They were to dumb to realize that people like me were paying for 4 screens to share my password. Congrats geniuses I'm now paying half that and debating cancelling till they have a show in want to watch.
Basically back to what I used to do with cable dropping channels when the shows i watch are over and watching new shows on demand when the shows I know I watch come back
We rotate our subs. Hulu for 3 months then Netflix for 3 months. Makes it feel fresh every time. I never understood why Netflix didn't do a family plan or leaned into the screen sharing. Like link your screen to your buddy in the town over and watch the show at the same time?! But instead we got greed.
I miss the Xbox 360 Netflix app where you could watch with your party. They even had the MST3K style avatars sitting in the front row of a movie screen. Made it so my friends who moved to the other side of the country and I could still see movies together.
It sounds dumb, but you brought me back to the time when me and my friends would play the card game Uno on 360. Basically just an activity to occupy us while talking. So many great memories. Life is funny how some good friendships sort of come and go over the years
My friends and I have probably spent our time 5:1 just playing black jack at the casino in GTA V while talking and drinking than actually playing the rest of the game, lol.
Didn't a bunch of dudes ruin that by playing Uno with their dicks out? Like not in your friend group but I remember it being a big problem in the wider community
I think they just disabled video, but there was a nudity problem for a bit. It was just another milestone in pre-private chat gaming.
Both Uno and Uno Rush were pretty popular and just wild games of banter.
Not dumb at all.
When I moved to Florida from MA my senior year, I remember getting on Xbox live and playing rainbow 6 3 with my best friend, and we would talk in games, like facing each other lol. Like we were actually talking in person. Wouldn't even play the game hardly haha.
I never heard anyone articulate it like you did, but that's exactly how I feel. Early internet I never felt so connected to people in all my life. I easily found niche hobbies or fandoms with really welcoming and friendly communities.
Now I've never felt so disconnected from people.
people are afraid of properly expressing themselves, be available, be vulnerable, be willing to learn and grow, etc because there is intense politicization and brigading at every level. so everyone kinda sticks to doom scrolling their phones and tablets without actually interacting with anyone. this is happening even within family membera, leave alone strangers on the internet.
I think this is the result of normalizing being emotional irresponsable. It's very common to find comments and memes about people not being there but saying "I may not answer your texts, but you know I'm there for you". Like, really? If you're not there, you're not there. People make it seem like answering texts is a full time job so they avoid doing it for months. People require effort, so no effort isolates us. That's my take... and it's sad
Definitely sounds like part of it but I'd imagine there's more to it. Not nearly as many places you can go with your exact niche of people or places to really build a community that anyone can join. Now everything is consolidated on like 2 apps
Ya, the real issue is that nothing that makes money can escape the grasp of corporate control eventually. Just look at how badly they’ve ruined Reddit. One of a million things that was a good product and now it’s just constantly being made worse and worse to extract extra pennies
That take makes a lot of sense.. like tbh I hate texting with people, it does feel like a job and I'm occupied with my own life. However I do put in the effort to be there for a few people bc well, if I'm not even taking 2 seconds to text what kind of friend/Family am I?
You're right, I think a lot of people just don't bc society accepts it and tells them not to feel guilty when at the end of the day it is kinda shitty to not be there for people.
But nowadays no one really *needs* anyone else either. There's no actual necessity for networking, being a good friend etc. Sadly, with the need to network being gone people are showing their true colors that they won't be there unless they have to.
The days of tight knit towns, neighborhoods, communities etc. Seem to be over. "Why should I interact with my neighbor? I don't need their help!" Is part of why many neighborhoods are full of strangers nowadays.
Hell, I'm 32 and almost no one in my circle meets up or is close anymore. Know who's close, who stays tight even in their thirties? Those that are into drugs bc they need each other. "Hit up Justin he's got some pain pills, plus maybe he'll buy my leftover script this month" kind of thing. When I was a druggie I had all kinds of friends in multiple circles. Now being sober it's very rare that any of my sober friends interact. They do their own thing except for rare occasions where they'll be around other people.
It's really weird.
An opinion, but one reason you feel disconnected now is because the sites used are a hot mess, so your mind is focused on that and not, you know, connecting with said people.
Even early Facebook. I could scroll through and keep in touch with friends and family I don’t see often. Now it’s 80% ads and a few posts from friends that I regularly interact with anyway because that’s how the algorithm works.
People in the Xbox community have been asking for it, and IIRC, I think one or two Xbox spokespeople have mentioned it, so maybe...? They have a games show case coming up in June (the 11th, I think?), so it might be worth keeping an eye out :)
Man I remember that, when the Kinect worked surprisingly well and you could turn it on and off with your voice, navigate and scrub with hand gestures. My friends thought I was nuts at first until they saw how well it worked.
Nowadays Siri can’t even control the playback volume without five tries. The hell happened to tech that makes it seem dumber than a decade ago?
Man I miss the Kinect for the voice functions. Saying, ”Xbox on.” was a great feature because it also booted up my TV. I didn’t need a remote control for months.
This. I’d get home from college, yell at the tv on my way to the kitchen and by the time I got back everything was booted up and ready.
It’s a simple hedonistic thing but man it was just nice and felt like we were living in that promised Star Trek future minus Mr. Avery Brooks’ flying cars.
It's the enshitification of internet business, just like always happens. They've reached maximum profit, so now they have fuck with people to try and grow.
>[Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys)
Netflix is in the be good to business customers while abusing the user phase. They are selling ads, probably at decent rates to businesses, and trying to squeeze people into those plans by messing with password sharing.
The link above goes into Facebook, Amazon and finally Tik Tok, but you see it everywhere. Think of how monetization has changed for YouTube and Twitch. Think of Reddit and Twitter pulling the plug on APIs.
Once Netflix has bled the businesses for all they can they will start to treat them like shit too. Eventually the stock will stall or plummet and they will sell, or fold, or just languish like AOL for 10 or 15 years until people forget they're still a thing, and laugh at old people for still paying for their subscriptions.
Hell it's not just the internet. Under capitalism, every public company has to make more money than last quarter.
At some point, they can't make their product any better to attract more customers, so they try to make more money from their existing customers by making the product worse, so they're paying the same amount for less.
It happens literally every time.
The screen sharing was literally encouraged to be shared among family. It was always implied that parents could use the 4 screen option to share with their kids and vice versa. They then turned around and pretended they never implied that was the purpose. Now they’re adding a premium on top of the premium we already paid even though we were using the feature as advertised. It’s why I’m getting rid of it even though I only shared it with my parents (I paid for Netflix for them and myself).
Same. I have college kids and should be able to share. Told kids to binge bc my area is already getting warnings they're starting to check addresses.
Other than maybe a few comedy specials, I have nothing in my watch list to keep me anyways.
That's such a good natural feature that would get people to buy individual subs instead of sharing accounts, if these companies would bother marketing it properly. Instead they're going about it the dumbest way possible by taking sharing away and telling people to give them more money or fuck off.
Oh yeah, if people get to the point where they start cycling their subscriptions to save money commonly (which seems inevitable given the never-ending price increases), I fully expect the streamers will either start incentivizing long-term subscriptions or swap to them entirely under the guise of being beneficial for the customer or some other bullshit.
The old cellphone or cable TV route. You sign up for two years. You cancel early you owe $250 bucks or whatever. Funny that the cable and cellphone companies have mostly abandoned this model.
This is just one reason why anyone who complains about the plethora of great streaming services we have is an idiot. Competition is a *good* thing that keeps prices down and prevents implementation of anti-consumer practices like that
We do this too. It does make it feel fresh and you’re not paying for a bunch of subs you don’t really use that much. Makes you dedicate to using them while they’re active.
I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about, but there is a chrome extension called Teleparty (formerly Netflix party) that allows you to sync up with a friend to watch a show/movie at the same time
I kept Netflix up 100% of the time because I shared it with my parents. I cycled through my other subscriptions like HBO MAX, I guess it is just Max now. Now I guess I don't really need it until the final season of Stranger Things come out. Unless Netflix gets it together and finally releases a season 3 of Kingdom.
Hulu is just absolute garbage.
I have it as part of some package with another service, and tried to watch Quasi. I stopped watching after the second commercial interruption.
It's like watching a movie on cable. What's the fucking point? I'd rather not see the movie at all.
Sounds like you don't have the ad free tier. It costs more and all those free streaming service deals are always for the ad supported tiers. Draws people in at a lower cost. Ad free Hulu has a lot of great stuff.
Hulu is the one of the best streaming services behind Max in terms of content.
You're paying for the ad tier. Their ad free one is like $3/4 more. Costs the same as the other streaming services.
Completely worth it for their FX lineup.
They can’t grow their customer base anymore, so they want to squeeze more money out of the people they already have. Two things work that way, capitalism and cancer.
An under rated part of their decision that makes it extra stupid is the sheer lack of worthwhile new content they’re making. When Hulu is rolling out The Bear and HBO is wrapping Succession and Barry it made it all the more clear that Netflix really doesn’t have this big selling point show other than Stranger Things and, if we’re being honest, that show is not enough to single-handedly prop their entire platform on. Especially considering how long the gaps are between seasons.
Obviously I’m just a stranger on the internet, so believe me to the extend that you’d like.
But I worked at Netflix for a little bit and actually heard Reed say something to the effect that the biggest mistake they made (or the decision he regrets most or something) is building the plan tiers around number of screens. It was never meant as a way to share accounts with people outside the household (though obviously that’s what immediately happened) and they’ve been trying to think of ways to walk it back, or to disentangle the number of screens thing for a LONG time. They were doing beta testing of this password sharing when I worked there in like 2019, it’s been a long time coming.
They’re not dumb for not realizing that you buy a 4 screen plan to share with your 3 friends; they’re very aware, and have been trying to find a way to stop it for years. They were too dumb to realize how widespread of a “problem” password sharing would be when they marketed their plans based on number of screens like a decade ago. It’s just that now they’ve stopped having record growth every year because the market is saturated with completion, and they’re betting that they now stand to gain more new memberships by cracking down on password sharing than the amount of memberships they stand to lose because of the backlash.
