Amazon Prime Video Calls out Netflix for Password Sharing Crackdown

By Michael Hein

The streaming wars got personal this week as other companies poked fun at Netflix for its new password-sharing policy. Netflix's new rules about sharing passwords went into effect in the U.S. this week, and many responses referenced an old tweet where Netflix had written, "Love is sharing a password." The official Twitter account for Prime Video in the U.K. posted a reply to that six-year-old tweet on Thursday, and fans went wild.

In March 2017, the official Netflix account tweeted, "Love is sharing a password," implying that the company was fine with users sharing their logins with each other. The streamer has been trying to crack down on password-sharing for the last year, and that old tweet has often been thrown back at them since then. Prime Video got in on that trend on Thursday by posting a screenshot of a home screen on the Prime Video interface, which starts with the question "Who's watching?" The names of the five different profiles spelled out the phrase: "Everyone who has our password," with a heart emoji for good measure.

The post picked up over half a million likes and nearly 100,000 retweets as well, and it sparked a conversation about password-sharing in the replies. Many users applauded Amazon for getting a shot in against Netflix here, though others had their own critiques for both companies. Many pointed out that Prime Video might regret this tweet if it ever decided to implement its own new policy on passwords.

Netflix announced that it would change its policy on password-sharing over a year ago when the company had its first fiscal quarter with a loss in subscribers rather than a gain. The company began testing the new system in other countries last year and received extreme backlash from users, but kept pushing forward in broader markets. Finally, the new rules hit the U.S. this week, with subscribers receiving an email explaining how it would work.

The new rules don't prohibit password-sharing, they just ask users to pay for the privilege. Netflix asks subscribers to identify their home location and wifi network so that it can verify all the devices used in that household. If someone tries to use Netflix with the same account in another household, the subscriber will be asked to pay an additional fee of $7.99 per month. If they decline, the other household will be booted off the service. Users on the Standard plan are allowed to add up to one additional household to their account while users on the Premium plan can add up to two. It's unclear how this is impacting the number of subscribers and other key metrics so far.

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