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Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

Apple, Google and Amazon would seem to have a big advantage here in doing Family Accounts.

By putting someone "in your family" you at least feel like you're giving them access to a lot of stuff, so you probably don't do it with friends as much. Plus there is some unique tracking by account even if it's just an email address. I never tried it but I would assume I can't be in multiple "families" at the same time on Prime or iStuff.

Whereas if you're just Netflix, and the only reason I use you is to stream Netflix, what is the barrier to handing out my password?

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Good point — if NFLX wants to cut down on password sharing, maybe they should make it so that anyone with the password can order premium PPV content. That would make people think twice before giving out their passwords!

Yeah Google makes you share access to a credit card so you'll never add randoms

or your children

I don’t know about Google. But in Appleland you can have children in your family without letting them use the payment card associated with the family. You definitely can prevent them completely from buying anything (my situation), but IIRC you can also let them buy stuff once an adult has approved. It sounds like a reasonable system.

google has the same thing - purchase approvals so your kids can only request to purchase stuff, not actually purchase it

Then couldn't account sharers use the same trick?

I haven't seen a kids permission but I haven't tried. But maybe it's limited in other ways to make it useless

I am already sharing Apple TV+ using Family Sharing and it's working out great.

There are Apple limits to how often you can change families, and potentially family members could buy apps with your account or use its storage, so you're incentivized to only share with people you trust and not random strangers.

Netflix needs something similar at no additional charge.

I agree with you but also it's easy to not do it right for YouTube movies. You can't share videos with family unless "you purchase them with the family payment method" (source: https://support.google.com/families/answer/7007852?hl=en#zip...). I bought a movie on YouTube a few days ago. SO couldn't find it because I didn't buy with the correct credit card.

Get movies anywhere, buy elsewhere. Fortunately Apple doesn’t do this nonsense, this got me once too.

I found the iTunes family sharing stuff too complicated and just lent my password to my family instead. Which I wouldn't do with friends because that's actually a lot of access.

How anyone can find Apple family sharing difficult to setup is interesting as it takes I think a total of 6 taps to get setup with your first family member.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201088

It's not that, it just seemed like more moving parts. I don't know what it's going to share and what it's not, or if all purchases are eligible (as it turns out, some aren't).

As for the setup, it'd probably start like this: "Mom, what's your Apple ID password?" "I don't know."

Netflix has family accounts. But god forbid you live in another country and pay the subscription for your boomer parents back home - as not just a courtesy, but also as they’re not capable at all of managing things digitally. Apparently this is a racket

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