The endless pursuit of revenue to suit shareholders. Netflix can’t increase subs anymore as who would subscribe have already and luxuries are first to go in a depressed economy. So you look for the next low hanging fruit to launder.
I don’t really understand these comments. Do you think Netflix is a charity? “Endless pursuit of revenue” is how they stay in business, employing people and yes, generating profits to shareholders.
Imagine turning this same thinking around at other groups I’d imagine you sympathize with like unionizing workers: “In their endless pursuit of revenue, workers have demanded pay increases”. Like wtf?
That next marginal dollar of revenue in the short term is often at the expense of subscriber goodwill in the long term. Rebuilding burned goodwill is very hard to do and dooms the business in the long run.
How does that answer my question in the slightest?
I think Netflix was too late to realize that they need to become an entertainment company like Disney or HBO and not a tech company, because that's Amazon and the world is too small for another Amazon, just as it is too small for another Google. It doesn't matter how good their CDN is or how good they are at writing JavaScript libraries, they will keep losing subscribers if there is nothing to subscribe for.
Netflix is somewhat ahead of this slippery slope here, in that when they started producing their own content it was third-rate from the start, very much quantity of quality. They were always going to fall off a cliff once subscriber numbers stopped growing, since eventually existing subscribers will tire of the crap they try to force-feed them, and decide the service isn't worth the price.
And yet in spite of this, McDonald's Corp has never been more valuable.
See my point?
I wouldn't agree with this, and apparently neither would they. But none of this answers my question.
Anyway, what they meant was "chasing short term profit bumps unwisely at the expense of long term satisfaction due to temporary economic stress"
Plenty of armchair CEOs on this site who simply don't appreciate the market position and power of the companies they judge. I'm not saying this won't be bad for Netflix long run, I'm saying I simply don't know. But I would bet that Netflix management have spent a lot more time than either you or I to understand the implications.
The two pieces of news I’ve heard about Netflix this year are stranger things season 4 is coming out and this. Why do I want to support a business who’s major contribution to the media landscape for 2022 is a new customer-hostile billing model?
If I gave some food away, and the restaurant I purchased it from called the recipient a free loader... I would have negative feelings about the restaurant such that a network effect would begin to take place after I kept telling people - just like this hn posting.
Edit: I guess you can argue that Netflix pricing is an insurance pool, where not always watching the streams you paid for goes into reducing the subscription cost (or raising profits). Having every subscriber let others use their downtime raises the subscription cost with that idea - but that is still contrary to years of their marketing.