This is so strange to me. I guess people enjoy being ripped off and getting less and less value for their money.

  • VodkaSolution @feddit.it
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    11 months ago

    That proves their recent moves are not perceived by people as unfair, contrary to what “the common web” said

    • 1984@lemmy.todayOP
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      11 months ago

      Yeah I guess. It’s very shocking to me, but people have spoken…

      • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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        11 months ago

        You can’t trust people. People listen to Cold Play and voted for the Nazi Party.

          • Cyclist@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Nothing, I think the point is that people will listen to a band that may have left of center sensibilities (I don’t know about Coldplay in particular) then vote the opposite. A great example is the video of the old white couple, wearing thin Blue line flags, dancing to Killing In The Name Of by Rage Against The Machine.

          • SmokumJoe@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Ben and Jerry’s “Coldplay’s Pretentious Vanilla”

            Bland, self important and boring

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          If you gave humanity the ultimatum that they can continue paying what they’re currently paying, or subscribe to nothing for a year but be rewarded with the same price to access all movies and tv series ever created, via a single service, for the rest of their lives… I’m willing to bet more than 2/3 of the human population would cave and re-subscribe within a couple of months.

      • Pips@lemmy.sdf.org
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        11 months ago

        Because they made the cost of adding a household less than the cost of two accounts, then banked on the fact that people wouldn’t want to “screw over” whoever they were sharing a password with. It was a good business strategy, if shitty consumer practice.

    • LetMeEatCake@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I’d agree, though I wonder how much of this is how appealing consumers find the competition? None of them seem to be making major inroads at the moment. The biggest competition is also raising prices, nullifying the competitive penalty Netflix would face from that move.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It just proves that avergae people want their TV and don’t give a fuck about how much it costs.

        My wife is a perfect example: We leached off my mom’s Netflix for years. I don’t really care, we have Plex that I manage and Netflix blows, so it’s all her. Mom ended up cancelling with the latest price hike. Brother and I took bets. My wife lasted 36 hours before making her own account. I lost my bet.

        • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Same here. I set up a Servarr stack and showed everyone in my house how to use Jellyseer to pick shows. I set up Jellyfin on all of their devices as well as the common TV. It works wonderfully well and they can download anything.

          So what do I see when I look over their shoulder to see what they’re using? Netflix and Prime Video. SMH.

          • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            Yup, happens every time. Even with everything working and that my wife can pick her own shows to automatically download, I think it’s the waiting that does it, because God forbid you have to wait 5-10 minutes. Also too, I can see the appeal in browsing someone else’s library and watching something on a whim.

            • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Yes, and I think there is some inertia and cognitive load at play. Going to Jellyseer to find a show, figuring out what’s good, committing to the download, waiting for the download and then switching over to Jellyfin is a bit more cognitively involved than the basically mindless browsing you can do on Netflix. I see it with my kids with Tiktok as well. Tiktok looks even more passive with the algorithm just feeding you non-stop, constantly varying content.

              • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                Agreed. I’m not really one for much TV or movies anymore, though when I am, I know exactly what I want to watch. I also tend to watch things I’ve already seen before as background while I’m doing something else. But I know there are plenty of people that when they get home, they just want to zone out, and that mindless browsing, plus content they’ve never seen before available instantly certainly could have that appeal.

    • Pohl@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      They upset and turned away people who were not willing to pay. Not a big loss. In the meantime they added tons of people who would pay if given a small push.

      I have never really been sure how exactly “the internet” thought they would be punished for this move. It seemed kind of bullet proof to me. Like, sure you’re leaving and never coming back, but you were not really a paying customer and never would be.

    • brrt@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Didn’t read the article but I wonder how many people will now sub for a short period and cancel.

      Like say you have a group of 3 and 1 person subbing indefinitely before and now there might be 3 people subbing for 2-3 months each. For a period of a year that’d be 12 months vs about 9 months.

      So right now they might have increased their subs and revenue but it might change over a longer period of time? Or maybe people are just too lazy and will keep their subs. Who knows.

