Netflix reveals plan to charge users fees in password-sharing crackdown

The company will make people move their accounts over in early 2023

Netflix has announced that it will start to crack down on password sharing at the beginning of 2023. Customers who share their login credentials will be charged extra.

“After listening to consumer feedback, we are going to offer the ability for borrowers to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for sharers to manage their devices more easily and to create sub-accounts (“extra member”), if they want to pay for family or friends,” Netflix said in its earnings call.

“In countries with our lower-priced ad-supported plan, we expect the profile transfer option for borrowers to be especially popular.”

Netflix has not announced how much the extra cost will be yet, but the tests that it has been conducting in Latin America suggest a 25 per cent increase, or up to £4 per month.

The video streaming company has been pushing to increase revenue after seeing a declinate of roughly 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and nearly a million in the second quarter of this year. That appears to have changed, with the company reporting a net gain of 2.41 million subscribers in the third quarter. It is expected 4.5 million new subscribers will join in the next three months.

As well as cracking down on password sharing, Netflix also recently announced an ad-supported tier called “Basic with Ads”, which will cost £4.99 a month in the UK and will launch on 3 November.

Users will be able to watch content on TV and mobile devices, but the video quality will be limited to 720p/HD for both the Basic with Adverts and Basic plans, and there will be four to five minutes of adverts per hour.

At launch, adverts will be 15 or 30 seconds in length which will play before and during series and films, but certain films and TV series will not be available, due to licensing restrictions, and there will be no ability to stream from multiple devices or download titles.

Netflix said this is due to “technical complexities” of showing ads on offline shows.