Netflix: account sharing page was online ‘by mistake’

Netflix has removed the controversial rules surrounding account sharing from its website. The company wrote about a new policy last week, but now says it appeared online ‘by an error’. Netflix received a lot of criticism after it posted the rules.

Netflix says in response The Streamable that last week’s help page on controversial account changes was “an error.” “An article was online for a short period that contained information that only applied to Chile, Costa Rica and Peru,” a company spokesperson said. The rules have now been adjusted again. Netflix also says that the new password sharing policy will not simply be rolled out “without first communicating it to customers.” The company continues to experiment with ways to prevent account sharing.

Earlier this week there was a lot of fuss when Netflix put a help page online explaining the rules for sharing accounts. Under those new rules, all devices must log in from the primary account location at least once a month. There were many angry reactions from users who found the rules unfair and who could think of dozens of situations in which they were disadvantaged, even if they did not share their account with others.

In this way, Netflix hopes to prevent the sharing of accounts between different users. The company has been struggling with this for years and tries in various ways to persuade users not to share accounts with others. Over the past year, Netflix has conducted many different experiments to find the best way to prevent account sharing. This usually happened in individual countries. The message that the company now posted online was also on the help page for Costa Rica, but could be read internationally. According to the company, that was the mistake: the page should only have been readable by Costa Ricans, Chileans and Peruvians.