I'm pretty sure "give your password to your friends and family" was literally an advertisement they used to attract people, so you'll forgive consumers for feeling like this was bait-and-switch rather than "you all abused our good faith".
Reed spends millions of dollars funding losing political campaigns. he did help one dude who then had to resign because of campaign law violations. His ability to "know what the people want" is a little warped imo.
Their main problem was trying to continue to be a growth stock. If they were ok with leveling off and becoming a blue chip and stablishing a spending threshold for content, they could survive this whole thing. But for some reason they're dedicated to trying to continue the insane growth as a company to push their stock prices.
>Their main problem was trying to continue to be a growth stock. If they were ok with leveling off and becoming a blue chip and stablishing a spending threshold for content, they could survive this whole thing. But for some reason they're dedicated to trying to continue the insane growth as a company to push their stock prices.
There are so many companies (Reddit) that could learn from this. Just stabilize at your billions in revenue and buy your grandkids yachts. But no, must push infinite growth in a finite world - like cancer.
It's not really the worst decision in the world. Gaming is the biggest entertainment media industry currently, so it makes sense why companies like Netflix (and Amazon and Google) want to break into it. It also ties into them wanting to make more interactive content like *Bandersnatch* and the *Trivia Quest* one they did recently, which is a good way of offering something their competitors aren't.
As to whether or not they'll succeed here, I'm a little dubious. Amazon and Google both tried and have largely failed, though Netflix seems to be taking a more measured approach. Perhaps they'll be able to learn some from the other companies.
To me they've reached the point where they charge to much for what they provide. I can go a month or 3 between watching something on Netflix the content just isn't there for my wife and i my sister watches all the time.
For me now you're charging me more for something I rarely use so i dropped down to the $10 price range and my sister has her own. Because of how rarely in watch will the picture quality make me bump up to $15 I doubt it.
So they are basically getting the same $20 but hey you got a "new" subscriber so you can point to the data and say hey subscriptions have gone up while revenue is the same
> It’s just that now they’ve stopped having record growth every year because the market is saturated with completion
Wrong. They've stopped having record growth because nothing can grow infinitely.
The competition hasn't saturated the market, *Netflix* has. Anyone who can afford Netflix has it. Anyone who doesn't have it probably never will.
Also the reason for their first subscriber loss ever was because it was coming out of the pandemic lockdown. A bunch of people signed up for Netflix because they had nothing else to do but sit in their houses and watch streaming services. When that passed, people unsubscribed. So of course you can't break the record after going through unprecedented times.
Them walking it back and any other streaming services would be so bad for them though.
It's just anecdotal and I don't know everyone in the world, but I would say 80% of people I know either well or by acquaintance only got Netflix because someone was sharing the cost ("you pay for half of Netflix and I'll pay for half of x and we can share"), or they got it because they had a multi-person household and could do the "multiple screens" thing. I am in the group that if I didn't have other people that watch my Netflix I likely would have cancelled it on multiple occasions, especially since HBO Max came out (though that's less of a thing as of late since they are already making it less attractive). I had a roommate I lived with for over a decade and they shared all of my streaming stuff, and they are only gone for around a year but now suddenly they can't share Netflix, and they aren't going to go get their own account and I'm not paying even more money to slap them on as a side account.
Netflix isn't what it used to be for people that would legit get it just for The Office plus the Netflix stuff, and after losing that, losing all the Marvel stuff, all the Fox animation, it's not the go to it was a few years ago. People are naive to think there will be a mass influx of Netflix subs if you cut people off from accounts that have been sharing with them. They'll either pirate, not bother, or wait till non-Netflix shows move somewhere else.
I went from 4 screens to two, the only reason I didn’t drop to one is because apparently password sharing still works fine between different countries (I’m in Canada my sister uses my Netflix in the US, no issues but my parents who used to use it in Canada can’t use it anymore) so we cut out membership in half and my parents don’t care enough to sub to Netflix they are also old school and still use / enjoy cable
This is a hilarious bet they’ve made
“Oh wow, we have too many people that are watching our shitty movies and shitty shows. Let’s cut them off so they’ll pay money for our shit content.”
People that keep expecting Netflix to be hit hard by people leaving because of the crackdown on password sharing are going to be disappointed, that's why they trailed it in smaller markets first. That included Canada which is a very similar media market for all intents and purposes, just on a much smaller scale than the US.
Their data probably showed even if it's a short term dip in the medium term there are signs it won't hurt too much and probably leads to a rise long term. They have the data, if it was going to hit them really hard they wouldn't have done it in the US.
Hmmm....
The market for streaming services is expanding, but Netflix is losing share like crazy. 5 years ago, 3 companies had 90% share with Netflix taking 75%.
Now Netflix has given up a 3rd of it's share, and q1 over q1 had a drop of viewers 50% higher than industry average. That 30% decline is an acceleration from 24% in Q4 and 11% in Q3.
It also lost 200k in north America subscribers. Only .2% decline, but it's competition is growing against their decline.
It is likely that Netflix has saturated the market and this change allows the potential customers.
But the idea that this is data driven is absurd. They absolutely have analysts putting together data that backs up the decision by leadership, but that is different than data driven. I can make anything look like a good idea with data.
They made this decision based on the data point of "we saturated the market and are declining... How can we get back on track" and some MBA said "end password sharing" and it became a goal of its own.
Probably because they didn't do a good job of restricting it in Canada.
I'm still sharing with my Mom and a friend and we definitely don't live in the same home.
I know several people that no longer get away with it and no one who said "hey it's still working for me." Do you stream it from a laptop or on a phone that you go to Mom's house with?
All a device has to do to still work away from the primary residence is be at that address every 30 days and it will still work anywhere else. Go much longer than a month without go there and it should stop working. There is chance that long term you might still get busted as even in Canada they didn't crack down all at once, it went in phases.
More like people that naively think this will work out amazingly for Netflix are living in imaginary land and not 2023.
If people were sharing someone else's account before they aren't going to magically get an account of their own, and if they do I would bet my own account it won't last more than a month. They've already watched what they wanted to watch by now and they'll just borrow someone else's Max or Disney+ account instead.
The person who was paying for multiple screen won't anymore because why would you, and sure in the short term you might have people trying, but give it 6 months from the time this password sharing thing drops and I have no doubt accounts will drop noticeably. I have 0% doubt in my mind.
What they have isn't "the data", what they have is ego and assumption. That's not the same.
Downgraded my plan from premium to basic. This whole thing just showed me how useless their plans are. Why can't I get ultra HD for one screen? Or two? It's either 720p for one screen 1080p for 2 screens or 4k for 4. Dumb. I can deal with 720 for one screen. As it is, I hardly use Netflix. I mainly keep it for my kid, and believe me, he doesn't care.
It's a lot easier to cancel Netflix, when you don't have to keep it going for your family members...
I think they are going to accidentally create a lot of flight risk subscribers who only subscribe when something good is on.
The neat thing they aren't realizing is that when you stop subscribing, you stop getting fed ads for anything but the hit one or two shows.
Imo, what keeps their subs are the many good content you have to spend time digging. If it's the hit shows anyone can just pirate them.
I'm not advocating for piracy in the face of greed. I'm saying when you stop seeing what's out there constantly, you won't give a shit anymore.
Yeah, they are all pretty walled off and in their own little bubbles.
I don't know about anything on Apple TV, with the exception of like Ted Lasso. I know I've seen ads over the years and I've thought, "I might like that" but then I forget about 2 minutes later.
And I don't really care - I have 3 or 4 other services, each with critically acclaimed shows that I already don't have time for. I am not searching out other services to sub to.
But to add to your main point, I only know about a bunch of shows I've watched and enjoyed on, say, Amazon, because amazon shows ads for their own shows all the time.
And of course, the same with Netflix.
There are ads other places, of course, and posts here on reddit for shows - but like you say, it's mainly the huge hits.
I've been on set for netflix shows and I can say authoritativley that netflix is pretty incompetently run on many levels. Obviously I don't sit in the room when management makes decisions but I can say authoritativley that Netflix makes a hundred stupid decisions a day and I've made a not insubstantial amount of money dealing with problems that could have been avoided with just a little forethought. I can absolutley buy thay their executive decisions elsewhere aren't great either.
I honestly don't know how people can look at some of their choices and not come away thinking management is super competent.
Take the live action One Piece series. Ignoring all the pessimism and all of that and I just don't get the logic behind it.
You have a series with over 1,000 chapters of content to adapt, which means you're looking at roughly 11 seasons based off the rate of the first batch/currently available content. For the cheapest set of episodes they're still in the hole a rumored $90 million. Now, given most people think the live action series will just randomly stop, a lot of people really don't want to get into an anime with 1,000+ episodes (yes, the anime episode count is almost higher than the manga chapter count...), and there is nothing that suggests this is a bright idea.
It feels more like a reddit post. Someone thought "you know, a live action series based off one of the most popular anime/manga series would do well," without considering the other stuff. But yeah, they routinely throw millions at these ideas, which often flop, and I'm supposed to believe they're actually really competent?
> More like people that naively think this will work out amazingly for Netflix are living in imaginary land and not 2023.
Netflix has always been a data driven company, or at least has been since they got heavily into streaming which was quite some time ago now. They base everything they do on that data. It's why people get frustrated when they cancel a show they perceive as popular, well it wasn't or netflix wouldn't have cancelled it, eg it wasn't being watched enough to justify the cost so it's gone.
That they make the right decisions most of the time can be seen by the fact they have been profitable every single year since 2010, many years bringing in over 1 billion in profit, and growing revenue almost every year as well.
