Is there some sort of data you require from your user? I guess there's a preferences algorithm you may have cultivated, but that's really it. Unless you really care about having handcrafted the Netflix algorithm, it kind of feels like that's just an excuse.
I have the premium Netflix subscription level (4 streams), and Netflix accounts are personal. Obviously I share this with my wife and daughter.
I want to split out my accounts too, for both the above reason, and that I don't like sending them a password so they can log in on their devices.
Why can't we have our own accounts and manage them into a family account?
But since accounts are personal, do Netflix expect me to watch 4 streams simultaneously on my 4 different devices, using my 4 eyes with my 4 brain halves?
I recognize that I'm probably not classified under "password cheat", but their still current solution feels really dirty.
Yeah, that's a different use case than above - I'm fairly certain that's exactly what the family plan is meant to be used for - multiple users in the same household.
Even then it's not great that you have to share the master account password which contains the billing information (maybe they need a read-only and admin password, but now we're complicating it past the "password123" crowd), but really that seems to inadvertently encourage good password discipline - if you don't trust the people using your account, they probably don't qualify as a user on your account.
Some of us who have at least some involvement with security do have to cringe a bit at this. Yeah, I have a unique password for Netflix and there's only so much harm someone with access to the account could do. But don't share passwords even with people you trust is still ingrained enough that it just feels wrong and certainly isn't a good practice in general.
Who knows who a kid, for example, is going to share the password with?
Though, as you say, requiring the password to be shared to share the account probably helps limit how casually people will give others access.
This is exactly my problem. I can't imagine any less than at least 75% of all engineers at Netflix cringing at the current solution regarding shared passwords.
A further gripe is them not having a netflix.com/link system in place for settop boxes, so I need to enter a randomized 30+ character/multi-word phrase or whatever scheme password using a directional remote on my Nvidia Shield. Not often, but when I do it's with seething rage.
Yup, and as they are in your household, there's little reason for them to actually know the password - if you're physically in the household with them, you could easily log them on yourself without ever telling them.
> But since accounts are personal, do Netflix expect me to watch 4 streams simultaneously on my 4 different devices, using my 4 eyes with my 4 brain halves?
Netflix accounts are not personal. Their terms of use fully support shared use within the same household. That's why they support multiple user profiles per account.
