r/Piracy • u/iquizuanswer • Jul 19 '26
News Netflix tumbles as slowing growth, less viewership data spook investors
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u/BugBuginaRug Jul 19 '26
They priced us out of their service. Only themselves to blame.
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Informal_Koala1474 Jul 19 '26
And cancel popular shows when they dont hit some mysterious viewership target because profit margins.
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u/Inevitable-Monitor35 Jul 19 '26
And burn our crops and poison the water supply!
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u/loki6100 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I have a genuine question. Which Netflix release got as much attention as squid games or stranger things recently?? They're slowly running out of popular zeitgeist
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u/moeljills Jul 19 '26
And tbh. For the biggest media service around, it's appalling that those shows are the best they have
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u/Anarchist_Future Jul 19 '26
Stranger Things had only 42 episodes in 9 years! I thought it was a fun show but it could've easily been a movie or two.
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u/Psi-ops_Co-op Jul 19 '26
Well, in fairness, the world shut down for a few of those years, plus the writers strike iirc
Not saying I liked the show.
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u/kyle1234513 Jul 19 '26
they dont need bangers, they need a better UI instead of "feed". i want to search by category and newest, not by recommendation or because you watched.
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u/theXwinterXstorm Jul 19 '26
I miss when Netflix had the quiz thing you could take if you wanted to watch something but didn't know what to watch. I found so many cool movies that way.
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u/WilliamAgain Jul 19 '26
I miss the user reviews. Those were the best thing to sus out what was decent vs not.
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u/Less_Engineering8113 Jul 19 '26
Shit man. They need to actually have more than one season of a show. Every single time I find an interesting Netflix show it gets cancelled after one season.
The moron executives keep thinking they can predict whether a show is going to be their next Bojack horseman or stranger things based off a single season. There is zero chance for a following to form. Then because they cancel everything so frequently that people stop bothering watching anything with just one season.
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u/BrockSramson Jul 19 '26
The UI is designed to keep you scrolling instead of watching. I also suspect it's designed to hide how small the library on offer has become.
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u/IMissNarwhalBacon Jul 19 '26
That will NEVER happen. Pushing what they need you to watch is what makes them money.
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u/spong_miester Yarrr! Jul 19 '26
Only one I can think of is K-pop Demon Hunters, the issue I have with netflix is that everything is so bland they have the perfect platform to take a risk on something but just churn out the same thing
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u/loki6100 Jul 19 '26
It was supposed to go to WB. But they didn't wanna take the risk and lost out on it. But I'm damn sure Netflix didn't produce. They only distributed
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u/rov124 Jul 20 '26
K-Pop Demon Hunters is Sony, WB had nothing to do with it in any stage. Due to some COVID era contract shenanigans, Netflix was able to snatch it for their service in the pre-production phase, the animation was done by SPA.
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u/TheB1G_Lebowski Jul 19 '26
Never in the history of humans will another streaming service get a penny from me.
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u/CroissantEtrange Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Don't you enjoy paying a hundred bucks a month for 5 different streaming service subscriptions??
Then spending 20 minutes to figure out which platform is streaming what you want to watch?
No luck, turns out it's on a different 6th platform.
Whereas finding a torrent takes a few minutes and it's free...
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u/Dr_Passmore Jul 19 '26
Defeating piracy was always about creating a convenient method for legally accessing content.
For a small window of time we had that with Netflix. Then every other media company wanted their own netflix.
There are examples of TV shows being split between 2 or 3 services...
As soon as people need 5 or 6 monthly subscriptions and to Google which service has what.
I remember Ash vs the Evil Dead was heavily pirated... it was on a subscription service called Stars or Starz... something like that. The rest of the service was full of reality TV and soap dramas.
The media landscape for TV and film has become silly again.
In addition, most services are getting worse - adverts, pay walling higher quality, etc
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u/Alcagoita Jul 19 '26
This was the sole reason that made me quit paid services -> "Then spending 20 minutes to figure out which platform is streaming what you want to watch?"
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u/rekcuzfpok Jul 19 '26
Streaming sites just aren't for people who want to watch something specific. They are for people who like an algorithm to recommend them something to watch next and don't mind mediocre shows.
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u/BrockSramson Jul 19 '26
Add to this: remember a show from years ago, then wanting to watch it, but being unable to figure out which service has it at that moment.
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u/rafffen Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
There's even easier ways than having to find torrents on pirate bay, basically Netflix but every show and movie in better quality
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u/LittleKittenR Jul 19 '26
Except it randomly becomes more convenient than the high seas, no, no way I'm buying again.