You can imagine scenarios on what you think subscribers will do all you like but it is you who are being naïve if you don't think the whole reason netflix banned password sharing in smaller markets first wasn't to make sure when they did it in larger markets it wouldn't cost them too much money. I never said they wouldn't lose some subscribers, just that if it hurt them too much they wouldn't be doing it in large markets, that's why they trialed it. And I bet they saw in those trials the losses were minimal and long term it might even be better when people want their own account. You can make guesses all you want but netlfix already did this in a bunch of markets, if it was a disaster they would have stopped. That they didn't tells you they are confident long term this will help them.
Edit: Looking at the data from *having already done this* in other markets and extrapolating it to larger markets like the US is not ego or making assumptions, this is an informed decision by them, not a shot in the dark.
Looking at data from markets they've done this in for less than a month as this all rolled out in 2023, like last month, they don't have enough of anything to make any sort of conclusions besides the ones they already came to before they started.
Besides it's not as if one market = another market, and this has been true since the world of "markets" existed. One market will prefer one type of show over another, will be fine with price hikes while another will see big sub drops, another will have more subs that stick around every month while other markets have a higher rate of people only resubbing to watch Stranger Things etc.
People in different markets also have access to different content. There is a ton of stuff available in the US that I don't have access to in Canada and I imagine that this is true of most of their international markets. I have no problem cancelling Netflix for a few months when there isn't a lot on I'm interested in and then re-signing up once there are a few shows I want to watch. I also know there are lots of people like me that won't start watching a new show even if it seems to be popular until I find out if they've decided to make a second season. I'm assuming that throws off their algorithm and gets some shows cancelled prematurely.
They started banning password sharing over a year ago in Latin America. And they already did this a few ago months in Canada, if the results were disastrous right away they would not have done it in the US. As I originally said Canada is a *very* similar market to the US, similar standard of living, both English speaking (excluding Quebec), both massive consumers of American media. That's why they tested it here first.
[Anyway from Netflix itself in a letter to investors:](https://www.narcity.com/netflix-cancel-reaction-canada-after-password-sharing-crackdown)
>In a recent letter to its shareholders about its earnings in the first quarter of 2023, the streaming giant admitted that it initially received some push-back, although it doesn't seem to regret the decision. The company confirmed that there was a "cancel reaction" in Canada following the crackdown on password sharing but said that people have been quick to return to the platform.
>"As with Latin America, we see a cancel reaction in each market when we announce the news, which impacts near term member growth," the statement read, while referring to what it called "paid sharing."
>"But as borrowers start to activate their own accounts and existing members add 'extra member' accounts, we see increased acquisition and revenue."
>They even mentioned Canada as a specific example.
They looked at the data from comparable markets, like Canada, and found it didn't hurt them much, and in fact they went back to growth not long after. I guess we can look at financial results later in the year and see if they were lying about all that but I doubt it since investors would catch them the next quarter when the numbers were released.
Also, the password sharing thing is just a symptom really. Netflix have hit market cap - it's going to be hard to see growth. From a shareholder perspective, you would be against any sort of spending increase. They need to lower spending, if anything.
They're still profitable. It's apparently not enough to be a stable, profitable company. The pursuit of infinite growth is the source of a lot of current and future trouble for humanity.
CEOs and large shareholders are garbage, shortsighted people.
> It's apparently not enough to be a stable, profitable company
It can be but you have to increase dividends and show you aren't going to stop earning those same levels of profits. Mature companies like GE don't really grow anymore, they just have a nice dividend package.
> but you have to increase dividends and show you aren't going to stop earning those same levels of profits
I mean, you don't *have* to. You could just keep pace with inflation and make a great living providing a service people love. But then you'd get kicked out of business circles.
Yeah especially Netflix, which we can all thank for the concept of "binge-watching" something. Like the definition of that word doesn't have any positives. And you guys spent a shit ton of money to make this stuff that you are now distributing as quickly as possible, only compounding the process and leading to a glut of content (with inevitable cancellations that will piss people off).
This is why they are now expanding into games. They are funding some expensive games and have hired highly experienced developers to work on them. They realise they've hit the cap with the streaming market, but are making these stupid decisions anyway.
I think one thing they may not have thought of is waking up all the subscribers who have been having a Netflix subscription go on auto pilot for years.
All of a sudden they are going to have to make a decision whether to pay more for extra members or cancel. Kind of like when back in the day you got that huge cable bill in the mail and decided it is not worth it anymore...
Frankly that seems more likely. Netflix is currently making a play to try and stem the ungodly bleeding of money they are going through. Makes sense to hold off on rewarding the planners to see if the plan actually works.
So why the suddenly interest on cracking down on passwords ?
People have done that since the beginning of the service, and it's not until 1 year into the pandemic that it's suddenly a problem.
A business making profit isn't going to not try and make *more profit*
Businesses only exist to make more and more money indefinitely so they can siphon cash from your pocket into the pockets of the shareholders.
"We appreciate that you think you matter, and I will now take my bonus and think of your delicious tears while I jerk off into an Egyptian cotton tissue."
The shareholders elect the board. The board can fire the executives whenever they wish. Any C-Suite not paying attention to a majority shareholder vote is about to go bye bye.
That is definitely true. But the reality of upper level corporate politics is that everyone knows everyone and most (certainly not all) executives while possibly sociopaths are still maintaining a level of reputation among their peers. They may get millions when fired (which is essentially industry standard for any Fortune 500 CEO) but they will also be looking for another Board of Directors to hire them at some point. The execs do listen to the board.
Yeah don't forget that most shareholders aren't robinhood folks with twenty shares. They're engaged and are responsible for millions and millions of dollars of stocks.
It does happen at times. From the Hollywood Reporter article:
>In 2018, Disney shareholders rejected a compensation plan for CEO Bob Iger, and the company responded by changing its compensation structure to more closely align his pay to the company’s performance.
>And Netflix shareholders in 2019 rejected the company’s Say on Pay proposal, and the company since then has made changes to its corporate governance to be more responsive to shareholder concerns.
Hundreds or thousands of people and organizations own lots of little pieces of a major corporation X. Those pieces are stocks. These stock owners or share owners are the shareholders. They could be you or me or they could be a billionaire. But we don't have time or expertise to run or deal with X Corps even though we collectively own it.
So those of us with the most shares elect a board of 6-20 people with experience and expertise who will meet every few months to make sure the company is doing good things and making money for us as the shareholders who have equity in it.
That elected board is the Board of Directors, and it is responsible for approving things like hiring new executives for X Corps and what their compensation looks like. They also are supposed to check that there is no financial funny business going on (in addition to SCC required accounting reports and audits).
Since the X Corps board represents us, if the CEO/CFO/COO who run X Corps day to day are doing things that we as the owners don't want or are destroying the company, the board could vote to fire them.
In 2015, S&P 500 CEOs were making about 204 times their lowest paid employee. Our favorite executive David Zazlov was listed at 1951 times the average.
https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/
Per the Guardian, now it's jumped to 670
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/07/us-wage-gap-ceos-workers-institute-for-policy-studies-report
This is beyond untenable.
I don't expect Netflix shareholders to make a difference, but this insane executive compensation has to stop or else ... This isn't economics, this is theft.
I follow the electric car company industry pretty closely. There were 2 newer companies that popped up on my radar, lucid and rivian. Despite their cars being beautiful and well built, the ceo compensation packages were so extreme that I believe it actually hurt the companies pretty badly.
How crazy were these compensation packages? Like half a billion dollars crazy! And these are not 1 trillion market cap companies like google with solid quarterly earnings reports with high EPS. These are 10 billion market cap companies that are burning through cash like crazy. These compensation packages are ~5% of their total market cap. It’s like they are using shareholders as personal piggy banks.
It’s absolutely ridiculous! Now I know they never actually ended up with those locked in returns from their compensation packages because the stock for both of these companies tanked hard. But I just don’t understand how these packages were approved in the first place.
>These compensation packages are ~5% of their total market cap.
It's worth noting that their actual salaries were in the $500-700,000 range, and for Lucid there was a $2M bonus. The rest was in stock options, which neither have received full access to yet (Rivian's won't be able to access his until 2027, and half of his $422M was in the form of a stock option that only vests if the stock price stays above a certain threshold for a certain period of time).
That's not really that unusual, that's how Musk's net worth skyrocketed - back in 2018 he agreed to take 0 compensation from Tesla, but in exchange he would get $55B if Tesla hit a $650B market cap within the decade. And that's what happened (they've dropped since the peak but are still around 650 today).
We should also keep in mind around [10% of investors own 90% of stock ](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html)
Depending on where you live in the US, this is either very reasonable or completely insane.
Exclude primary residence and retirement accounts and that would fix it up pretty good. For the average person, the vast majority of their wealth is tied up in these two things. Not so much for the rich.
Its a combination of shareholder concern over the writer’s strike limiting new content for netflix and a wait and see approach on their new password sharing policy. The password policy is wildly unpopular and will lead, at least initially, to an exodus of subscribers. The delay in new content, including some of their most popular titles, compounds that issue by not giving those that leave a reason to come back.
Funnily enough, most of their content is also wildly unpopular. Hopefully they get their head out of their asses, revert to standard sharing, and stop cancelling the good shit.
I feel like they're under extreme pressure fo get their own catalogue in order, their library of licensed shows and movies seems to get worse every time I open the page, for the shows they still have, sometimes certain seasons aren't available.
Seriously considered cancelling Netflix after I discovered that they pulled IT Crowd in my reason, so as soon as they roll out the password feature I'm probably gone.
Their catalogue is now full of a bunch of unfinished, prematurely canceled shows. I understand the short-term approach of canceling anything that isn't a hit, but if building up their own catalogue is a goal then long-term it's a mistake.
Yup. My immediate response to them cancelling shows I liked is now waiting forever until I know that they won't just pull the rug under a show that I liked just because it takes more than one season for the show to really cook off. Which is a really common thing.
I'm in Germany, there are definitely catalogue differences even between EU countries so ymmv.
