Even when a family member, friend, or a romantic partner watches a netflix show on an account that they didn't personally pay for, they're still watching netflix, still talking about good shows they saw on netflix with others, still posting about things they saw on netflix online, and still providing netflix with valuable data and metrics and netflix is still making money.
I really wonder if they genuinely think all the broke and massively in debt college kids on their parents netflix accounts will just fork over the cash for Netflix's ever increasing monthly fees and that they have data showing that it'll make up for the loss of subscribers and viewers this will cost them or if there's a CEO caught up on a sunk cost fallacy or something. It seems like this couldn't come at a worse time for netflix considering that there are a growing number of competitors with better offerings for less money, netflix has been getting objectively worse, piracy is easier and more affordable than ever, and a huge amount of things that aren't even streaming television are competing for our attention.
Low cost, convenience, and having a decent catalogue of content made netflix what it is today, but today netflix is getting more expensive and less convenient, while their library struggles to have enough worth watching to keep people around all year.
Given most of the shows on Netflix are exclusive, it's not a stretch to think people enjoyed their content. Consumers aren't zombies that just watch whatever is cheapest and easiest. If that were the case the only successful streaming service would be Youtube or something.
I mostly pay for the convenience. Make it inconvenient and I'll use my time to make it work my way.
I can agree with you on principle, but they're not making it any more inconvenient. Literally nothing changes except the price.
You almost certainly in fact paid for 4 concurrent streams in the same household, and you were just out of compliance on your contract the whole time.