Netflix is rolling out profile transfers

Netflix is rolling out profile transfers
FILE PHOTO: Signage at the Netflix booth is seen on the convention floor at Comic-Con International in San Diego, California, U.S., July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Bing Guan/File Photo

Netflix has sort of been going through it recently. It used to have a hard grip on the streaming market, but now with all sorts of other streaming services, it makes up a much smaller market share. Earlier this year, it released a report that said it was losing subscribers. In addition to the increased competition, it pointed toward those people who share accounts, cutting down on the number of users actually paying for the service.

So, Netflix recently cracked down on account sharing, allowing users to add people to their plan – for a fee, of course. But what happens when a user doesn’t want to be in the same Netflix “home" account anymore? Think ex-partners, roommates or people just wanting to start their own account.

Well, now, Netflix is rolling out profile transfers. The idea is pretty simple – if you have a Netflix profile on someone else’s account, you can transfer it to a new account of your own without losing all your curated lists and suggestions.

Netflix is advertising it as a service for users sharing accounts with people they’ve parted ways with. Let’s say you move out of your parent’s house, or you don’t want your ex to know you’ve been binge-watching “Is it Cake?" For those people, the frustration of needing Netflix to relearn all of their preferences can be annoying, especially since we’re not talking about TikTok here – the content is long-form (which means it takes longer to learn your preferences in the first place).

But the clear motivation is that Netflix wants these account sharers to pay up. And this isn’t the only thing it’s rolling out to solve the shared-account problem; it’s also created ways to charge more to have extra users on one account, limit the amount of “homes" an account can be used in and use codes to verify if it’s your account or not.

Long story short, if you’re one of those people still on your best friend’s cousin’s roommate’s account, then Netflix is coming for you, and one way or another, it’s going to get you to pay up. Profile transfers are just a way of asking nicely.