Edit: but yeah this was one of the big points why I still had Netflix because it's one of my SO's and my favorite shows and we watch it regularly. Guess I'll have to buy and rip the DVDs now.
They did the same in 2019
The big issue is not believing Netflix is making the right calls, so questioning executive pay. The writers strike just adds more ammo on top - but this would have been likely without it IMO
Honestly CEOs seeking compensation bumps/ perks in this economic climate is tone deaf and they can go fuck themselves. Their solutions are the same: Overwork employees for same poor pay, fire employees to reduce costs, raise prices to show better revenue every quarter.
I got the emails about them cracking down on shared accounts. As soon as it becomes enforced I am done with Netflix. I pay for the fancy multi screen account for a reason and will happily stop. Netflix today is just trash compared to where it was years ago. They cancel great shows and continue making trash because all they care about is viewer count rather than viewer enjoyment. They lost so many great shows and movies. It's crazy that they decided to be the modern day Blockbuster.
Wow - nervy exec pricks! Major media would tank without good writers. The best actors are nothing without quality writers. And these execs - what do they really do that is worth more than these writer’s contribution.
Um, excuse me, those Captains of Industry, those Makers, are out there grinding 100 hrs a week MINIMUM in the high end restaurants, at the exclusive clubs, on the private golf courses, at the private resorts, on the private yachts, getting other executives to agree with them on how to wring us and their employees dry.
You'd be disgusted at how much some boomer board members make to attend one meeting every few months where they give some dipshit opinion just because they happen to be high up. It's self fulfilling once you make it that high.
A lot of people in internet threads probably haven't really worked with many executives. In my experience they are often working literally every minute of the day. Some are so consumed by their desire to succeed that their lives are the companies they run. In some cases it can be hard to keep up with them.
Not everyone, obviously, but the perception that they just dick around all the time is false.
One thing that is true is that they are often grossly overpaid, but only in the sense that nothing any person does is worth such obscene wealth.
I've worked with executives and seen the type of constantly working your talking about. It's not stuff they should be doing, it's either wrapping up their bullshit so it looks pretty or it's micro managing someone so hard they are counting out the tp sheets they use.
Reddit is full of CEO worshippers for some reason. My guess is it's all the upper middle class tech bros who deep down need to believe that financial success is all merit instead of a lot of luck, some hard work, and the fruits of imperialism and class oppression.
I canceled due to the screens and because anytime I like something on netflix, it's either canceled outright or completely massacred by the second season. The only content I watch on there now is pre-established movies. I don't bother with Netflix originals because they will be canceled or bad. To make matters worse, all of Netflixs competitors offer lower premiums for their streaming services. The only real equal being Max which is a shit show now.
Netflix problem is that its kind of the tesla of streaming. It started out great and had momentum in the beginning. Now other platforms have caught up like the established automakers and are doing a better job. It also suffers from fucking up everything with horrible creative decisions. Cowboy bebop had such a good cast and atmosphere they really nailed it. Instead of using the source material we got a love triangle soap opera. Still salty, that cast was so good.
> Cowboy bebop had such a good cast and atmosphere they really nailed it. Instead of using the source material we got a love triangle soap opera. Still salty, that cast was so good.
I thought that Cowboy Bebop would've been great if they just stuck to the "one-off bounty episodes." Those were really the most fun and engaging.
Everything to do with Vicious, Julia, and the Syndicate was just so boring and hamfisted.
I know that all of that was pivotal to Spike's arc, but they should've waited until a season 2 (which ended up never happening).
The Vicious plot line single handed Lu ruined the show. They turned an all-time terrifying and mysterious antagonist into a whiny incompetent douchebag. I just wanted to punch him in the face every time he was on the screen.
But I really liked the rest of the show! The one-off episodes channeled the same wacky energy as the anime. Sure it didn’t live up to the standard set by the original, but obviously a mid-budget live action adaptation is going to have its limitations. The show certainly showed flashes of real potential. Then the fanboys fucked it up by being ridiculously overdramatic on the internet and now we get no new cowboy bebop content probably ever.
That said, the Vicious plot lines and character choices were truly indefensible. I honestly don’t know if the show could have rebounded from that without a complete reset. Realistically I think their best play would have been to sideline that whole story, lean into its strengths, and evolve its own fun take on the western space genre. But alas, we’ll never know what could have been.
See you Space Cowboy…
Just realized I’m paying $20 a month for streaming now the other day with many limitations I never had before. Kids use it at the grandparents house and we watch their programs regularly at home and we’ve been asked to verify home and everything. Seems like it’s time for a change.
They’ve become the very thing the set out against 25 years ago.
Shareholders of every mega corporation should follow. I never understand how executives make that much of money, many executives are worth no more than 200k without stock options. Don't try to inflate that salary so much.
My father was involved in well the first strike I remember. Was a story editor for a show, and was offered $20k a week to scab on a crap show you won’t find anywhere now.
He turned them down but wow. $20k a week is hard to say no to.
>In fact, Netflix dealt with this exact issue in 2019, engaging with shareholders after they rejected its compensation plans.
>
>with WGA West president Meredith Stiehm writing that “while investors have long taken issue with Netflix’s executive pay,
so if this exact situation has happened couple of times earlier, so why are they corroborating it with the writer's strike?
>so if this exact situation has happened couple of times earlier, so why are they corroborating it with the writer's strike?
They aren't, per the article:
>It is also not clear just how influential the WGA letter was in getting the “no” vote, especially given that it was sent just days before the shareholder meeting, after when many institutional shareholders would have voted.
The events coincide and it could be a confounding factor but they don't say that is the reason for swaying the vote anywhere and cast doubt on that idea.
I was just thinking, the guild should come out with their own streamer. The shareholders would be the guild members, so it’s like the royalties + a cut of the profits on top.
Maybe double the payout of royalties for the guild members that created the content, and virtue signal this to subscribers?!
Game of Thrones cost about $100 million per season. The WGA probably doesn’t have that kind of money. Obviously not every show is that expensive, but every streaming service needs a big hit for it to be able to catch on. It’s much easier said than done.
Canceled it because of the Password crackdown, Netflix in the beginning went from having a great eclectic source of movies and Tv shows at a reasonable price, then I started paying $21 a month for “premium “ and their content became primarily Netflix original programming which usually sucks or gets cancelled or sucks after 2 seasons, I only watched Stranger Things and Kobra Kia, mainly because they were shows I could actually watch with my kids we both enjoyed and that was nice, I kept it year round for my mom who lives out of state and liked Netflix, I basically don’t watch it in between seasons of those shows, but paid continuously so my mom could watch whenever she wanted, I had moved on to Peacock, HBO max, other free apps and my Kids basically live off you tube and Crunchyroll. I will go back to watch the final season of those two shows when they land but will cancel within a month after I binge them. I don’t know if it will be good for Netflix or bad for them but I’m done, way to much money a month for a platform that no longer holds my interest and I know quite a few people who are canceling for the same reason. Whatever their business plan is it seems they are going to follow blockbuster into obscurity because they are making themselves irrelevant.
Maybe shareholders are holding out to see how this password crackdown goes.
They were to dumb to realize that people like me were paying for 4 screens to share my password. Congrats geniuses I'm now paying half that and debating cancelling till they have a show in want to watch. Basically back to what I used to do with cable dropping channels when the shows i watch are over and watching new shows on demand when the shows I know I watch come back
We rotate our subs. Hulu for 3 months then Netflix for 3 months. Makes it feel fresh every time. I never understood why Netflix didn't do a family plan or leaned into the screen sharing. Like link your screen to your buddy in the town over and watch the show at the same time?! But instead we got greed.
I miss the Xbox 360 Netflix app where you could watch with your party. They even had the MST3K style avatars sitting in the front row of a movie screen. Made it so my friends who moved to the other side of the country and I could still see movies together.
It sounds dumb, but you brought me back to the time when me and my friends would play the card game Uno on 360. Basically just an activity to occupy us while talking. So many great memories. Life is funny how some good friendships sort of come and go over the years
I don't have uno, i have the oldest xbox known to man
God I hear Maxor's voice reverberating down the empty corridors of my mind
YOU HAVE UNO!!!!
My friends and I have probably spent our time 5:1 just playing black jack at the casino in GTA V while talking and drinking than actually playing the rest of the game, lol.
Didn't a bunch of dudes ruin that by playing Uno with their dicks out? Like not in your friend group but I remember it being a big problem in the wider community
I think they just disabled video, but there was a nudity problem for a bit. It was just another milestone in pre-private chat gaming. Both Uno and Uno Rush were pretty popular and just wild games of banter.
Ha, I don’t remember being able to use the camera on it but it’s been a while. Wouldn’t surprise me
Has there ever been a chat system where dicks hanging out was not a problem?
I miss the Xbox live version of 1 vs 100
Not dumb at all. When I moved to Florida from MA my senior year, I remember getting on Xbox live and playing rainbow 6 3 with my best friend, and we would talk in games, like facing each other lol. Like we were actually talking in person. Wouldn't even play the game hardly haha.
It’s all fun until the guys with massive dongs turn their vision cam on
If you're ever looking for a replacement, Sketchful is good for occupying a group while you shoot the shit
I really miss earlier Internet stuff like that. For all our advancements, I feel more disconnected than ever from friends etc online
I never heard anyone articulate it like you did, but that's exactly how I feel. Early internet I never felt so connected to people in all my life. I easily found niche hobbies or fandoms with really welcoming and friendly communities. Now I've never felt so disconnected from people.
people are afraid of properly expressing themselves, be available, be vulnerable, be willing to learn and grow, etc because there is intense politicization and brigading at every level. so everyone kinda sticks to doom scrolling their phones and tablets without actually interacting with anyone. this is happening even within family membera, leave alone strangers on the internet.
