Netflix Is Coming for Your Shared Account in 2023

Netflix didn’t care about password sharing for a long time, but now the company is evaluating ways to discourage the practice (or at least get money out of it), testing out two different systems to charge people in South America. Paid password sharing will now come to everyone sooner than later.

The streaming service announced in a letter to shareholders that it would be monetizing password sharing starting in early 2023. If you currently borrow a friend’s Netflix account, the company wants you to either move to a subscription of your own or pay for using your friend’s subscription.

Whenever this system does roll out, the person sharing their account will be able to set up a “sub-account” for you for an extra fee, which will work with its own separate login. And if you want to get your own, full account, you’ll be able to transfer your existing profile to a different account soon.

This is the same account-sharing system that’s currently being tested in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. Netflix tested out a different system that prompted users to pay for extra “households” in Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, but it looks like Netflix will not go through with that one.

This new measure will follow the rollout of the service’s cheaper, ad-supported tier, giving Netflix users, or borrowers, more options to enjoy their favorite movies and shows for cheaper while still supporting the company’s business. As for a concrete date on when this will roll out, we don’t have one, as Netflix is stopping at “early 2023.”

Source: The Verge