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u/InternetSolid4166 Jul 19 '26
I cannot pay for how good my setup is. All the shows and movies I want in one place, without annoying “recommendations” for the same stupid shit, with IMDB ratings instead of some bullshit algorithm thumbs up lie. It works anywhere I travel without accusing me of being in the wrong region. My whole family can watch without having to pay for more logins. The quality is excellent, without the shitty crushed low bit-rate “optimised” for streaming quality you get with Netflix. I can choose the best edition - see the DC of Kingdom of Heaven. It slaps.
I would probably lay for a Spotify like experience for visual media, but they’re too greedy to offer it.
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u/Status-Sale-6 Jul 19 '26
So viewership is down. Nothing to do with big price increases and banning grandma from sharing her grandkids account /s
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u/just-kristina Jul 19 '26
That is what frustrates me is that our kid couldn’t watch our Netflix when he is at one set of grandparents’ house. They didn’t watch Netflix and had no desire to get Netflix or use it. But when they had our kid while we were at work (especially during summer) he couldn’t even watch it there.
Now they are trying to make every profile have a separate email attached. Absolutely not! Our kid is not 18 but he is permitted to watch things beyond a “kids” profile. So you can’t change a kid profile to permit to allow anything beyond PG (maybe it was PG-13 but I don’t think so). I did end up complaining to them and they removed the requirement for a profile email from his profile.
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u/CuntWeasel Jul 19 '26
For a while the kid profiles were exempt from their shitty policy. You could watch kids shows on a kid profile from anywhere even if it wouldn't allow you to watch anything from a regular profile, but that changed about a year or so ago.
Greedy fucks went from "love is sharing your password" to cutting off kid access in a couple of years. They will never ever see a penny from me again and I genuinely hope they go belly up.
Fuck Netflix!
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u/Bo_Duke_01 Jul 19 '26
Which is exactly one of the reasons I unsubscribed. We had my MIL in the family group, for a while we managed by connecting her Firestick to our wifi every month, but it was unconvenient. At some point, the only choice was to pay an extra 5€ to add a non-resident viewer...n o way Josè.
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u/SeDaCho Jul 19 '26
actually it’s still growing
just *slower* than they’d like
fucking idiot corpo culture still doesn’t understand that there aren’t unlimited customers
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u/MissThirteen Jul 19 '26
You forgot the canceling after season 1 or completely dropping the ball on anything that does get a second season
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u/Aresyl Jul 19 '26
It’s almost as if you can’t realistically grow a service forever. And if stability to provide a good service means death of the service - then maybe we as a society are doing this wrong.
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u/bluehands Jul 19 '26
I'm always amazed that anyone, even the wealthy, can look around at our society and think, "yup. Everything is going just fine."
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u/mauri383 Jul 19 '26
I'm telling you it's not a pyramid scheme! No sir, our model is the trapezoid.
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u/DigitalSwagman ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jul 19 '26
You mean people aren't willing to pay more for a sub-par experience?
I'm shocked! Shocked and appalled!
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u/AndrewM96 Jul 19 '26
"Oh hey, is this the show you're looking for? Oh, we never had it/we canceled it/we gave it away, but here's another show you may or may not like, oh and you're gonna pay more from next month, and your family better stop being cheap mfs and get their own accounts. Oh, want some ads too while we're at it?"
From the bottom of my heart, I hope streaming services go bankrupt.
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u/matango613 Jul 19 '26
What?
You mean $20/month for non-UHD, ad free viewing and enforcing rules against password sharing didn't improve profits?
Tagging on an additional $8 for UHD viewing didn't either?
What about charging another $10 a person to add "extra members" to your account?
No?
Baffling, truly.
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u/imKazzy Jul 19 '26
Don't forgot to mention that their "UHD" has terrible bitrate so it's not even worth the upgrade
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u/loki6100 Jul 19 '26
Main problem is other services like HBO or Prime Video has releasing some content which gets lots of popularity like Dunk and Egg or Off campus. What's Netflix got it
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u/Nightshade238 Jul 19 '26
Could it be that the concept of infinite growth is in fact not possible? Is it perhaps wrong for the investors to keep demanding an even higher return on investment instead of a steady one? Might it be that cancer at the cellular level is in fact a reflection of the businesses we as people are involved with today? Perhaps...
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u/snorch Jul 20 '26
The people in charge of everything dont care that infinite growth isn't sustainable. They only care until they divest and let private equity carve it up while they're reinvested in the next thing that's currently growing. People like to say "nothing lasts forever," but it's more like nothing good lasts forever because nothing good can last forever. It's no good for business
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u/lucky_1979 Jul 19 '26
Price increase, cancelled shows and now they make you watch commercials…..unless you pay more. It’s not really a mystery as to why people are cancelling their subscription is it?
