It was only a matter of time – Netflix will start charging “extra user” fees as a measure to crackdown on password sharing. The company’s fortunes have started to see a turnaround, with Netflix reporting much larger growth numbers than expected in Q3. The crackdown on password sharing is another measure to buffer its revenues, as it named it as one of the major reasons for the stunted growth in recent quarters.
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Beginning in early 2023, Netflix will charge customers an added monthly fee to people who share their login credentials. It is an expansion on an existing test the company is running in Latin America, which charges extra fees for “extra user” subaccounts, users outside of your immediate household who use your login to access the service.
So how will Netflix be able to track this usage? Well, every listing on the “Who’s Watching?” screen is going to cost you extra money if they don’t also live with you. The company hopes this measure will entice more of the users outside of the main subscription household to also take up the service to increase its customer numbers. With help from Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Season Four of Stranger Things, the company was able to add more than 2.4 million subscribers in the third quarter.
We don’t yet know what the additional cost per user will be, but Netflix is expected to announce that in the coming weeks. That being said, the pilot programme is using a “one quarter of the basic rate” scheme. It is possible to avoid these fees with creating a separate subscription, and Netflix will have a tool available to migrate the users’ data to the new subscription. Netflix unveiled the account migration tool last week that will transfer a user’s subaccount data (viewing history, recommendations and the like) to their new, independent subscription.
