Netflix knows you’re a thief. The streaming service knows you’ve been using the login information given to you from your friend, co-worker, parents, or ex-partner. And Netflix is going to stop you from doing it. But the company is going to do it in a way that is nice, don’t worry.
According to a new earnings call from Netflix (via Variety), co-CEO Reed Hastings talked about the recent reports that the company was testing a variety of ways to prevent password sharing amongst its users. Though Netflix has yet to announce or show off the final implementation of the software that will be used to weed out those free-loaders, Hastings is here to assure the honest, good ol’ paying subscribers that there won’t be any inconvenience to prove their identity.
“We’ll test many things, but we would never roll out something that feels like ‘turning the screws’” on people who enjoy the service, he said. “It’s gotta feel like it makes sense to consumers, that they understand.”
As we covered recently, news that Netflix is testing ways to find out if people are paying for the service or borrowing passwords from others. Password sharing has become a big issue, apparently, and even though the service has hundreds of millions of paying subscribers around the world, there are plenty more that are enjoying the platform for free. And mega-corporations have to mega-corporation, right?
Netflix COO and chief product officer Greg Peters said the testing that is currently happening is “mostly about letting that process unfold and letting our members speak to us about what the ideal model is.”
Whether that’s going to end up resulting in a process that does text codes that you’ll have to confirm every so often or whatever is still unknown. But it does appear that the days of people freely using others’ accounts will be coming to an end at Netflix. At least, it’ll be a lot more inconvenient to do so.