Netflix Loses A Million Subscribers In Spain After Greedy Password Sharing Crackdown

We've noted repeatedly how Netflix's password sharing crackdown is a stupid cash grab that alienates and annoys loyal customers, duplicates existing efforts to restrict freeloaders," won't give the company the financial windfall it thinks, and just generally represents how the company has inevitably shifted from innovative disruptor to the kind of tone deaf cable giants it used to criticize.

The plan basically involves charging users an extra $2-$3 a month if it's found that someone is using your account outside of your home. The problem: Netflix has already been imposing blanket price hikes, and it already limits the number of simultaneously streams per account, forcing users to subscribe to more expensive tiers if they want to expand the limit.

While the crackdown isn't expected to hit U.S. subscribers until the end of the second quarter (aka soon), the effort has generally been a hot mess in the smaller countries Netflix first used as guinea pigs to test both the underlying tech and company messaging.

The company had to suspend the efforts in countries like Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, after users were equal parts befuddled and annoyed. And in Spain, estimates are that the company saw a defection of more than one million subscribers largely due to the higher, unnecessary fees:

There are of course inherent risks with clamping down on password sharing, particularly when back in 2017 Netflix was seen to be actively encouraging it. Some users were expected to be lost in the process but losing over 1 million users in a little over a month has major implications for Netflix and whether it decides to continue with its crackdown globally.

Interestingly, there is no strong demographic skew to those who cancelled, signaling a more outright rejection of the password sharing clampdown. In a worrying sign for the next quarter, 10% of remaining Netflix subscribers say they plan to cancel their plan in Q2 2023, which is well above the average seen in previous quarters."

It's just blanketly stupid to impose annoying and costly new restrictions at a time when streaming competition has become more heated than ever. Netflix's competitors can now simply gain a competitive advantage by being less confusing and annoying on pricing and account restrictions.

I don't expect it to be fatal, but it sure as hell won't help the company maintain leadership in an increasingly competitive and crowded field. Meanwhile, some analysts say Netflix's predictions that it will be a boon for revenues simply aren't based in reality:

Benchmark Co. analyst Matthew Harrigan, in a note last week, expressed skepticism that it would be a growth game-changer," opining that the strategy cannibalizes full-ride member growth." He pegged the incremental revenue lift at less than 4% revenue, even with generous assumptions about how many piggybackers Netflix might be able to convert to Extra Member accounts.

But it's also just another example of Netflix's pivot from disruptive innovative to just another powerful corporation primarily interested in nickel-and-diming its existing customer base in a bid to please Wall Street's insatiable need for improved quarterly returns at any cost. It doesn't matter to many myopic investors if you're sabotaging longer term product quality and company reputation.

This inevitable pivot was first made fairly obvious when the company began waffling on issues like net neutrality in 2018, and is all the more evident now. Much like big cable companies like Charter, Netflix - a company that spent years openly advocating for password sharing - now wants to pretend password sharing is some unethical financial nightmare, when that's simply never been the case.