Throughout the years, streaming services have gotten more popular and arguably more greedy. These services are often utilized by college students, whether for the sake of binging or providing background noise.
Netflix, a widely used streaming service, is one of the greedy giants of streaming. With the implementation of its password sharing rule, which prohibits people from accessing accounts in different households, college students who utilize this service are left to navigate somewhere else.
Other streaming services have either already followed suit or are planning to implement this feature.
Most college students share an account with their friends or family, sharing the password between one another. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. However, streaming services think that it’s an end-all-be-all issue to their business.
A rule on the Netflix Help Center website states that “a Netflix account is meant to be shared by people living together in one household.”
A subsection in the same menu also states that “people who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch; or in many countries you can buy an extra member slot to add an extra member to your account.”
This crackdown went into effect in May 2023 and sparked plenty of outrage from users of the service.
This rule is a useless regulation that I feel is used to line Netflix’s pockets with more money.
Disney+ and Hulu are two of the other streaming services who have implemented this rule into their guidelines.
Password sharing is not the only issue that these streaming services have. Multiple services, including Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, Disney+ and Max also charge users more for an ad-free experience.
These services were originally intended to provide customers an escape from the commercials of cable television, providing an ad-free experience. This feature was once included in any tier of subscription, including the lowest.
For example, a Hulu plan with no ads costs $18.99 a month. Meanwhile, the basic tier with ads costs $9.99 a month, and the student plan costs $1.99 a month, still with ads.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that these companies need money to operate, but they seemed to be doing fine before these arbitrary rules started being put into place. Now, they’re just making a lot of people mad, and rightfully so.
With the addition of the potential TikTok ban coming up, there’s a chance that these services will become the go-to entertainment apps.
These companies cannot keep doing this. They should at least spare the college students from it. We’re already poor, so don’t add to the financial stress any further.