    • eskimofry@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      This doesn’t prove anything. Netflix can project whatever they want. It takes time for their shitty decisions to affect them.

      How many of these subscribers are bundles and in emerging markets? Netflix doesn’t reveal such details.

  • DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    A lot of it is familiarity. I begged my parents to cancel Netflix, especially since they complain about the programming (or lack thereof); I pointed out that they could try another streaming service for a month, and then if they really hated it, then they could just go back to Netflix. But they wouldn’t even entertain the possibility. They’re afraid of change.

    And Netflix is making bank on that.

    • sealhaslupus@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      At some point they made a decision to change from something else to Netflix, so perhaps they’re not afraid of change but might need a compelling reason to use a different service?

      Could be an opportunity for you to educate them on what options are available and why that will benefit them long term.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        He could just pickup another service for a month or two and share the account with them. I know most others are planning on cracking down, but none have so far afaik.

    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Their competition sucks big ass, too. I guess branding matters in this case. For example, once you watched the classic HBO TV series (The Sopranos, The Wire…), you don’t need it anymore. The others have even less going on.

  • normalexit@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I cancelled around the time the password policy changed. I found less and less compelling shows to watch and the old favorites like the office moved on to other services.

    It’s a bummer they aren’t facing consequences for their price hikes and other shenanigans .

    • 1984@lemmy.todayOP
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      11 months ago

      I guess someone else is paying for our cancelled subs now. Hope they enjoy their shitty service.

    • Lad@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      Yep it’s disappointing that they aren’t getting punished for their bullshit. They’ll never get any money from me anyways.

    • Zekas@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’ve been waiting to get hit with it so I can finally cancel but for whatever reason it’s kept working. Feels like ok value with it split over 5/6 people. It’s supposedly rolled out here in nordics but no one’s had issues.

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. Many people are too lazy to pirate and the alternative services are also pricy now. Cable and satellite companies did the same stuff before streaming, and most people were too hooked on the product to abandon it.

    The comments in a Reddit and Lemmy post are not indicative of broader behavior. Just because everyone in the comments says they’re bailing, that doesn’t mean Netflix is screwed. This is a bubble.

    • thrawn@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      With massive businesses in the US, I operate on one very simple assumption: Americans will take anything. Low quality products, price hikes, evil behavior— nearly 100% of the time, it doesn’t matter. Americans will take it lying down.

      Very rarely, there will be significant pushback. Usually this leads to a minor walking back, but the thing that was tried will probably be tried again. Among hundreds of “this is now worse” decisions, maybe two or three are actually significantly haltered or occasionally truly stopped every year.

      I don’t even really blame them. American consumers have been treated like absolute shit for so long, and the draw of escapism on TV is probably hard to resist.

      • clgoh@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        Nothing to do with Americans specifically. Netflix gains are worldwide.

        • thrawn@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Well, yeah, and I suppose with the erosion in rights and healthcare in other countries too, maybe humans are just not great at standing up to power.

          Perhaps it’s just that, as an American, I am quite frustrated at the lack of respect corporations offer customers. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of skincare buyouts and subsequent shit tier reformulations, but they’re often done by French companies. Maybe it’s more a western thing— I typically buy most of my stuff while in Japan these days because their companies at least continue to provide good products. But their culture treats workers horribly so it’s not exactly ideal there either.

    • kratoz29@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Many people are too lazy to pirate

      This is the most shocking part for me, like, dude, we have it really easy nowadays, if you want to hoard you have plenty of tools, and not to mention you can even automate this (granted, it is not very user friendly but it is the kind of things that doesn’t require much maintenance from your side).

      Do you want to stream? There are a shit ton of streaming sites for free lol, not to mention the ultimate user friendly way to get a better streaming app on lots of platforms synced across them, Stremio + Torrentio + RD.

      This is a bubble.

      Yeah, we are in a bubble inside a bubble, I realized about this way back ago when I noticed all these scams selling media on Facebook were getting a lot of attention, like, dude they got those TV shows and movies from the web, and you are there too lol.

