Netflix looks to carry out its password-sharing crackdown in 2023

The days of your whole family or friend group working off one Netflix account look like it’s ending. In many ways, the streaming service is trying to spur subscription growth (it added a lower-cost, ad-supported tier a couple of months ago). According to The Wall Street Journal, Netflix is looking to end free password sharing some time in the new year. When the changes eventually occur, they will affect over 100 million account holders.

Netflix was experimenting with ways to crack down on password sharing overseas in countries like Chile and Costa Rica. If you share your account with extra users, you’ll most likely have to pay an additional $2.99 on top of your monthly price. Maybe Netflix will take another route and have other users sign up for an account of their own. No specific details have been released just yet.

I know many of us have enjoyed watching our favorite Netflix shows from the comfort of somebody else’s profile. You had to figure it was only a matter of time before Netflix ended all of this. The service has been scrambling to find a way to push for people to sign up for their service after it hit a wall after the pandemic-related boom of 2020. Netflix’s $6.99 basic ad tier has gotten off to a bad start, only accounting for 9% of subscribers. Companies are starting to go into a headwind of rising production costs, inflation, and realizing there are only a finite amount of people in the world. You can only use growth as a metric for so long.

Now, Netflix does have new seasons for You and The Witcher coming around the bend. However, those might be enough for people with the streaming service to stick with it. So, maybe start working on a contingency plan or pool some money together if this will be a problem for you.