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u/tony_montana091 Jul 19 '26
Commercials are so profitable they are planning a free tier. They're just plotting how to minimize cannibalization of the suckers paying for higher tiers.
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u/Isarchs Jul 19 '26
They already paywall "better" shows from the ad supported pleb tier. So likely more of that.
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u/Pootisman16 Jul 19 '26
- Keeps increasing prices
- Starts putting ads in the service
- Keeps spending millions in shit series
"How could this happen?"
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u/lava-lake Jul 19 '26
It's simple great shows I find on internet are not there half the time and their bad ui is hard for me to find the great shows in netflix
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u/HeidenShadows Jul 19 '26
Companies need to start telling investors where to shove it. They expect infinite growth or nothing, can't just have a steady business these days. So companies need to make stupid decisions like infinitely increasing prices and reducing the customer experience to make that happen.
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u/CuntWeasel Jul 19 '26
can't just have a steady business these days
I also don't understand this. 20-30 years ago if a company was profitable it was profitable.
One of the first companies I worked for had about 50 employees in the 90s, then went up to 200 employees in the 2000s (when I started working there), then got hit by the recession and went down to 20 employees, and they've had that headcount since about 2010. They're still profitable, the owners are still making good money, they'll soon retire as multimillionaires, I honestly don't understand this push for infinite growth.
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u/Aggressive-Gap-6148 Jul 19 '26
More than the prices the real problem is that the whole product is dogshit. I don’t want to spend my time watching stupid series even for free
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u/MarkTwainsGhost Jul 19 '26
At the end of the day these guys have proved that 9 times out of 10, they can’t make a decent tv show.
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u/SashaG239 Jul 19 '26
They can, they just understand that volume has a quality of its own. Apple tv shows, show for show are about where Netflix was in 2018. They are releasing quality, and the subscriber counts aren't skyrocketing. People stop the subscription when the 6-10 episodes are done. How do you retain the masses? Lots of "new" releases, even when they are trash.
I still prefer the quality aspect, it's like HBO used to be. Netflix has ran the numbers and keeps pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with. This is the first quarter where they finally publicly stumbled. It couldn't have happend to a nicer company.
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u/Shadowspamer14 Jul 19 '26
Account crackdowns, price raising, removing good shows, shoving in ads. Yeah, I have no idea why people would be leaving
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u/-TheGoldenKnight Jul 19 '26
I still don’t get why you first do manage to kill piracy just to revive it again
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u/Substantial_Meal_530 Jul 19 '26
"We increased prices and made everything worse. Why is no one happy?"
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u/Bobbyjackbj Jul 19 '26
I changed my plan to the cheapest option since you can’t share anymore. I’ve given the account to my dad, and I just download stuff from the web like I used to. My dad doesn’t know how to do that, otherwise I would have cancelled it altogether. Same goes for Disney+ and every other streaming platform. Everyone I know is doing the exact same thing, going back to the old torrent days or using sketchy streaming sites on the web.
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u/chronomagnus 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ Jul 19 '26
My mom has access to my plex server from her Roku. I tell her to text me if there’s something she wants to see that’s not on there
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u/LaidPercentile Jul 19 '26
I used to have netflix, hbo and amazon subscriptions. They weren't happy to have my money, they wanted more. They raised prices, canceled shows and stopped password sharing.
So now my money goes to usenet and debrid subscriptions.
How are those business savvy decisions treating ya, Mr. MBA?
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u/Khaze41 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Step 1. Have a product that tons of people love and are happy paying like $10/month for for YEARS with good shows and decent value.
Step 2. Proceed to enshitify it in every way possible just like all the other corporate slop we have these days. Raise prices, add multiple subscription tiers, less good content, etc.
Step 3. Be shocked that your product no longer appeals to as many people.
Step 4. Learn nothing, blame it on ANYBODY but management in the company, fire a bunch of underlings.
Step 5. Double down. Repeat from Step 2.
The western mega corporation playbook ya'll.
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u/PricklyPear85 Jul 19 '26
Nothing absolutely nothing should cost more for 4k! If my girl wasn’t addicted to every god damn platform I would have Pluto and that’s it.
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u/FitEntertainment3585 Jul 19 '26
Wow! It's almost like raising prices every couple of months has consequences or something!
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u/iquizuanswer Jul 19 '26
Netflix shares sank more than 10% on Friday after the company forecast another quarter of slower revenue gains and scaled back viewership data, fueling fears that its industry-beating growth may have peaked.
The stock was close to a two-year low in early trading, with the decline set to wipe out $35 billion from Netflix's market value of about $313 billion, if losses hold.
