Netflix, what's behind the strategy of transferring shared profiles

Netflix

For some time now, Netflix has been on the defensive. The reasons are known: competitors are increasing - the latest is Paramount + -, market share is being eroded and subscribers are even starting to drop. And so the counteroffensive of the colossus founded by Reed Hastings starts: new cheaper formulas with advertising and above all open war on password sharing, or the practice of sharing a single subscription between multiple homes (in theory prohibited, but so far widely tolerated by Netflix) .

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On the other hand part, when shareholders start to take your breath away (the value of the shares has dropped by 52% since the beginning of the year) the estimated 100 million of those who in the eyes of Netflix are "freeloaders" become a potential loot to be monetized as soon as possible . In South America (the first continent to deal with this change of strategy), the methods adopted by Netflix were quite direct: in some countries, those who connected from a different home were encouraged to sign up for a new subscription (but this strategy has just been decommissioned, probably due to numerous cancellations of subscriptions), in other Latin American countries it was instead preferred to charge an extra to add individual users who are outside the home.

In the northern world -western, Netflix is ​​instead taking it much further away. Not only is it still possible to share passwords without particular problems, but the streaming platform has decided to adopt an indirect strategy that masks the desire to let us buy a subscription of our own in a gesture of concern, attention to the changes that our life goes through.

“People move. Families are growing. Relationships change. Life continues ”, writes Netflix in an email that is being sent to all its subscribers, pointing out how today it is possible - unless the functionality is blocked within a few days - to transfer one's profile. The imagined situation is the following: you break up with your partner but - in order not to lose the personalization of the Netflix profile, the history and everything else - you are no longer forced to continue sharing the same subscription (which is a bit unpleasant) , you can now transfer the profile to a new account that you pay for yourself.

Fight against sharing

Already tested in several South American countries at the same time as the fight against password sharing (which we, instead, it hasn't arrived yet), more than allowing us to move our account peacefully it seems to be a passive-aggressive strategy to stop us from scrounging the parental subscription or sharing it with friends, in view of a crackdown that could leave us deprived of both.

This strategy also limits a high risk: if we had to activate an account from scratch, what would prevent us from taking a look at the competitors' offers? By allowing us to transfer the profile, Netflix seems to want to take us by the hand to a new subscription on its platform, removing the siren song that could distract us along the way.

That's not all. As reported by the lawyer Ernesto Belisario, digital expert, Netflix has not limited itself to finding an easy way to move the scrounged profile into one that we pay for in full, it has also found a way to keep what is most dear to him: our data . If we were to start from scratch, Netflix would lose all the data relating to users who in many cases have been profiled for years, whose tastes, times, viewing mode, style of poster that has the greatest probability of attracting the audience are known. look, preferences for animal documentaries, arthouse movies or action TV series and much more.

If Netflix forced you to stop scrounging for a subscription without offering "profile transfer", it would be in turn forced to restart profiling on your account. And that would be a serious loss indeed, especially at a time when competition is pressing. People move and relationships change, but for Netflix it's critical that our data stay with us. Forever.