I have a Netflix account. Maybe you have a Netflix account too. For years, I have given it money, and it has given me movies and TV. For years, I have also paid for its highest tier; in exchange for more money, I have been able to give my sister and parents profiles on my account so they can watch movies and TV too. This has all been fine for basically forever, until now.
In the old days, password sharing on Netflix involved literally giving someone your email address and password and just trying not to use the account at the same time. In 2013, the company introduced a plan that let multiple users watch Netflix on different devices through one account, which felt like a more formal codification of how everyone was basically using the service anyway. Where password sharing before felt like something you weren’t really supposed to be doing, this felt above board and, to me, like a fair exchange; once I could afford it, I was happy to pay extra to provide Netflix to my family members without having to do some clandestine song and dance.
Netflix started cracking down on password sharing in 2023, to much backlash, so I can’t claim surprise that it’s finally come for me. But when it did, I was baffled by what a shitty job it did of the whole thing. In April, I went to log into my Netflix account on my laptop from my home in Brooklyn, only to learn that Netflix no longer considered me part of my “household,” despite the fact that it seemed to recognize I was the owner of the account. What’s a “household?” Well, it requires owning a TV, which I never have. According to Netflix, “If you don’t watch Netflix on a TV or don’t have one, you do not need to set a Netflix Household for your account.” Except that explanation didn’t address the fact that Netflix had made its own determination of my “household” and decided I wasn’t part of it, rendering me an intruder into my own account. I ultimately had to request a code to grant myself temporary access to the account I pay for, which Netflix was keen to remind me would expire.
Who, exactly, did Netflix consider the account’s “household?” My guess is that it’s my twin sister and her kids, many states away. I can understand how Netflix came to this assumption, especially with its new vision of account sharing as multiple devices in one physical location–which is literally not what it meant for years and frankly is weirdo behavior. While I did find it incredibly funny that it felt like Netflix basically stole my account and gave it to my sister because she has the most TVs, I also knew this was going to be a problem.
But then, for a few months, it wasn’t! I was counting down the days until the temporary code expired, curious to see what would happen next, but when the day came, nothing happened. We all went on using my Netflix as normal, and while I knew it was too good to last, I put the whole thing out of my mind.
Until this week, when I received flurries of alerts asking me to verify that my parents were part of my non-existent “household” when they tried to use my account in a different state from both my sister and me. This raised a problem; I wanted to approve the alert so they could use the account, but would telling Netflix that they’re the household mean my sister and I weren’t? The whole thing became some kind of weird Trolley Problem: Do I give Netflix to my elderly parents, my single-mom sister and her four kids, or to myself? From a utilitarian perspective, my sister’s family should get it: there are more of them, and real talk they’ve been through hell these last few years and shouldn’t have to add losing Netflix to the mix. My parents don’t use it often, but then again they’re my parents. Paying for an account I can no longer use is very like me, but I pay for it!
Netflix itself provides a solution: In addition to the $27.21 a month I pay for the “premium” tier ($24.99 a month, plus tax), I can pay an additional fee to buy my parents and my sister “slots” on my account, making them “extra members.” Extra members can only use one device and only have one profile, which is very much not how my sister’s family is using the account, but it would still be the closest approximation to our current setup. Extra member slots cost $6.99 with ads (oh yeah, Netflix has ads now) or $8.99 without, and only the premium tier I’m currently on lets you have two extra members. All this means that I would practically double what I currently pay in exchange for a lesser version of the thing I’m currently paying for.
This is such frustrating naked bullshit that I subjected my family group chat to a furious critique of it, which weirded out my parents and which my sister politely ignored. But it’s garbage! As I told my family, I can afford it, but it’s the principle of the thing. I don’t want to have to pay more for a worse service! I hate how Netflix is acting like this has always been the case, or is putting the blame on me for doing the thing it let me do for years. It’s apparently been going well for Netflix, which reported an increase in subscribers after the crackdown. But this fact just makes me less prone to wanting to give the company more money. I don’t want to fall for this shit! Don’t bully me, Netflix!
The most obvious answer is probably for my family members to get their own accounts, which would let me downgrade my account and thus rob Netflix of some of my money but still ultimately netting it more money while juicing its subscriber numbers. Or I could downgrade and pay for just one extra slot, asking me to choose between my parents and my sister; Mom and Dad don’t look but I would probably choose my sister, which would still give her a worse version of Netflix with its limited profiles and devices.
Honestly, I’ve been feeling a bit uncomfortable with how much TV I watch for a while, so maybe cancelling the whole thing wouldn’t be the worst outcome, and it would feel like a moral victory over Netflix to boot. But it would still have a negative effect on my family, who have suffered enough from my unhealthy consumption habits over the years. All of this is way too much to have to deal with in exchange for Bojack Horseman marathons and working my way through the US version of Shameless.
My current plan is to… just keep ignoring it until it becomes thoroughly unavoidable, while also worrying about the variety of other accounts I share and when enshittification will come for them too. But if you’ve found some way to deal with this that doesn’t cost you a ton of money or let Netflix humiliate you, let me know.