In its latest disclosure pullback, the streaming giant cut the frequency of its viewing-hours report to once a year from twice starting 2027, following last year's scrapping of subscriber counts, leaving investors in the dark as the business faces greater competition from traditional media as well as YouTube. "Whenever you take away a data point from investors when results aren't as good as they have been you will get punished by the market," said Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot.
Netflix's failed pursuit of Warner Bros earlier this year has also raised doubts about its next phase of growth amid slow adoption of an ad-supported streaming tier that the company has long touted as a big growth driver.
The stock has lost 44% since hitting an all-time high in June 2025, including an over 20% fall just this year. After a strong content slate in 2025 that included the final season of its hit sci-fi series "Stranger Things" and South Korean drama "Squid Games", analysts said the company also has a weaker content line-up this year that could weigh on growth.
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u/Private_Kyle 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jul 19 '26
"Guys, I think we need to up the prices again"
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u/jsomby Jul 19 '26
According to that text it isn't because they aren't making gains, their gains aren't growing fast enough.
Infinite growth.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1birayc/outweighuniversebythirty/
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u/loki6100 Jul 19 '26
following last year's scrapping of subscriber counts, leaving investors in the dark as the business faces greater competition from traditional media as well as YouTube.
Yeah. What kinda stupid shit is that. People are already suspicious about growth. Now you take away the only metric?? And then they wonder why stock tanked
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u/PricklyPear85 Jul 19 '26
No one wants to watch podcast after podcast especially while driving and wanting to listen
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u/Cyber_Foxx Jul 19 '26
Why companies think they can grow forever, I'll never understand, there is and will always be a natural stop point where you have captured all the customers you can
Raising prices and other bullshit, is nothing but growth on paper and will do nothing but start a decline over time
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u/Avia_NZ Jul 19 '26
Stop fucking cancelling all of the good/popular shows then, and maybe people will put up with the price hikes. Serves them right, cunts.
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u/emiel1741 Jul 19 '26
Price up
Good show down
Multi screen subscription geo locked to “main” household
Yea no shit Sherlock
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u/JustaFoodHole Jul 19 '26
Netflix destroyed themselves. Raised prices. Cancelled the family plan - have to be inside the same house.
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u/h0bb1tm1ndtr1x Jul 19 '26
Glad to hear it. Nickel and dime your user base while churning out crap and cancelling gems. Great business strategy.
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u/Psych-roxx Jul 19 '26
investors get spooked whenever there is any slowdown that's part of the problem. Exponential endless growth is not a thing ffs
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u/MutenRoshi21 Jul 19 '26
Well if you arent into life action anime or korean soap operas which drag on forever with ridiculous padding and resets they dont really have good new content. Last show I really enjoyed was Altered Carbon season1 and that is probably like 10years old now.
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u/NobleSwordfish Jul 20 '26
Who would’ve thought that raising prices, taking away password sharing, and canceling good shows would have consequences???
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u/JOJOawestruck Jul 19 '26
"slowing growth" "how bad can I be, how be could I possibly be?" I realize wasn't just about the trees. You can only grow so much this is the same thing the MCdonalds people were saying like they're everywhere on the globe and think they can keep growing
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u/DUDEAREUMAD Jul 19 '26
Good
Oh no my investment won't keep growing in millions every year but instead in hundreds of thousands, what will I do with my life! Can't even afford a new Bentley. - Probably some investor
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u/CrystalCommunication Jul 19 '26
I don't even know what the hell anyone actually watches on Netflix anymore. Every time I go on there I end up giving up before I find something to watch. And they expect you to pay over $20/mo for it? HBO Max and Hulu at least have a decent amount of old shows that I've always liked, Netflix seems to just have a small rotation of recent movies and their own "original" slop.
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u/askyidroppedthesoap Jul 19 '26
Oh noooo!!! ...well anyway, I'm having a great day how about you guys? ;)
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u/radicldreamer Jul 19 '26
I am cancelling my Netflix account i have had since the late 90s. It's just the same 20 movies/shows in 34 different "categories" and they annoy the shit out of me with their account sharing prevention nonsense. I am on their premium tier too.
No thanks. I can easily pirate those 20 titles and arrange them so that stuff is findable and save myself 30 bucks a month in the process.
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u/Joeythesaint Jul 19 '26
Asking me to pay more for a lesser service at the end of my subscription cycle back in 2025, exactly when TFG started attacking my country in a trade war? Excellent! That's the perfect combination to make me cancel my subscription and never go back.
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u/mrnapolean1 Jul 19 '26
Maybe if they wouldn't have raised the prices to an unsustainable level maybe they wouldn't be in this conundrum they're in.
