Netflix Is Finally Cutting You Off From Your Ex’s Uncle’s Account

Netflix could lastly, truly, for actual this time, should crack down on password sharing.

On Tuesday, the OG streaming large introduced that it’s shedding, fairly than gaining, subscribers for the primary time in a decade in a letter to shareholders. To be actual: 200,000 subscribers have fled the platform which went from 221.84 million paying members final quarter to 221.64 this quarter.

The firm additional projected that its buyer base will proceed to shrink subsequent quarter, all the way down to an estimated 219.64 million individuals.

Following the discharge of the letter, Netflix’s stock tanked, with share values dropping by greater than 25% on the time of penning this.

The firm largely blamed the membership loss on competitors and its current success (i.e. there’s no new prospects left). “Our relatively high household penetration – when including the large number of households sharing accounts – combined with competition, is creating revenue growth headwinds,” Netflix wrote within the shareholder letter.

But the corporate additionally estimated that, on high of its greater than 222 million paying subscribers, an extra 100 million households are leaching their Netflix content material by way of password sharing—contributing to the losses. In response, the corporate is threatening to crack down on password sharing, stating that they’re engaged on the “monetization of multi-household sharing.”

So, if you need to have the ability to entry that candy, candy Netflix authentic content material lengthy into the long run, perhaps its time to surrender your friend-of-a-friend’s login information? (Gizmodo neither endorses nor denounces this concept.)

Finally, as with each good company announcement ever, Netflix blamed among the losses on elements past their management. The letter lists “sluggish economic growth, increasing inflation, geopolitical events such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and some continued disruption from COVID,” as partially liable for the corporate’s subscriber downturn. The firm mentioned it misplaced about 700,000 Russian subscribers when it suspended service there.

Though complete subscribers fell, Netflix nonetheless reported a quarterly income development of just about 10%. So, on second thought, perhaps you may maintain onto your ex-uncle’s password in any case.