They will. That’s basically what their new policy is blocking.

> money for two houses

> no money for separate accounts for family members

That's not what GP said. GP complained about having to pay as if there were multiple households benefiting, when it's actually just one household, albeit a wealthy one. If NFLX said "we're going to start charging rich people more, based on zip code," there would be a revolt.

I would assume it's not their intention to try to "go after" this segment and make them pay more (since it's a small portion of their users, and the revenue opportunity is small), but they've undoubtedly thought about this possibility and the unfairness it creates.

To be fair, this seems like a very convenient redefining of "household". If a household can, quite literally, span two houses (and states!), then what does household actually mean?

Edit: double checked and Netflix today is clear that plans are for a single "household". No idea if that language has changed over time but I vaguely recall them always referring to multiple "devices", not people.

According to a dictionary, "household" means:

> those who dwell under the same roof and compose a family; also: a social unit composed of those living together in the same dwelling [1]

It seems more focused on the family unit rather than where they're located. If a household goes on vacation, are they not still a household when they are at their hotel? Why is it different if they're at a condo, which they own?

Disclosure: not that it matters, but I do not have a second home.

1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/household

I'm curious how you read that and don't see the words "roof" and "same dwelling"? Because... that seems far more focused on where they are located than not? Only thing it is excluding is multiple family units all living in a shared building are not one household.

Oh, I absolutely see that limitation. But as I mentioned in my example, a "household" does not cease to exist when it leaves that shared roof. The group is defined based on where they live, regardless of whether they are together at any given moment, or if they are under a different roof together (and whether that different roof is part of a hotel, condo, or vacation home).

It totally ceases when you leave the shared roof. Is why me and my siblings shared a household with our parents, but don't share one now that we have moved out.

I can't believe you actually had to explain this to someone on HN

OP referred to an intact family unit that has multiple homes. They are still a household because, unlike your example, the are still intact. It's obvious that once you move out permanently, you're not part of the household anymore. But the original examples, and all of mine, refer to temporary relocations of an intact family unit.

I am sympathetic, but to pretend a household is multiple houses feels forced, to say the least. Would be like claiming you have multiple primary houses. Can make a sense, in very narrow cases. Largely not what anyone thinks that term means. To claim otherwise seems bad faith.

> pretend a household is multiple houses

To me this reads as a category error. Households are made up of people, and houses are made of wood. But if you want to pay more to Netflix when you visit a friend's cabin, or your own, I won't get in your way!

And to me this reads as petulant redefining of terms in the hopes of pulling a gotcha.

To be clear, the portability afforded with streaming services is nice. And I'm all for taking advantage of it. But household has always been the combination of a physical house and a social group in it. To claim otherwise is silly.

Can you find other uses of the term that does this? Even "family" is typically constrained to immediate family. Such that nobody expects family benefits at a job to extend to their cousins. Heck, we don't even expect it to extend to siblings or parents.

You're free to think of this as a redefining of terms, but the first person to make that argument upthread was downvoted to grey. That tends to indicate that I'm not the one redefining a term in a novel way.

But to answer your question, economists refer to "household income" and they don't care if you have a vacation home.

If you look at the origin of this thread, it relates to a single family with multiple homes. If you can't see that a family does not cease to be a family when they purchase a second home, then nothing I can say will convince you. Cheers!

Apologies on missing this the other day. The "first person" to make this argument is just getting the ire of folks that are upset to be losing their streaming benefits.

Household income is an interesting one. You have a primary residence that dictates a ton of information for financial reporting. And as far as households go, you only count in one of the houses, as far as a household. The others are non household units.

My entire point is that a household is not a family. Those are different things.

> And to me this reads as petulant redefining of terms in the hopes of pulling a gotcha

You are the one doing the petulant redefining.

> But household has always been the combination of a physical house and a social group in it. To claim otherwise is silly.

Not true.

Household has a well established meaning that you are trying to redefine. The referent of "household" is a social group and does not include the house itself. The house is merely part of how that social group can be defined.

If your house is destroyed in a fire, you don't stop being a household while it is rebuilt. If you own a vacation home, the household doesn't change based on who might be visiting the vacation home at any given time.

> Even "family" is typically constrained to immediate family. Such that nobody expects family benefits at a job to extend to their cousins. Heck, we don't even expect it to extend to siblings or parents.

You seem to have trouble with meanings. Just because some employment benefits described with the term "family" are contractually limited, doesn't change the meaning of the word "family". In fact, even the term "immediate family" explicitly includes siblings, spouse's siblings, parents, spouse's parents, grandparents, etcetera.