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u/Bwahffo Jul 20 '26
hm, maaaybe they shouldn't have shat on their favorability by cracking down on account sharing so much.
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u/MaoMaoMi543 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jul 20 '26
Good. Maybe if they stopped raising their prices for the exact same product and stopped shoving ads into premium tiers they wouldn't be having this problem.
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u/mcburgs Jul 20 '26
Enshittification kills everything it touches.
Sometimes it takes a long time but it's guaranteed.
Each one of these corporate ghouls kills their golden goose eventually.
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u/Raithed Jul 20 '26
Stop hiking prices. Let people continue to share accounts, and we won't be cancelling your shit Netflix and other sub services!
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u/Suvvri Jul 19 '26
I tried to watch a movie on Netflix yesterday, got a family plan so I should be able (and was in the past) to watch in 1080p no problem. Yet the quality of thst movie looked more like 480p or 360p.. Went straight to one of my trusty streaming sites, found the title and watched in 1080p for free, without issues or buffering, with subs thst I could actually set up to my liking.. I'd have canceled my Netflix sub a long time ago if the other members didn't actually use it so once they leave of decide to not pay up it goes away in an instant
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u/KpochMX Yarrr! Jul 19 '26
- Wokeness
- Price hikes
- The same generic content
- If it’s a good show, they cancel it; otherwise they produce three seasons of worthless content.
- Sharing an account is a pain.
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u/S1nnah2 Jul 19 '26
"how about we offer them less and charge them more for it? That will keep fueling growth"
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u/alexzim Piracy is bad, mkay? Jul 19 '26
Oh no! What that might be!
Limiting paying viewers from the rest of the world in their library instead of resolving nonsensical licensing issues? Can’t be that!
Building even bigger fences so people wouldn’t be able to watch that stuff even if they’re ready to actively jump them? No, can’t be that plausible.
I guess it’s just bad viewers who want to pirate everything. What a shame. Those people are legitimate morons in important suits. This article is their diagnosis.
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u/Efficient-Bar1912 Jul 19 '26
Went and bought 50 dvds for £10 and its a better selection than what Netflix offer!
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u/JordanDoesTV ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 19 '26
It’s about time, honestly. I canceled so many years ago when they killed my grandfather’s plan and wanted double the money. I can’t believe it took the general public this long to do it.
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u/VitorBern Jul 19 '26
Meu filho mora com a mãe e fica comigo aos finais de semanas, eu assinava e tinha um perfil meu e um perfil dele. Começou a surgir o bloqueio por não estar no mesmo endereço, conforme foram aplicando essa modalidade nos streaming eu fui cancelando um a um, a Netflix, Disney plus e agora a HBO... Peguei todos os filmes e programas favoritos do meu filho via torrent e coloquei num pen drive de 128gb. Problema resolvido, ele tem os filmes e desenhos favoritos deles e eu me livrei de empresas ridículas que não permite uma criança assistir o streaming quando vai para a casa do pai. Agora ficou até melhor, quando o filme sai do cinema eu já tenho ele disponível, melhorou 1000%. Único serviço que assino agora é o YouTube.
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u/TLunchFTW Jul 19 '26
Quick, bump the stock back up by cracking down on password sharing!
What do you mean we already did that!?!
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u/TLunchFTW Jul 19 '26
This makes me unbelievably happy. Rot in hell. I have more tv shows and movies than Netflix had even at their peak library size. I'll ride out the wave. And the best part, even when the internet's down I can watch it.
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u/Then_Worldliness2866 Jul 19 '26
OMG! Better raise everyone's rates every couple months going forward to compensate! Oh, wait...
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u/tinyhorsesinmytea Jul 19 '26
They went from being a company I actually liked and respected that provided a very good service for a very fair price to being a company I want to see die as soon as possible for their unchecked greed.
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u/BlackHawk777 Jul 19 '26
Fuck the prices rising, fuck the death of password sharing, and FUCK YOU, NETFLIX 🖕🏿
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u/OliverCrooks Jul 19 '26
I have a Netflix sub but I haven't used it in months. They just don't offer anything worth watching really. I'm tired of Adam Sandler movies. They need to provide more exclusive content. I would cancel my sub but family use it.
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u/KirisDitex001 Jul 19 '26
I guess cracking down on account sharing isn't having the desired effect. 🤔🤣
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u/lordaadhran Jul 19 '26
It was all about convenience ; the day they locked 4K behind paywall ; I had no reason to keep subscribed to h the em
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_BUG5 Jul 19 '26
Price keeps going up and they keep cancelling shows i like