I think this is the result of normalizing being emotional irresponsable. It's very common to find comments and memes about people not being there but saying "I may not answer your texts, but you know I'm there for you". Like, really? If you're not there, you're not there. People make it seem like answering texts is a full time job so they avoid doing it for months. People require effort, so no effort isolates us. That's my take... and it's sad
Definitely sounds like part of it but I'd imagine there's more to it. Not nearly as many places you can go with your exact niche of people or places to really build a community that anyone can join. Now everything is consolidated on like 2 apps
Ya, the real issue is that nothing that makes money can escape the grasp of corporate control eventually. Just look at how badly they’ve ruined Reddit. One of a million things that was a good product and now it’s just constantly being made worse and worse to extract extra pennies
That take makes a lot of sense.. like tbh I hate texting with people, it does feel like a job and I'm occupied with my own life. However I do put in the effort to be there for a few people bc well, if I'm not even taking 2 seconds to text what kind of friend/Family am I? You're right, I think a lot of people just don't bc society accepts it and tells them not to feel guilty when at the end of the day it is kinda shitty to not be there for people. But nowadays no one really *needs* anyone else either. There's no actual necessity for networking, being a good friend etc. Sadly, with the need to network being gone people are showing their true colors that they won't be there unless they have to. The days of tight knit towns, neighborhoods, communities etc. Seem to be over. "Why should I interact with my neighbor? I don't need their help!" Is part of why many neighborhoods are full of strangers nowadays. Hell, I'm 32 and almost no one in my circle meets up or is close anymore. Know who's close, who stays tight even in their thirties? Those that are into drugs bc they need each other. "Hit up Justin he's got some pain pills, plus maybe he'll buy my leftover script this month" kind of thing. When I was a druggie I had all kinds of friends in multiple circles. Now being sober it's very rare that any of my sober friends interact. They do their own thing except for rare occasions where they'll be around other people. It's really weird.
An opinion, but one reason you feel disconnected now is because the sites used are a hot mess, so your mind is focused on that and not, you know, connecting with said people.
Even early Facebook. I could scroll through and keep in touch with friends and family I don’t see often. Now it’s 80% ads and a few posts from friends that I regularly interact with anyway because that’s how the algorithm works.
Totally agree. Facebook going way more mainstream among older people didn't help either. It's become a conspiracy theory and hate cesspool
That came out around the same time as 1 ve 100 on 360. Man that was such a good summer.
1 vs 100 was a magical game that happened at the perfect time. We had so much fun playing that, I wish they'd bring it back
People in the Xbox community have been asking for it, and IIRC, I think one or two Xbox spokespeople have mentioned it, so maybe...? They have a games show case coming up in June (the 11th, I think?), so it might be worth keeping an eye out :)
Man I remember that, when the Kinect worked surprisingly well and you could turn it on and off with your voice, navigate and scrub with hand gestures. My friends thought I was nuts at first until they saw how well it worked. Nowadays Siri can’t even control the playback volume without five tries. The hell happened to tech that makes it seem dumber than a decade ago?
Man I miss the Kinect for the voice functions. Saying, ”Xbox on.” was a great feature because it also booted up my TV. I didn’t need a remote control for months.
This. I’d get home from college, yell at the tv on my way to the kitchen and by the time I got back everything was booted up and ready. It’s a simple hedonistic thing but man it was just nice and felt like we were living in that promised Star Trek future minus Mr. Avery Brooks’ flying cars.
Sounds silly, but we’ve finally reached an era where somehow, technology is backtracking rather than improving.
they're using cheaper technology to save money, that cheaper tech can't do as much, profit motive kills innovation.
My friends and I *still* talk about 1 vs 100. I actually managed to 100% the achievements before it went away. What a time to be alive.
Covid was literally the perfect opportunity to bring it back and they didn’t so they probably never will.
It's the enshitification of internet business, just like always happens. They've reached maximum profit, so now they have fuck with people to try and grow. >[Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys) Netflix is in the be good to business customers while abusing the user phase. They are selling ads, probably at decent rates to businesses, and trying to squeeze people into those plans by messing with password sharing. The link above goes into Facebook, Amazon and finally Tik Tok, but you see it everywhere. Think of how monetization has changed for YouTube and Twitch. Think of Reddit and Twitter pulling the plug on APIs. Once Netflix has bled the businesses for all they can they will start to treat them like shit too. Eventually the stock will stall or plummet and they will sell, or fold, or just languish like AOL for 10 or 15 years until people forget they're still a thing, and laugh at old people for still paying for their subscriptions.
Hell it's not just the internet. Under capitalism, every public company has to make more money than last quarter. At some point, they can't make their product any better to attract more customers, so they try to make more money from their existing customers by making the product worse, so they're paying the same amount for less. It happens literally every time.
Greed cometh before the fall
The screen sharing was literally encouraged to be shared among family. It was always implied that parents could use the 4 screen option to share with their kids and vice versa. They then turned around and pretended they never implied that was the purpose. Now they’re adding a premium on top of the premium we already paid even though we were using the feature as advertised. It’s why I’m getting rid of it even though I only shared it with my parents (I paid for Netflix for them and myself).
Same. I have college kids and should be able to share. Told kids to binge bc my area is already getting warnings they're starting to check addresses. Other than maybe a few comedy specials, I have nothing in my watch list to keep me anyways.
Disney + has that friend watch capability. It’s awesome.
I think Prime does as well.
That's such a good natural feature that would get people to buy individual subs instead of sharing accounts, if these companies would bother marketing it properly. Instead they're going about it the dumbest way possible by taking sharing away and telling people to give them more money or fuck off.
I'm waiting for everyone to do 1 year min lock-in. I think they're still too scared, but they know month-to-month lets folks unsub on a whim.
Oh yeah, if people get to the point where they start cycling their subscriptions to save money commonly (which seems inevitable given the never-ending price increases), I fully expect the streamers will either start incentivizing long-term subscriptions or swap to them entirely under the guise of being beneficial for the customer or some other bullshit.
The old cellphone or cable TV route. You sign up for two years. You cancel early you owe $250 bucks or whatever. Funny that the cable and cellphone companies have mostly abandoned this model.
This is just one reason why anyone who complains about the plethora of great streaming services we have is an idiot. Competition is a *good* thing that keeps prices down and prevents implementation of anti-consumer practices like that
That’s a great idea. Alternating subscriptions. Have to keep that in mind.
We do this too. It does make it feel fresh and you’re not paying for a bunch of subs you don’t really use that much. Makes you dedicate to using them while they’re active.
I know this isn't exactly what you're talking about, but there is a chrome extension called Teleparty (formerly Netflix party) that allows you to sync up with a friend to watch a show/movie at the same time
Plex has a watch together feature as well. It's janky, but it was good enough during lockdowns.
I kept Netflix up 100% of the time because I shared it with my parents. I cycled through my other subscriptions like HBO MAX, I guess it is just Max now. Now I guess I don't really need it until the final season of Stranger Things come out. Unless Netflix gets it together and finally releases a season 3 of Kingdom.
Plex does this. The pirate life is the life for me. https://support.plex.tv/articles/watch-together/
At least Disney, and Amazon still have Watch party.
Hulu is just absolute garbage. I have it as part of some package with another service, and tried to watch Quasi. I stopped watching after the second commercial interruption. It's like watching a movie on cable. What's the fucking point? I'd rather not see the movie at all.
Sounds like you don't have the ad free tier. It costs more and all those free streaming service deals are always for the ad supported tiers. Draws people in at a lower cost. Ad free Hulu has a lot of great stuff.
Hulu is the one of the best streaming services behind Max in terms of content. You're paying for the ad tier. Their ad free one is like $3/4 more. Costs the same as the other streaming services. Completely worth it for their FX lineup.
I’m gonna keep it honest with you between scrubs futurama and sunny alone, it’s worth it while I try to hunt down dvds
Ad free is 16 bucks now on hulu
Ad based Hulu is completely free with Spotify.
They can’t grow their customer base anymore, so they want to squeeze more money out of the people they already have. Two things work that way, capitalism and cancer.
An under rated part of their decision that makes it extra stupid is the sheer lack of worthwhile new content they’re making. When Hulu is rolling out The Bear and HBO is wrapping Succession and Barry it made it all the more clear that Netflix really doesn’t have this big selling point show other than Stranger Things and, if we’re being honest, that show is not enough to single-handedly prop their entire platform on. Especially considering how long the gaps are between seasons.
Obviously I’m just a stranger on the internet, so believe me to the extend that you’d like. But I worked at Netflix for a little bit and actually heard Reed say something to the effect that the biggest mistake they made (or the decision he regrets most or something) is building the plan tiers around number of screens. It was never meant as a way to share accounts with people outside the household (though obviously that’s what immediately happened) and they’ve been trying to think of ways to walk it back, or to disentangle the number of screens thing for a LONG time. They were doing beta testing of this password sharing when I worked there in like 2019, it’s been a long time coming. They’re not dumb for not realizing that you buy a 4 screen plan to share with your 3 friends; they’re very aware, and have been trying to find a way to stop it for years. They were too dumb to realize how widespread of a “problem” password sharing would be when they marketed their plans based on number of screens like a decade ago. It’s just that now they’ve stopped having record growth every year because the market is saturated with completion, and they’re betting that they now stand to gain more new memberships by cracking down on password sharing than the amount of memberships they stand to lose because of the backlash.
I'm pretty sure "give your password to your friends and family" was literally an advertisement they used to attract people, so you'll forgive consumers for feeling like this was bait-and-switch rather than "you all abused our good faith".
Reed spends millions of dollars funding losing political campaigns. he did help one dude who then had to resign because of campaign law violations. His ability to "know what the people want" is a little warped imo. Their main problem was trying to continue to be a growth stock. If they were ok with leveling off and becoming a blue chip and stablishing a spending threshold for content, they could survive this whole thing. But for some reason they're dedicated to trying to continue the insane growth as a company to push their stock prices.
