OF THE HOSPITAL CHILDREN
- wanderingmind 4y agoJust create a tailscale network and make one of the home devices as the exit node. Its free for upto 20 devices.
- jokowueu 4y agoMost routers have the ability to act as a VPN server . That's another good tip as well
- wanderingmind 4y agoI've never tried that. Thanks for the tip
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- sefrost 4y agoI’m starting to feel like a mug for not sharing streaming service passwords with people over the last few years. To be honest I probably wouldn’t trust people not to mess my recommendations up!
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> To be honest I probably wouldn’t trust people not to mess my recommendations up! I thought there were user profiles inside the account specifically so different people don't trample each other like that?
- EduardoBautista 4y agoYou have to trust they won’t use your profile.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoI guess? I'll grant that you shouldn't share an account with people who might intentionally mess up your profile, but that seems like an edge case.
- 14 4y agoThis move was what I needed to finally join a plex share. Now I have access to way more content, more simultaneous streams at once, and higher quality streams for the same cost.
- chrisbolt 4y agoAs much as I disagree with the Netflix crackdown, especially after their own marketing tweets (https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712 https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712), the "hospital patient" clickbait is a bit much, and this article is not adding much for discussion that hasn't already happened on HN.
- ncallaway 4y ago> the "hospital patient" clickbait is a bit much Why is it too much? It's a scenario I personally hadn't considered about the password sharing crackdown (I don't travel a ton, so the 7-day window seems...aggravating, but not something that would be a huge issue for me; although I write this I'm realizing I'm in the middle of unanticipated travel that would run afoul of their rules). Being hospitalized is a scenario in which I would absolutely want to have digital entertainment (obviously, depending on the reason I'm hospitalized). If I paid for Netflix, and got locked out when I needed it the most I would be absolutely livid. I think, as a customer, it's helpful to know the scenarios that Netflix will kick me to the curb. I hadn't thought about this specific scenario, but it seems hugely problematic to me. Honestly, this article (and realizing that my current trip would also be disallowed by their rules) makes me realize than when Netflix brings these rules to the US, I'm just going to cancel my subscription, and make sure I have better alternative arrangements when for when I may want them.
- notimetorelax 4y agoI’m curious if they tried reaching out to support. Netflix support was pretty good last time I had to use it.
- ncallaway 4y agoDefinitely something worth a try if you’re in their position, but as a customer (or prospective customer) I usually pretend the “support backstop” doesn’t exist, because it’s something that so easily changes. It’s kind of like relying on AWS support to waive charges for accidental billing. It’s great that they often do it, but it’s not something I want to rely on. If I make a mistake and need it, I’ll definitely reach out and ask, but… I want to avoid needing to ask. Here, I’m going to make my purchase decision based on their policies, and the impact of those policies. If I decide to pay for Netflix, and support provides a better experience than I was planning on that’s great.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoI certainly sympathize with this patient, but at the same time I'm not a fan of the news media's quest to find some of the biggest outliers possible (preferably one that includes an incredibly sympathetic, tear-jerking protagonist) to somehow use that as an example of "Big Company Being Mean". It reminds me of a bunch of articles recently that were like "Pregnant mom laid off from company!" I mean, when a company lays off thousands of people, of course you'd expect there to be at least one pregnant woman in the mix. Or was the article somehow arguing pregnant women should be immune from layoffs? To be clear, I'm not commenting one way or another on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of Netflix's new password sharing policy. Just saying that finding these types of cases doesn't make me change my opinion one way or the other in how I think about the issue.
- kanbara 4y agoin germany, when doing layoffs, plans need to be submitted and in most cases when it exceeds a certain %, the company must rank people from most to least vulnerable, so pregnant women, people with dependents and older employees are not the first to get the boot
- throwawaylinux 4y agoHuh, turns out even Germany has little confidence in their own state run social welfare systems. Makes sense I guess.
- swores 4y agoOr looked at from a different angle, Germany cares about its population enough to want to try to protect people in multiple ways rather than with a single point of failure.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago> Or looked at from a different angle, That's the same way of looking at it. > Germany cares about its population enough to want to try to protect people in multiple ways rather than with a single point of failure. Indeed, you're getting to the root cause of why the hallmark of government enterprise is incompetence, corruption, and inefficiency.
- seanhunter 4y agoIt’s tempting to discuss this as an edge case, but the point is that netflix has a massive customer base and people’s personal circumstances are messy and don’t fit into the clean model that this location crackdown demands. Alan Bennett in Dinner at Noon wrote “Every family has a secret, and the secret is that it's not like other families”[1]. This policy makes no allowances for anything but the most vanilla arrangements. Homes where the parents separate, so the kids spend time at each parent? Wow, sucks that your parents got divorced now also no netflix for you! What about people who spend long periods on contract working etc - Oh you have to be on an oil rig/cruise ship/construction site/etc for a few months? Boring as all hell to be away from home and also either you or your family have to do without netflix. Have a health problem and have to spend time in hospital? At least you have netflix to console you… just kidding, no you don’t! Etc etc etc Netflix monetized the long tail of people and now are trying to enforce a policy that only works for people who lead super-generic lives. [1] https://libquotes.com/alan-bennett/quote/lbb1f9r https://libquotes.com/alan-bennett/quote/lbb1f9r