• Netflix mistakenly published rules regarding account sharing but not before the world caught a glimpse.
• The update had many in the US and UK threatening to cancel their account.
• Unfortunately for Netflix, the piracy market has evolved and is waiting with open arms for new viewers.

This week Netflix made a mistake, and no, that doesn’t mean a new season of Manifest is on its way.

No, the streaming platform accidentally published an update to a Help Center article regarding account sharing. This kicked off a fuss as Netflix would seemingly start requiring users to log into an account from its primary location once every 31 days among other things.

This update, however, happened to be a mistake.

“For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries. Netflix has since updated it,” Netflix said in a statement sent to the media.

Unfortunately, this mistake has customers in the US and UK threatening to cancel their accounts on social media and various comment sections. It’s clear that Netflix has upset a fair number of people but whether these customers will follow through on their threats is unclear.

The firm however anticipates that users will simply sign up for their own account when the sharing restrictions are put in place. And make no mistake, sharing restrictions are coming to more countries.

“From our experience in Latin America, we expect some cancel reaction in each market when we roll out paid sharing, which impacts near-term member growth. But as borrower households begin to activate their own standalone accounts and extra member accounts are added, we expect to see improved overall revenue, which is our goal with all plan and pricing changes,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders earlier this year.

This feels very much like Netflix is out of touch with its user base but, we also don’t have a division that is studying the behaviour of Netflix users so maybe the firm has a better grasp on customer behaviour than we do. As users though, we would be inclined to drop our Premium subscription to a Basic tier should restrictions on sharing be implemented.

For many, the mistakenly published rule update was a glimpse into the future of the platform as it chases higher revenue. Growth over at Netflix has been slow with the platform’s results for 2022 showing a 4 percent increase in paid memberships.

This comes after nearly one million subscribers left the platform in 2022 and the firm has struggled to keep its revenue per member up. While things improved over the rest of the year, this latest mistake could lead to more account terminations.

This is not to say folks don’t want to watch Netflix content. As TorrentFreak reports demand for Netflix in the piracy market is on the rise.

Unfortunately for Netflix, piracy has evolved over the years and there are many avenues one can take to watch the content they want. What’s more, VPNs provide a shade of protection for those pirating content and thanks to Netflix’s geographic restrictions on content, VPNs are a lot more widespread than they were nearly a decade ago.

Netflix has created a perfect monster and pirates are waiting in the wings to welcome new users.

One thing is clear, nobody likes paid sharing and maybe it requires a bit more time in the oven before Netflix rolls it out to more territories.