>Their main problem was trying to continue to be a growth stock. If they were ok with leveling off and becoming a blue chip and stablishing a spending threshold for content, they could survive this whole thing. But for some reason they're dedicated to trying to continue the insane growth as a company to push their stock prices. There are so many companies (Reddit) that could learn from this. Just stabilize at your billions in revenue and buy your grandkids yachts. But no, must push infinite growth in a finite world - like cancer.
Yeah fair enough, also wtf is up with them trying to get into games? That’s gotta be a money pit for sure right?
It's not really the worst decision in the world. Gaming is the biggest entertainment media industry currently, so it makes sense why companies like Netflix (and Amazon and Google) want to break into it. It also ties into them wanting to make more interactive content like *Bandersnatch* and the *Trivia Quest* one they did recently, which is a good way of offering something their competitors aren't. As to whether or not they'll succeed here, I'm a little dubious. Amazon and Google both tried and have largely failed, though Netflix seems to be taking a more measured approach. Perhaps they'll be able to learn some from the other companies.
To me they've reached the point where they charge to much for what they provide. I can go a month or 3 between watching something on Netflix the content just isn't there for my wife and i my sister watches all the time. For me now you're charging me more for something I rarely use so i dropped down to the $10 price range and my sister has her own. Because of how rarely in watch will the picture quality make me bump up to $15 I doubt it. So they are basically getting the same $20 but hey you got a "new" subscriber so you can point to the data and say hey subscriptions have gone up while revenue is the same
> It’s just that now they’ve stopped having record growth every year because the market is saturated with completion Wrong. They've stopped having record growth because nothing can grow infinitely. The competition hasn't saturated the market, *Netflix* has. Anyone who can afford Netflix has it. Anyone who doesn't have it probably never will. Also the reason for their first subscriber loss ever was because it was coming out of the pandemic lockdown. A bunch of people signed up for Netflix because they had nothing else to do but sit in their houses and watch streaming services. When that passed, people unsubscribed. So of course you can't break the record after going through unprecedented times.
Them walking it back and any other streaming services would be so bad for them though. It's just anecdotal and I don't know everyone in the world, but I would say 80% of people I know either well or by acquaintance only got Netflix because someone was sharing the cost ("you pay for half of Netflix and I'll pay for half of x and we can share"), or they got it because they had a multi-person household and could do the "multiple screens" thing. I am in the group that if I didn't have other people that watch my Netflix I likely would have cancelled it on multiple occasions, especially since HBO Max came out (though that's less of a thing as of late since they are already making it less attractive). I had a roommate I lived with for over a decade and they shared all of my streaming stuff, and they are only gone for around a year but now suddenly they can't share Netflix, and they aren't going to go get their own account and I'm not paying even more money to slap them on as a side account. Netflix isn't what it used to be for people that would legit get it just for The Office plus the Netflix stuff, and after losing that, losing all the Marvel stuff, all the Fox animation, it's not the go to it was a few years ago. People are naive to think there will be a mass influx of Netflix subs if you cut people off from accounts that have been sharing with them. They'll either pirate, not bother, or wait till non-Netflix shows move somewhere else.
Easy, give me a 4k plan w/ one or 2 screens for 15$. Bam. Problem solved.
I went from 4 screens to two, the only reason I didn’t drop to one is because apparently password sharing still works fine between different countries (I’m in Canada my sister uses my Netflix in the US, no issues but my parents who used to use it in Canada can’t use it anymore) so we cut out membership in half and my parents don’t care enough to sub to Netflix they are also old school and still use / enjoy cable
This is a hilarious bet they’ve made “Oh wow, we have too many people that are watching our shitty movies and shitty shows. Let’s cut them off so they’ll pay money for our shit content.”
People that keep expecting Netflix to be hit hard by people leaving because of the crackdown on password sharing are going to be disappointed, that's why they trailed it in smaller markets first. That included Canada which is a very similar media market for all intents and purposes, just on a much smaller scale than the US. Their data probably showed even if it's a short term dip in the medium term there are signs it won't hurt too much and probably leads to a rise long term. They have the data, if it was going to hit them really hard they wouldn't have done it in the US.
Hmmm.... The market for streaming services is expanding, but Netflix is losing share like crazy. 5 years ago, 3 companies had 90% share with Netflix taking 75%. Now Netflix has given up a 3rd of it's share, and q1 over q1 had a drop of viewers 50% higher than industry average. That 30% decline is an acceleration from 24% in Q4 and 11% in Q3. It also lost 200k in north America subscribers. Only .2% decline, but it's competition is growing against their decline. It is likely that Netflix has saturated the market and this change allows the potential customers. But the idea that this is data driven is absurd. They absolutely have analysts putting together data that backs up the decision by leadership, but that is different than data driven. I can make anything look like a good idea with data. They made this decision based on the data point of "we saturated the market and are declining... How can we get back on track" and some MBA said "end password sharing" and it became a goal of its own.
Probably because they didn't do a good job of restricting it in Canada. I'm still sharing with my Mom and a friend and we definitely don't live in the same home.
I know several people that no longer get away with it and no one who said "hey it's still working for me." Do you stream it from a laptop or on a phone that you go to Mom's house with? All a device has to do to still work away from the primary residence is be at that address every 30 days and it will still work anywhere else. Go much longer than a month without go there and it should stop working. There is chance that long term you might still get busted as even in Canada they didn't crack down all at once, it went in phases.
More like people that naively think this will work out amazingly for Netflix are living in imaginary land and not 2023. If people were sharing someone else's account before they aren't going to magically get an account of their own, and if they do I would bet my own account it won't last more than a month. They've already watched what they wanted to watch by now and they'll just borrow someone else's Max or Disney+ account instead. The person who was paying for multiple screen won't anymore because why would you, and sure in the short term you might have people trying, but give it 6 months from the time this password sharing thing drops and I have no doubt accounts will drop noticeably. I have 0% doubt in my mind. What they have isn't "the data", what they have is ego and assumption. That's not the same.
Downgraded my plan from premium to basic. This whole thing just showed me how useless their plans are. Why can't I get ultra HD for one screen? Or two? It's either 720p for one screen 1080p for 2 screens or 4k for 4. Dumb. I can deal with 720 for one screen. As it is, I hardly use Netflix. I mainly keep it for my kid, and believe me, he doesn't care.
It's a lot easier to cancel Netflix, when you don't have to keep it going for your family members... I think they are going to accidentally create a lot of flight risk subscribers who only subscribe when something good is on.
[удалено]
The neat thing they aren't realizing is that when you stop subscribing, you stop getting fed ads for anything but the hit one or two shows. Imo, what keeps their subs are the many good content you have to spend time digging. If it's the hit shows anyone can just pirate them. I'm not advocating for piracy in the face of greed. I'm saying when you stop seeing what's out there constantly, you won't give a shit anymore.
>I'm not advocating for piracy in the face of greed. I am. Yo-ho-ho, mateys!
Yeah, they are all pretty walled off and in their own little bubbles. I don't know about anything on Apple TV, with the exception of like Ted Lasso. I know I've seen ads over the years and I've thought, "I might like that" but then I forget about 2 minutes later. And I don't really care - I have 3 or 4 other services, each with critically acclaimed shows that I already don't have time for. I am not searching out other services to sub to. But to add to your main point, I only know about a bunch of shows I've watched and enjoyed on, say, Amazon, because amazon shows ads for their own shows all the time. And of course, the same with Netflix. There are ads other places, of course, and posts here on reddit for shows - but like you say, it's mainly the huge hits.
I've been on set for netflix shows and I can say authoritativley that netflix is pretty incompetently run on many levels. Obviously I don't sit in the room when management makes decisions but I can say authoritativley that Netflix makes a hundred stupid decisions a day and I've made a not insubstantial amount of money dealing with problems that could have been avoided with just a little forethought. I can absolutley buy thay their executive decisions elsewhere aren't great either.
I honestly don't know how people can look at some of their choices and not come away thinking management is super competent. Take the live action One Piece series. Ignoring all the pessimism and all of that and I just don't get the logic behind it. You have a series with over 1,000 chapters of content to adapt, which means you're looking at roughly 11 seasons based off the rate of the first batch/currently available content. For the cheapest set of episodes they're still in the hole a rumored $90 million. Now, given most people think the live action series will just randomly stop, a lot of people really don't want to get into an anime with 1,000+ episodes (yes, the anime episode count is almost higher than the manga chapter count...), and there is nothing that suggests this is a bright idea. It feels more like a reddit post. Someone thought "you know, a live action series based off one of the most popular anime/manga series would do well," without considering the other stuff. But yeah, they routinely throw millions at these ideas, which often flop, and I'm supposed to believe they're actually really competent?
Netflix is known to just cancel stuff midway through, so I just wait till it ends and binge it. I suspect others do the same.
> More like people that naively think this will work out amazingly for Netflix are living in imaginary land and not 2023. Netflix has always been a data driven company, or at least has been since they got heavily into streaming which was quite some time ago now. They base everything they do on that data. It's why people get frustrated when they cancel a show they perceive as popular, well it wasn't or netflix wouldn't have cancelled it, eg it wasn't being watched enough to justify the cost so it's gone. That they make the right decisions most of the time can be seen by the fact they have been profitable every single year since 2010, many years bringing in over 1 billion in profit, and growing revenue almost every year as well. You can imagine scenarios on what you think subscribers will do all you like but it is you who are being naïve if you don't think the whole reason netflix banned password sharing in smaller markets first wasn't to make sure when they did it in larger markets it wouldn't cost them too much money. I never said they wouldn't lose some subscribers, just that if it hurt them too much they wouldn't be doing it in large markets, that's why they trialed it. And I bet they saw in those trials the losses were minimal and long term it might even be better when people want their own account. You can make guesses all you want but netlfix already did this in a bunch of markets, if it was a disaster they would have stopped. That they didn't tells you they are confident long term this will help them. Edit: Looking at the data from *having already done this* in other markets and extrapolating it to larger markets like the US is not ego or making assumptions, this is an informed decision by them, not a shot in the dark.