  • cmrn@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    And yet this is 2 posts down from an article about their price hikes and increase in ads coming up.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Am I on glue? I could have sworn the quarterly earnings call results were abysmal. Like quarter over quarter their revenue has tanked.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        No. They’ve lost subscribers several times, but always in reaction to price hikes.

        When you increase your prices 20% and lose 5% of your subscribers what you’ve done is reduce bandwidth costs while massively increasing profits.

        And the crackdown on account sharing has been massively successful for them. If zero people had paid for new accounts their profits still would have gone up from their savings in bandwidth and processing. But then tons of people bit the bullet and started paying.

        • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          I understand that but the data I saw showed their revenue decreased substantially. I can’t find it for the life of me though. It was some google popup on my phone and I have no idea how to get back to it lol.

          Anywho, seems like I don’t know what I’m talking about cause the stock is surging.

  • shirro@aussie.zone
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    11 months ago

    Growth of a few million subscribers is nothing for a company the size of Netflix and there could be all sorts of creative accounting going on.

    Executives patting themselves in the back to justify bonuses is self serving bullshit. Quality and value build long term brand profitability but that is too hard for MBAs. Cost cutting and screwing customers is all they know. In a few years people will be asking what the fuck happened to Netflix.

    I was a relatively early adopter of Netflix before it was available in my country and used it via VPN back when Netflix had more to gain by allowing that. They made some interesting shows that justified the very affordable price. Now there is more content and most is crap. I rotated subscriptions for the last year but I am hard out now. And ad supported tiers don’t fix it for me because I would rather eat shit than watch them.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      They want you to eventually pay more and watch ads. It’s their long-term goal.

    • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I also doubt the numbers and wonder if they’re outright lying just to boost stock (which is working apparently)

  • SonnyVabitch@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’ve been cycling through them a few months at a time. When it gets harder and harder to find something interesting on, say, Netflix, I cancel and sign up for, say, HBO, then a few months later Disney+, rinse and repeat.

    I refuse to pay for more than one at a time because I’m not watching more than one at a time. And when I go back to any of them after many months away, there will be new programmes in their catalogue.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayOP
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      11 months ago

      I used to do that but it’s also frustrating, because when something new comes out, it’s just random luck if I’m on the right streaming service to watch it. Otherwise I have to wait…

      Wasn’t this supposed to be as good or better than the video rental store, where they had everything in one place?

      • jeffw@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Blockbuster had new releases and a handful of classics. One store probably had .01% of the volume of titles on Netflix. If they even had that many.

        • dandi8@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          But now no one has all the new major releases, so in that regard it’s a worse experience.

        • SmokumJoe@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I also remember they had the shit knockoff movies next to the real ones to fool Grandma into getting you that “Deformers movie you like”.

  • Rolling Resistance@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This would be strange if Netflix didn’t have enough of easily accessible good content.

    When after finishing work we want to watch “a movie”, it’s much easier to choose a Netflix recommendation than to do a half an hour reasearch online and then wait for the movie to be downloaded.

    Now add to this time, energy, and expertise needed for looking up and trying pirating options, figuring out technical aspects, paying for a VPN, doing maintenance… Very few can and are willing to do all that.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayOP
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      11 months ago

      Yeah but the problem is, I was watching a lot of really bad movies on Netflix, just because they didn’t have anything I wanted to watch. So I was sitting there, feeling bored or annoyed or disgusted by the shit movies… I actually felt depressed by what I watched even!

      So I was like… I’m paying for this, and I feel like shit most of the time when watching it.

      No more.

      • Rolling Resistance@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        That’s fair, if this was your case. No point in paying for something you don’t like.

        As much as I hate old titles disappearing, I also enjoy the new content Netflix offers. To each their own, I guess.

        • uSpetzWon@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Netflix produced content is either garbage or cancelled after first season. (or both)

          The only quality content Netflix has is made by someone else and more than 20 years ago.

