200k users abandon Netflix after crackdown backfires | Hacker News Reader

200k users abandon Netflix after crackdown backfires

forbes.com.au

25 pointsmiked8551 comments

Speaking as a UK customer of Netflix... there's just not that much content to make it worth me keeping a full time subscription up with this. When it was shared it was fine? But now, Disney+ or AppleTV are better propositions.

I don't know what it's like in the States but there is significantly less high quality stuff on there today than there was 5 years ago - most BBC and Channel 4 stuff has been pulled in the UK for e.g. and is free anyway via BBC iPlayer and All4. There are occasional diamonds among the sea of Netflix produced stuff but much of it is awful.

IMHO they also focus on their own content too much. Every time I look for a movie, even from 80s or 90s so not exactly the latest blockbuster, it is simply not there while it is on Amazon Prime Video.

Yes, and if it's not there as part of the subscription, it is at least available to rent/buy on Prime.

>>available to rent/buy on Prime.

Which I find endlessly annoying. Already paying for the service, being required to buy ad hoc almost everything I want to watch is a source of repeated annoyance. Our response is to just say "Oh forget this, screw Prime", exit and switch to looking for something on Netflix, PBS, or whatever.

If it was the exception for new hot content, that'd be fine. But it seems to be the rule for the majority of content, even if it's a decade old. So, we hardly go there anymore.

I always view with the “free to me” thing unless I’m looking to watch something specific that I can’t find on any other steaming service

Agree with both comments - the balances between high-quality/low-quality and original/non-original has been upset quite a bit (at least in the UK). Too much lower-quality 'original' programming has ruined the experience. Netflix today reminds me of Prime Video when it first launched :(

Plus, their recommendation algorithm turned into garbage a while ago. It suggests a bunch of stuff I sometimes really regret watching.

I have way too many subscriptions for the amount of video I watch. I should probably drop Netflix for now.

Amazon Prime app is doing nothing but pushing it's secondary subscription for other platforms for me, especially Freevee. I have to go a few carousels down before I can even get back to my "Continue Watching" carousel. I have go past "ads" for Paramount+, Max, Freevee before seeing the stuff that I'm already paying for.

Except its not on the amazon streaming service it will be for $3.99 rent on prime video like the blockbuster days again.

I completely agree (as a UK customer). They are very focused on original content at Netflix, but the quality just isn't there. I feel like the best value service in the UK by far is disney+ as it includes the Disney stuff as well as most of the stuff that would be on Hulu in the US (such as Dopesick etc). Netflix just doesn't seem to be competing on that front.

The streaming economy is shotgun malinvestment into the arts.

The subscriber pays a flat rate for unlimited choice within the catalog. They're not paying for the media they think they like the most. While technically the streamer is on the hook for this, they have competing optimization criteria - churn, hours viewed, etc.

The platform pours money into a lot of experiments. Platforms optimize for revenue and retention, get signals based on hours viewed, etc., yet none of this directly maps to satisfaction. Viewers will often mindlessly play stuff in the background. Expensive content reduces the number of cheap experiments that can be run. Weird stuff is long tail.

The old model of paying for what we think we'll enjoy was a better match that resulted in much higher quality film and prestige television.

I'd pay for House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. I'd probably pay $50 - $100 for each good TV show. I don't want the rest of it.

In my ideal world I pay creators directly with an upfront deposit. If I watch certain percentages of the show or film, they get a percentage of that deposit. I'd gladly pay a lot more for content this way.

New content should be paid for directly, à la carte. Old content should be streamed.

We have more prestige TV coming out now than ever before. And of course the streaming platforms include the prestige TV of yesteryear as well. The value at current prices is simply astounding.

I don't know what it is about these platforms but most people seem to have an odd take on their value - so much that most of the comments in threads like these are people complaining about "there isn't anything good anymore". But each platform has thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hours of programming. So when someone complains about their choices, I have a sneaking suspicion that they just aren't looking and are basing their views on the heavily marketed major productions, which only account for a handful of shows or movies each year.

While others complain about cost, or having too many choices, I am quite pleased with the current offerings. I don't have every platform, but the ones I do are more than plenty. I'm worried that it's all gonna go back to a cable-like model in the future with platforms combining and charging $100+ for a super platform.