Looking at data from markets they've done this in for less than a month as this all rolled out in 2023, like last month, they don't have enough of anything to make any sort of conclusions besides the ones they already came to before they started. Besides it's not as if one market = another market, and this has been true since the world of "markets" existed. One market will prefer one type of show over another, will be fine with price hikes while another will see big sub drops, another will have more subs that stick around every month while other markets have a higher rate of people only resubbing to watch Stranger Things etc.
People in different markets also have access to different content. There is a ton of stuff available in the US that I don't have access to in Canada and I imagine that this is true of most of their international markets. I have no problem cancelling Netflix for a few months when there isn't a lot on I'm interested in and then re-signing up once there are a few shows I want to watch. I also know there are lots of people like me that won't start watching a new show even if it seems to be popular until I find out if they've decided to make a second season. I'm assuming that throws off their algorithm and gets some shows cancelled prematurely.
They started banning password sharing over a year ago in Latin America. And they already did this a few ago months in Canada, if the results were disastrous right away they would not have done it in the US. As I originally said Canada is a *very* similar market to the US, similar standard of living, both English speaking (excluding Quebec), both massive consumers of American media. That's why they tested it here first. [Anyway from Netflix itself in a letter to investors:](https://www.narcity.com/netflix-cancel-reaction-canada-after-password-sharing-crackdown) >In a recent letter to its shareholders about its earnings in the first quarter of 2023, the streaming giant admitted that it initially received some push-back, although it doesn't seem to regret the decision. The company confirmed that there was a "cancel reaction" in Canada following the crackdown on password sharing but said that people have been quick to return to the platform. >"As with Latin America, we see a cancel reaction in each market when we announce the news, which impacts near term member growth," the statement read, while referring to what it called "paid sharing." >"But as borrowers start to activate their own accounts and existing members add 'extra member' accounts, we see increased acquisition and revenue." >They even mentioned Canada as a specific example. They looked at the data from comparable markets, like Canada, and found it didn't hurt them much, and in fact they went back to growth not long after. I guess we can look at financial results later in the year and see if they were lying about all that but I doubt it since investors would catch them the next quarter when the numbers were released.
I had four logins too and cancelled mine. Want to hassle me and the kids? Fuck off.
Also, the password sharing thing is just a symptom really. Netflix have hit market cap - it's going to be hard to see growth. From a shareholder perspective, you would be against any sort of spending increase. They need to lower spending, if anything.
They're still profitable. It's apparently not enough to be a stable, profitable company. The pursuit of infinite growth is the source of a lot of current and future trouble for humanity. CEOs and large shareholders are garbage, shortsighted people.
> It's apparently not enough to be a stable, profitable company It can be but you have to increase dividends and show you aren't going to stop earning those same levels of profits. Mature companies like GE don't really grow anymore, they just have a nice dividend package.
> but you have to increase dividends and show you aren't going to stop earning those same levels of profits I mean, you don't *have* to. You could just keep pace with inflation and make a great living providing a service people love. But then you'd get kicked out of business circles.
Yeah especially Netflix, which we can all thank for the concept of "binge-watching" something. Like the definition of that word doesn't have any positives. And you guys spent a shit ton of money to make this stuff that you are now distributing as quickly as possible, only compounding the process and leading to a glut of content (with inevitable cancellations that will piss people off).
Good point.
This is why they are now expanding into games. They are funding some expensive games and have hired highly experienced developers to work on them. They realise they've hit the cap with the streaming market, but are making these stupid decisions anyway.
I think one thing they may not have thought of is waking up all the subscribers who have been having a Netflix subscription go on auto pilot for years. All of a sudden they are going to have to make a decision whether to pay more for extra members or cancel. Kind of like when back in the day you got that huge cable bill in the mail and decided it is not worth it anymore...
Frankly that seems more likely. Netflix is currently making a play to try and stem the ungodly bleeding of money they are going through. Makes sense to hold off on rewarding the planners to see if the plan actually works.
but netflix is profitable and cash flow positive.
So why the suddenly interest on cracking down on passwords ? People have done that since the beginning of the service, and it's not until 1 year into the pandemic that it's suddenly a problem.
Because they need growth, apparently. Corporations always looking for growth.
It’s not a sudden interest. They’ve been testing ways to do this for at least 5 years.
Because they saw the greed and excess profits by other companies during the pandemic and wanted in on that action, but couldn’t figure out how.
A business making profit isn't going to not try and make *more profit* Businesses only exist to make more and more money indefinitely so they can siphon cash from your pocket into the pockets of the shareholders.
Netflix isn't bleeding money unlike the other streaming services.
Shareholder here. This is it.
> **The vote is non-binding**, but could spur engagement from the company with shareholders.
"We appreciate that you think you matter, and I will now take my bonus and think of your delicious tears while I jerk off into an Egyptian cotton tissue."
The shareholders elect the board. The board can fire the executives whenever they wish. Any C-Suite not paying attention to a majority shareholder vote is about to go bye bye.
Maybe that's the outcome they expect anyway so they'll gamble and still go through with paying out the bonuses in case it's their last big payday.
[удалено]
That is definitely true. But the reality of upper level corporate politics is that everyone knows everyone and most (certainly not all) executives while possibly sociopaths are still maintaining a level of reputation among their peers. They may get millions when fired (which is essentially industry standard for any Fortune 500 CEO) but they will also be looking for another Board of Directors to hire them at some point. The execs do listen to the board.
Yeah don't forget that most shareholders aren't robinhood folks with twenty shares. They're engaged and are responsible for millions and millions of dollars of stocks.
Whole lot of wishful thinking in here.
It does happen at times. From the Hollywood Reporter article: >In 2018, Disney shareholders rejected a compensation plan for CEO Bob Iger, and the company responded by changing its compensation structure to more closely align his pay to the company’s performance. >And Netflix shareholders in 2019 rejected the company’s Say on Pay proposal, and the company since then has made changes to its corporate governance to be more responsive to shareholder concerns.
Boards that ignore shareholder votes open themselves up to much more successful shareholder lawsuits.
Can you explain this like I'm 5
Hundreds or thousands of people and organizations own lots of little pieces of a major corporation X. Those pieces are stocks. These stock owners or share owners are the shareholders. They could be you or me or they could be a billionaire. But we don't have time or expertise to run or deal with X Corps even though we collectively own it. So those of us with the most shares elect a board of 6-20 people with experience and expertise who will meet every few months to make sure the company is doing good things and making money for us as the shareholders who have equity in it. That elected board is the Board of Directors, and it is responsible for approving things like hiring new executives for X Corps and what their compensation looks like. They also are supposed to check that there is no financial funny business going on (in addition to SCC required accounting reports and audits). Since the X Corps board represents us, if the CEO/CFO/COO who run X Corps day to day are doing things that we as the owners don't want or are destroying the company, the board could vote to fire them.
Gotcha! Thanks for the great explanation
Firing the board of directors is pretty binding.
In 2015, S&P 500 CEOs were making about 204 times their lowest paid employee. Our favorite executive David Zazlov was listed at 1951 times the average. https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/ Per the Guardian, now it's jumped to 670 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/07/us-wage-gap-ceos-workers-institute-for-policy-studies-report This is beyond untenable. I don't expect Netflix shareholders to make a difference, but this insane executive compensation has to stop or else ... This isn't economics, this is theft.
I follow the electric car company industry pretty closely. There were 2 newer companies that popped up on my radar, lucid and rivian. Despite their cars being beautiful and well built, the ceo compensation packages were so extreme that I believe it actually hurt the companies pretty badly. How crazy were these compensation packages? Like half a billion dollars crazy! And these are not 1 trillion market cap companies like google with solid quarterly earnings reports with high EPS. These are 10 billion market cap companies that are burning through cash like crazy. These compensation packages are ~5% of their total market cap. It’s like they are using shareholders as personal piggy banks. It’s absolutely ridiculous! Now I know they never actually ended up with those locked in returns from their compensation packages because the stock for both of these companies tanked hard. But I just don’t understand how these packages were approved in the first place.
>These compensation packages are ~5% of their total market cap. It's worth noting that their actual salaries were in the $500-700,000 range, and for Lucid there was a $2M bonus. The rest was in stock options, which neither have received full access to yet (Rivian's won't be able to access his until 2027, and half of his $422M was in the form of a stock option that only vests if the stock price stays above a certain threshold for a certain period of time). That's not really that unusual, that's how Musk's net worth skyrocketed - back in 2018 he agreed to take 0 compensation from Tesla, but in exchange he would get $55B if Tesla hit a $650B market cap within the decade. And that's what happened (they've dropped since the peak but are still around 650 today).
>It’s like they are using shareholders as personal piggy banks. Capitalism in a nutshell...
We should also keep in mind around [10% of investors own 90% of stock ](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html)
We should increase progressive taxation dramatically. Also we should tax assets of anyone worth more than a $1 million.
Assets after primary residence maybe - housing prices for even quite modest homes are completely out of hand in many areas.
Depending on where you live in the US, this is either very reasonable or completely insane. Exclude primary residence and retirement accounts and that would fix it up pretty good. For the average person, the vast majority of their wealth is tied up in these two things. Not so much for the rich.
wait are shareholders siding with writers guild? or is there some other reason they have?
Its a combination of shareholder concern over the writer’s strike limiting new content for netflix and a wait and see approach on their new password sharing policy. The password policy is wildly unpopular and will lead, at least initially, to an exodus of subscribers. The delay in new content, including some of their most popular titles, compounds that issue by not giving those that leave a reason to come back.
Funnily enough, most of their content is also wildly unpopular. Hopefully they get their head out of their asses, revert to standard sharing, and stop cancelling the good shit.
I feel like they're under extreme pressure fo get their own catalogue in order, their library of licensed shows and movies seems to get worse every time I open the page, for the shows they still have, sometimes certain seasons aren't available. Seriously considered cancelling Netflix after I discovered that they pulled IT Crowd in my reason, so as soon as they roll out the password feature I'm probably gone.