        • 1984@lemmy.todayOP
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          11 months ago

          Yeah everyone has different taste. I actually like British TV a lot more then American too.

    • SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      The people who don’t know how I understand completely. But honestly people who have the know-how are underestimating how easy it has got. I can torrent a movie at a much higher quality than Netflix will even stream to my PC and do it all within 5 minutes.

        • HedonismB0t@sh.itjust.works
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          11 months ago

          So you download the movie to your Plex or Jellyfin server and watch it in living room. I do exactly this all the time.

          • Rolling Resistance@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Right, I use Plex now too. However, it only has things that I already downloaded. So if we don’t plan, we end up watching something on Netflix instead of spending extra time on looking+downloading+going back and forth between rooms.

            • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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              11 months ago

              Well Plex soon is adding support for buying and renting stuff.

        • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          “download this app, create an account, I’ll add you as a friend, off you go”

          It’s literally as easy as Netflix in that scenario.

        • thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          hell, I’m across the country at my parent’s place and got them a movie by remoting into my home pc to start a torrent and had it populatred in my Plex server and streaming at full bluray quality 4k hdr in less time that it took for them to get popcorn ready.

          they never even knew that i had to do any of that. i just told them “yeah, I’ll get that set up while you get snacks”

    • firadin@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      But does Netflix even have good movies? Like I think it’d be easier to do exactly that but on HBO Max or Disney Plus, or a TV show on Hulu.

    • AlphaOmega@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Weird. I can find and download a movie in a couple of minutes. It’s almost as easy as learning how to download and navigate Netflix.

      Pirating movies has never been easier, but wait there’s more, you can just stream them for free too.

      There’s even places you can buy a box for a one time fee, and have all channels and services free. Or get a subscription that offers every service and channel on earth.

      It’s so easy my 80 yr old father can do it.

      There’s no maintenance, no technical expertise needed, you don’t even need a VPN.

      The only thing Netflix really offers is convenience and legality.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      Eh, you don’t need to do all that. But I also have the same problem with the research stuff even if I use Netflix. A lot of the recommendations are not great for me, and low quality stuff. Once in a while something good will pop up though.

      Usually I write down recommendations people give me in conversation then I refer back to that list when I’m looking for something to watch. If it’s not on Netflix, well…

    • SeabassDan@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      For me it’s usually hear about a few things that could be interesting throughout the day and download them while I shower after work. A 5gb movie comes through in a few minutes so I don’t even feel it. It’s usually 2 or 3 at a time, and since I’d still be going in blind on Netflix recs, it doesn’t seem much worse.

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    11 months ago

    I’m confused by this password debacle. I am on my brother’s (US) family plan, but I’ve been living abroad the whole time. Nothing has changed for me at all. Does this mean there are some exemptions, that the crackdown just hasn’t hit my brother yet, or that he’s paying more now on my behalf without my knowing?

    • AnomanderRake@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      Netflix does let you add “guest” users in different households now, although It could be it just hasn’t hit you yet. When they announced the password crackdown it stopped Netflix working in my second household, but we just logged out and in and we haven’t been “blocked” since.

      It seems for the initial debacle they blocked loads of accounts but I don’t know how often they do a ban wave or if they just figured the original announcement would get more people to buy subscription’s (which seems to have worked).

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Maybe this is the people telling the other competitors to fuck off with their own streaming services. Maybe they think staying loyal to just one of them, things can go back to resemble how it was +5 years ago.

    • 1984@lemmy.todayOP
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      11 months ago

      I don’t think any company that becomes shit ever goes back to being not shit again…

      • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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        11 months ago

        Oh, well. In general, I agree, but there must be examples that don’t fit with your statement. In the end, companies pursue profit, ideally, offering a better service gives you exactly that. I know this rarely is the case, but it can happen.

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              11 months ago

              Sorry, I can’t hear you over how much they have businesses over the barrel with their absurd subscription licensing costs

              How has MS become more friendly to FOSS? (Genuine question)