People just don't know how to enjoy it when something is good.

P.s. you can usually buy episodes of a show on Google or Amazon or elsewhere.. watch an episode at a time and only buy the next one if you like what you see. You'll quickly find that model is much more costly to the consumer.

Every now and then there's something I want to see on Netflix, Disney+, or whatever. I'll re-sign up for a month and immediately cancel. I'll then watch whatever new content I've missed over that month. I imagine this pattern is pretty common, but likely some percentage of customers forget to turn it off for a few months.

As a US customer, it's the same way here.

P.S. I may be biased because I just watch Channel 4...

I’m probably going to get downvoted for this but Netflix is geared towards women. Everything is a female protagonist, the males in their shows are effeminate and there is next to no nudity that isn’t accompanied by some sort of feminist screed. It’s unwatchable.

This isn't unique to Netflix. Women make up the majority of non-sports TV viewing in general.

Everyone's Netflix recommendations are different, based on your viewing history. There are plenty of male protagonists in their stable of content, lol.

Maybe there's another explanation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66472938

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katieheaney/facebook-kn...

https://mashable.com/article/bisexuality-queer-tiktok

What does the recommendation system have to do with the available content (and especially what Netflix produces)?

I also remember reading on HN that the system was simplified even if the Netflix Prize [1] competition was supposed to make it better.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize

> What does the recommendation system have to do with the available content...

It impacts substantially your perception of what Netflix has on offer.

My kiddo's subaccount has all sorts of stuff I had no idea they carried. If the parent poster is seeing exclusively female leads with effeminate male supporting roles, that's what Netflix thinks they want to see.

Name one new Netflix show with a male lead you can actually look up to.

The Night Agent.

> the Netflix Prize [1] competition was supposed to make it better

Was supposed to, but the winning algorithm was unusable in production.

It was unusable in production. It's also the case the Netflix' goal isn't actually to give you the best recommendations; it's to keep you as a subscriber which is a correlated objective but not the same thing.

> which is a correlated objective but not the same thing.

True, but even if they didn't share it with their subscribers, "How much would this user like this movie" is a valuable tool in keeping subscribers.

Often the problem is bait and switch. For example, I went into the Witcher series expecting a show focused on Geralt, like in the games and books. Over the seasons it progressively devoted more screen time to Yennefer and Ciri, effectively making Geralt a side character in his own story. Now season 3 is sitting at a 19% audience score according to Rotten Tomatoes, viewership has cratered, the actor for Geralt (Henry Cavill) has left, and people are betting that it will be cancelled.

Just take a look at the new content, this isn’t a recommendation problem. This is a problem with the show greenlighters all being women for the most part over the last couple of years. Even international films are only allowed on the platform if they toe a certain line.

I dont have the data to evaluate if it's true or not, but netflix content surely doesn't appeal to me. They lose licenses for older shows that I found somewhat interesting, and their original content is terrible.

So yeah, I dont know if it's because I'm not the target demographic but I haven't missed it since I canceled 1 year ago or so.

Just got a transaction alert for the service billing this morning and it did make me realize I haven't watched anything of consequence on Netflix for so, so long. My house has four kids plus my wife and I, and Disney+ sees constant utilization. Apple TV+ sees constant utilization. Pluto, Prime, YouTube, Crave (this is in Canada) fill out the mix.

Netflix...I did turn on the Johnny Manziel thing in the background a while back. That was it. They've had nothing that has interested anyone in the household.

With the content dearth that is going to be ahead given the strike, it's probably time for a lot of people to cancel their Netflix, having nothing at all to do with their crackdown. The crackdown if anything is reminding people that they're paying for a service they seldom use.

My company sends out notes on how to improve your health and quality of life. One of their recommendations is to change your streaming providers every 90 days. Keep cancelling and rotating through. You'll still be able to watch everything you want and you can save a lot of money.

Why do people still read and upvote Forbes blogspam?

Netflix revenue, net income, EPS, operating income, cash on hand and share price are all up quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. They added 6M subscribers last quarter while the password crackdown was in full swing. They are doing just fine.

What is wrong with Forbes?

They'll let pretty much anyone write under their banner.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/02/an-incomplete-history-of-f...