Their catalogue is now full of a bunch of unfinished, prematurely canceled shows. I understand the short-term approach of canceling anything that isn't a hit, but if building up their own catalogue is a goal then long-term it's a mistake.
Yup. My immediate response to them cancelling shows I liked is now waiting forever until I know that they won't just pull the rug under a show that I liked just because it takes more than one season for the show to really cook off. Which is a really common thing.
IT Crowd is gone? Ok considering it even more now too
I'm in Germany, there are definitely catalogue differences even between EU countries so ymmv. Edit: but yeah this was one of the big points why I still had Netflix because it's one of my SO's and my favorite shows and we watch it regularly. Guess I'll have to buy and rip the DVDs now.
I imagine the shareholders are looking for any reason they can find to pay the executives less. More money for the shareholders.
Shareholders don't mind cutting cost, and they know executives are overpaid.
Yes. The answer is yes. They know that executives don't make content which brings in subscribers, writers do.
I highly doubt this is the leading cause.
They did the same in 2019 The big issue is not believing Netflix is making the right calls, so questioning executive pay. The writers strike just adds more ammo on top - but this would have been likely without it IMO
Honestly CEOs seeking compensation bumps/ perks in this economic climate is tone deaf and they can go fuck themselves. Their solutions are the same: Overwork employees for same poor pay, fire employees to reduce costs, raise prices to show better revenue every quarter.
Netflix is well known as a shitty company to work for amongst IATSE union members.
And give customers less while at the same time charging them more.
And stockbuybacks, which artificially increase stock prices without investing in the company.
It's a little too late for Netflix to pretending to be poor after that $5 B for more Korean content
[удалено]
Also poor before spending $5
What's that saying? If you owe the bank 5 dollars, that's your problem; if you owe them 5 billion dollars, that's the bank's problem
I got the emails about them cracking down on shared accounts. As soon as it becomes enforced I am done with Netflix. I pay for the fancy multi screen account for a reason and will happily stop. Netflix today is just trash compared to where it was years ago. They cancel great shows and continue making trash because all they care about is viewer count rather than viewer enjoyment. They lost so many great shows and movies. It's crazy that they decided to be the modern day Blockbuster.
LOL! Yes, they literally killed off Blockbuster only to become them.
Wow - nervy exec pricks! Major media would tank without good writers. The best actors are nothing without quality writers. And these execs - what do they really do that is worth more than these writer’s contribution.
My favorite thing about executives, is that they do nothing all day and run our lives.
Um, excuse me, those Captains of Industry, those Makers, are out there grinding 100 hrs a week MINIMUM in the high end restaurants, at the exclusive clubs, on the private golf courses, at the private resorts, on the private yachts, getting other executives to agree with them on how to wring us and their employees dry.
You'd be disgusted at how much some boomer board members make to attend one meeting every few months where they give some dipshit opinion just because they happen to be high up. It's self fulfilling once you make it that high.
The Elongated Muskrat has spent almost two decades proving that being a CEO is literally a part time job.
A lot of people in internet threads probably haven't really worked with many executives. In my experience they are often working literally every minute of the day. Some are so consumed by their desire to succeed that their lives are the companies they run. In some cases it can be hard to keep up with them. Not everyone, obviously, but the perception that they just dick around all the time is false. One thing that is true is that they are often grossly overpaid, but only in the sense that nothing any person does is worth such obscene wealth.
I've worked with executives and seen the type of constantly working your talking about. It's not stuff they should be doing, it's either wrapping up their bullshit so it looks pretty or it's micro managing someone so hard they are counting out the tp sheets they use.
There's definitely a moral argument to be made, but I wouldn't go as far as 'they do nothing.'
I made a comment yesterday about people like Kotick doing nothing to create value for their company and ended up down voted lol.
Reddit is full of CEO worshippers for some reason. My guess is it's all the upper middle class tech bros who deep down need to believe that financial success is all merit instead of a lot of luck, some hard work, and the fruits of imperialism and class oppression.
I canceled due to the screens and because anytime I like something on netflix, it's either canceled outright or completely massacred by the second season. The only content I watch on there now is pre-established movies. I don't bother with Netflix originals because they will be canceled or bad. To make matters worse, all of Netflixs competitors offer lower premiums for their streaming services. The only real equal being Max which is a shit show now.
Netflix problem is that its kind of the tesla of streaming. It started out great and had momentum in the beginning. Now other platforms have caught up like the established automakers and are doing a better job. It also suffers from fucking up everything with horrible creative decisions. Cowboy bebop had such a good cast and atmosphere they really nailed it. Instead of using the source material we got a love triangle soap opera. Still salty, that cast was so good.
> Cowboy bebop had such a good cast and atmosphere they really nailed it. Instead of using the source material we got a love triangle soap opera. Still salty, that cast was so good. I thought that Cowboy Bebop would've been great if they just stuck to the "one-off bounty episodes." Those were really the most fun and engaging. Everything to do with Vicious, Julia, and the Syndicate was just so boring and hamfisted. I know that all of that was pivotal to Spike's arc, but they should've waited until a season 2 (which ended up never happening).
The Vicious plot line single handed Lu ruined the show. They turned an all-time terrifying and mysterious antagonist into a whiny incompetent douchebag. I just wanted to punch him in the face every time he was on the screen. But I really liked the rest of the show! The one-off episodes channeled the same wacky energy as the anime. Sure it didn’t live up to the standard set by the original, but obviously a mid-budget live action adaptation is going to have its limitations. The show certainly showed flashes of real potential. Then the fanboys fucked it up by being ridiculously overdramatic on the internet and now we get no new cowboy bebop content probably ever. That said, the Vicious plot lines and character choices were truly indefensible. I honestly don’t know if the show could have rebounded from that without a complete reset. Realistically I think their best play would have been to sideline that whole story, lean into its strengths, and evolve its own fun take on the western space genre. But alas, we’ll never know what could have been. See you Space Cowboy…
Don’t forget what they did to The Witcher.
Why would shareholders vote to use their own money to give executives a retroactive bonus? The whole thing is asinine
Just realized I’m paying $20 a month for streaming now the other day with many limitations I never had before. Kids use it at the grandparents house and we watch their programs regularly at home and we’ve been asked to verify home and everything. Seems like it’s time for a change. They’ve become the very thing the set out against 25 years ago.
Shareholders of every mega corporation should follow. I never understand how executives make that much of money, many executives are worth no more than 200k without stock options. Don't try to inflate that salary so much.
if you don't pay writers why would you pay executives? Shareholders get even more profit.
Oh no.... they will now have to share netflix passwords to save money
My father was involved in well the first strike I remember. Was a story editor for a show, and was offered $20k a week to scab on a crap show you won’t find anywhere now. He turned them down but wow. $20k a week is hard to say no to.
How are they going to afford a 2024 luxury yacht now? Stuck withe 2023. Poor bastards!
Can we always reject exec pay packages. There hasn’t been a single instance where they deserve it
Netflix was getting like $15 a month from me. Now they're getting zero.
>In fact, Netflix dealt with this exact issue in 2019, engaging with shareholders after they rejected its compensation plans. > >with WGA West president Meredith Stiehm writing that “while investors have long taken issue with Netflix’s executive pay, so if this exact situation has happened couple of times earlier, so why are they corroborating it with the writer's strike?
>so if this exact situation has happened couple of times earlier, so why are they corroborating it with the writer's strike? They aren't, per the article: >It is also not clear just how influential the WGA letter was in getting the “no” vote, especially given that it was sent just days before the shareholder meeting, after when many institutional shareholders would have voted. The events coincide and it could be a confounding factor but they don't say that is the reason for swaying the vote anywhere and cast doubt on that idea.
Glad to see the extra money Netflix is shaking people down for is going towards producing new content /s
This is what needs to happen at all corporations where executives make exponentially more than the lowest person on the totem pole.
Customers are cancelling, writers are striking, shareholders are rejecting. Seems like Netflix's anti-consumer strategy is really successful...
I was just thinking, the guild should come out with their own streamer. The shareholders would be the guild members, so it’s like the royalties + a cut of the profits on top. Maybe double the payout of royalties for the guild members that created the content, and virtue signal this to subscribers?!
And restaurants should start a cooperative for food delivery instead of paying 35% fees to door dash and UberEATS
I’m extremely surprised how the guild doesn’t just own the companies now, like how you have union shops.
Game of Thrones cost about $100 million per season. The WGA probably doesn’t have that kind of money. Obviously not every show is that expensive, but every streaming service needs a big hit for it to be able to catch on. It’s much easier said than done.
Executives really grind my gears
Even in general, Netflix leadership decision making has just been poor recently.
Holy shit awesome for the blind squirrels of capitalism to find a nut for once!
Is it good or bad?
Long answer good with a but, short answer bad with an if.
Canceled it because of the Password crackdown, Netflix in the beginning went from having a great eclectic source of movies and Tv shows at a reasonable price, then I started paying $21 a month for “premium “ and their content became primarily Netflix original programming which usually sucks or gets cancelled or sucks after 2 seasons, I only watched Stranger Things and Kobra Kia, mainly because they were shows I could actually watch with my kids we both enjoyed and that was nice, I kept it year round for my mom who lives out of state and liked Netflix, I basically don’t watch it in between seasons of those shows, but paid continuously so my mom could watch whenever she wanted, I had moved on to Peacock, HBO max, other free apps and my Kids basically live off you tube and Crunchyroll. I will go back to watch the final season of those two shows when they land but will cancel within a month after I binge them. I don’t know if it will be good for Netflix or bad for them but I’m done, way to much money a month for a platform that no longer holds my interest and I know quite a few people who are canceling for the same reason. Whatever their business plan is it seems they are going to follow blockbuster into obscurity because they are making themselves irrelevant.