Disney Follows Netflix, Declares War On Password Sharing On Its Streaming Services
Is anyone else starting to feel like this whole "streaming revolution" thing isn't turning out to be the panacea we all hoped it would be? Most of us only got on board with this industry-wide push to cut the cable cord because it promised a cheap, convenient, and ad-free alternative. After all, surely we could trust tech companies to hold up their end of the bargain instead of progressively making the user experience worse and worse in search of squeezing every last penny out of this grift, right? Well, streaming services are jacking up the prices if you want to avoid ads, entire titles are disappearing into the digital vacuum at the drop of a hat, and now even the victimless crime of sharing passwords is becoming a thing of the past.
Not even a year after reports that Netflix would be cracking down on password-sharing among subscribers, Disney is now following in their lead — which means anyone who pays for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ is about to start feeling the heat. According to The New York Times, the three streaming services updated and laid out changes to their respective subscriber agreements on January 25, 2024. Today, users finally began receiving emails laying out the new language in stark and unambiguous terms, such as specifying that, "We are adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household." Screenshots of the email are provided below.
Disney+
Disney+
Hulu will begin enforcing its crackdown on March 14, 2024. Renewed efforts to test the patience of streaming subscribers everywhere, it seems, are doomed to continue indefinitely.
Here we go again
Talk about innovation. First, the streaming services tried to goose subscription numbers through an endless flood of exclusive movies and television shows, supposedly reinventing the entire landscape of entertainment in the process. Then, they added various ad-supported tiers to force people to pay extra for what should've been a standard feature. When that didn't magically improve their stock options, studios like Warner Bros. pioneered the idea of CEOs snapping their fingers and removing entire unreleased projects from existence for a tax write-off, Thanos-style. Finally, with a rapidly shrinking pool of potential customers to woo, they've now resorted to scraping the bottom of the barrel and forcing as many password moochers (as a moocher myself, there is no judgment in that statement) as possible to have to pay up and subscribe.
The New York Times article frames this decision as Disney's latest attempt to actually have its various streaming services become profitable this year, as opposed to racking up millions of dollars of debt with the promise of finally dipping into the black years down the line. (The report notes that Disney cost itself upwards of $500 million in losses thanks to Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ combined.) One way to do that, of course, is to add new charges wherever possible. Netflix has now instituted an extra $7.99 monthly fee per person to add to a subscriber's household, though it remains to be seen if Disney will follow suit in that regard.
None of this addresses any of the more obvious problems with such a system, like subscribers who login to their streaming services in multiple locations while traveling. Like much of this streaming era, it's the paying customers who'll end up having to foot the bill. So much for the future of entertainment, eh?