Netflix may possibly no longer allow you and your circle to share a Netflix account.
***cue crying***
So if you have been piggybacking off your ex’s account, let’s just say it may be time to saddle up and purchase your own subscription.
Thanks to new technology and capitalism, Netflix may be able to detect account sharing.
At the biggest tech show in the world – CES 2019 – video software provider Synamedia revealed a new AI-powered system designed to crack down on streaming services, ultimately eliminating account sharing.
Sky has already invested in Synamedia.
“We’ve long collaborated with the team at Synamedia SPVSS to help bring great content, products and entertainment to millions of customers across Europe – this investment will help deepen our innovate partnership.”
This new software can analyse which users are logged into certain streaming service accounts as well as where exactly the users are watching from in order to flag shared accounts among consumers.
It is called Synamedia Credentials Sharing Insight and it uses ‘behavioral analytics’ and ‘machine learning’ to monitor credential-sharing activity across streaming services.
The system allows the operator to specify how many users exactly should be using a single account and “..combat the rapid rise in account sharing between friends and families, turning it instead into a new revenue-generating opportunity for operators.”
Yeesh.
The AI can also monitor a subscriber database for any potential fraudulent activity.
According to Synamedia, it can additionally decide where and how the account is being used.
The firm’s recent research has discovered that 26 percent of millennials give out their information for video streaming services
CEO Reed Hastings of Netflix understands how ‘casual sharing’ is very common and believes it is a ‘positive thing’ as he believes people who did it were more likely to become paying subscribers in the future.
Synamedia is still a more harmful form of for-profit password-sharing by large-scale fraudsters according to Trusted Reviews as they equate it to piracy.
More research from Parks Associates found that by 2021, credentials sharing will account for $9.9 billion of losses in pay-TV revenues.
Synamedia says the system has already began trials.
The CPO of Synamedia, Jean Marc Racine, said:
“Casual credentials sharing is becoming too expensive to ignore. Our new solution gives operators the ability to take action. Many casual users will be happy to pay an additional fee for a premium, shared service with a greater number of concurrent users. It’s a great way to keep honest people honest while benefiting from an incremental revenue stream.”
The technology was created to bring down the hammer on those who use a basic service and share their account logins with their friends.
Folks responded to the announcement made on Twitter with disdain, to say the least.
“I pay the bill. If I want to share my password with my family it’s my choice no one else’s.”
While another user commented:
“Netflix and Prime are making Incredible profits regardless of the ‘shared users’ – you don’t try fix what isn’t broken.”
So if you pay for your premium service, you will most likely be fine but if not — well, maybe you should just cave and purchase the premium service like your fellow adults.
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