Forbes is more similar to Medium (although not as open) than it is to the NYT or WSJ.

As of a few years ago, you need to update your thinking about Forbes from "fairly respected business media outlet" to "blogging platform". Most of the contributors are not journalists per se, nor are their articles edited or fact-checked any more than a blog article would be. This is fine, except that it isn't made clear at all to readers, who often just recognize the brand name and assume a higher standard of quality than there really is. Forbes is in the phase where it is withdrawing any banked up credibility it earned in the past.

Why is the drop attributed to the shared account crackdown and not the price increase? Of course they lose subscribers in the short term when they offer less value for more money.

Or decline in product offering relative to the competition.

In Canada at least Netflix's library seems to have been gutted with a ton of their non-original content moving to Prime, Disney+, etc. And even a bunch of their own formerly-exclusive content is now available for free on services like Tubi.

I think the password crackdown accelerated people to evaluate if Netflix was worth paying for. For a lot of people that was no.

This should come with a few disclaimers:

(*) In Australia (subscribers are up by 17M globally over roughly the same time period)

(*) For unclear reasons (not necessarily due to the password-sharing crackdown - and these are year-on-year growth numbers while the account sharing change only happened a few months ago)

My mom got cut off due to crackdown and called me about it. Turns out neither of us have really been watching much netflix lately. Actually I think account sharing was blocked for a month before she noticed. So we canceled.

Forbes can write an article about anything. I wonder who scrutinizes the usefulness & relevancy. If this sort of article with a clickbait title is approved, it seems like their overall credibility would take a hit at some point.

We all have an easy way to summarize articles but I’m excited for the possibility of ask chat gpt to summarize all articles on Forbes about Netflix, for example. My hunch is chat gpt would describe Forbes’ Netflix coverage as vague or ambiguous.

“Subscription lockdown has been good and bad.”

What exactly is the underlying data in this chart measuring? I'm not sure how to interpret "paid and non-paid subscriptions". If 1 in 3 Australian users share an account, and Netflix users in general are down just 3%, that's fully consistent with a story where the crackdown succeeded and paying subscriber numbers are up.

Honestly, I would dump it, but the wife loves it and they have good content. I switched to a basic plan before they eliminated it and saved $'s from their crackdown as we didn't need the additional screens that I thought we did anyways.

If Netflix is as successful as Hulu with its advertising tier, it will make more money from its ad tier than its paid tier. Ben Thompson (Stratechery) thinks the best strategy may be just make the ad tier free.

Only reason I currently pay on the lowest ad-supported tier is for language learning purposes. The overall content is lacklustre and I have absolutely no loyalty to Netflix. Completely disposable.

Netflix suffers from the DropBox problem. It’s a feature not a service. All of its competitors see streaming video as an addition to a larger ecosystem.

If I didn’t have a highly subsidized subscription through T-Mobile (a $14.95 discount), I would definitely cancel it.

AppleTV has mostly quality programs. Even ones I don’t personally care for, I can see the appeal of them.

Disney has Marvel and Star Wars.

Paramount has Star Trek and a few other decent shows and movies.

Even Peacock gets a few good movies and day after filler TV from NBC.

Not to mention that both Peacock and Paramount have live TV from the local NBC and CBS affiliates.

We still get HBO Max free from their former deal with AT&T. I’m not sure I will keep it after we sell our house and cancel AT&T.

Of course we get PrimeVideo for free.

I’m really dismayed that I can still log into my PS5 and watch Netflix on a shared account whose main is 3,000 miles away, I check every other month or so

Anybody from Netflix please fix

https://archive.is/MDSK4

So a statistically insignificant drop in the bucket to Netflix?

The number appears scoped to Australian subscribers. Australia only has 25M inhabitants, so it's more significant than it sounds.

I don’t watch Netflix anymore because there is no content worth paying for. I kept it for a while because my kids were watching cartoons now on paramount+. So I cancelled Netflix and now enjoying some quality content on paramount like start trek.

FYI: Paramount+ has monthly free-month coupon codes that can be used on existing accounts. Cancel immediately (they'll probably offer you three months free at this point) and when your current month expires, https://www.doctorofcredit.com/?s=paramount for the new code.

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