My point was that nobody has ever used household for two houses. Ever. If you can find a place that has been done, I'd be swayed. But I have never ever seen that. The definition posted above has family/social unit and house/dwelling unit. Reading that as one of those being plural is awkward and feels flat out in bad faith to conversation.

Now, I will fully cede that Netflix has redefined their terms and are also at fault in this whole fiasco. They are the ones that tried to build on the back of goodwill by allowing a much more open sharing policy than anything else was ever capable of doing.

> My point was that nobody has ever used household for two houses. Ever. If you can find a place that has been done, I'd be swayed. But I have never ever seen that.

Then maybe you should have spent some time looking before so strongly asserting something that is flat out wrong. Go look at some definitions. There are plenty of legal definitions, in addition to dictionary ones, that clearly contradict your take.

The key element is shared residency and living expenses. The number of homes owned is not relevant.

Point me to some. Seriously, the definition linked here clearly has household as the combination. Where are households defined as multiple houses?

For fun, try https://www.prb.org/resources/what-is-a-household/ which says "A household is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as all the people who occupy a single housing unit, regardless of their relationship to one another."

Did they get it wrong? https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/technical-docume... seems to agree with them.

Or, maybe, you are just trying to gaslight folks and not actually arguing in good faith...

The census is a great example. If a person is at a location, such as vacation home, when the census counts them, the census counts them as at the location that they sleep at the most. You don't stop being a part of a household just because you're spending the weekend at your cabin.

Even if your 10 person household has 11 homes, 1 primary home where everyone sleeps 183 days a year and 10 vacation homes where each sleeps the other 182 days a year, that would still be counted as a 10 person household by the census.

And both those linked definition make clear the basic point that you are still apparently failing to grasp. The referrent of "household" is the people who share their primary residence, not the residence itself.

Ah, I see the distinction you are trying to make. You are talking of the people in the household. But that is easily seen as a distinct thing from the household.

Consider standard household services. They are tied to the household, which has a fixed address. Is why power company won't give you power for your RV at any other location.

Again, I'm sympathetic. And power companies distinguish this with service address. But this is exactly the point. Every other "sharable thing" will be a distinguished thing that is shared. They will often have vague ass terms that tie it to the people of a household. But they will also have carve outs on how that applies to them.

I will be curious to see what happens to families living in RVs.

Apologies for missing this. I'm not clear what you mean. They already have the worst services of any "household" you can imagine. Such that I don't see it changing much?

>If NFLX said "we're going to start charging rich people more, based on zip code," there would be a revolt.

Not in the poor houses, and the rich ones would pay anyway because they're rich and price inelastic.

So I doubt there'd be a revolt.

I would hypothesize a revolt for two reasons. First, it would violate people's general sense of fairness that a product is being sold at different prices to different customers. Wealthy people (who are perhaps above-average in terms of retention) would leave to go to other services that they perceive to be fairer.

Second, it would be difficult to avoid overinclusive/underinclusive issues. For example, someone who lives in a studio apartment in a zip code with many large expensive homes would feel they are being clumped with people who are not like them. Is it hypothetically possible to avoid these outcomes? Sure, but it would take a ton of work, and would likely outweigh the benefit of differential pricing.

You think The people will demand to pay more to subsidize the rich. I love your optimism and altruism

> If NFLX said "we're going to start charging rich people more, based on zip code," there would be a revolt.

Revolt? Price discrimination is illegal.

Tell that to the California power companies:

https://californiaglobe.com/articles/income-based-electric-r...

Your comment adds nothing useful to the discussion, as GP never said it was a matter of cost. I am in the same boat and it’s about convenience and/or the loss of what we currently have. Netflix both raised prices and reduced what you get.

Yeah, it's not a matter of angry feelings, it's just a cost-benefit analysis

I'm guessing they aren't actually going to put this into action in the USA, but we'll see how it goes

I'd personally be fine with paying for 5 different streaming video services, but my wife is too frugal and makes me cancel one when I start another.. presumably a lot of people are in the same boat, and would look at this as a good opportunity to try out Disney+, HBO Max, etc

Just curious, what makes you think they won't do it here? I think they're 100% greedy enough to do it here.

And at that point, I'll cancel. I've already kind of accustomed my parents to it by reminding them that it takes them half an hour to find anything that they even want to watch on Netflix.

I just think they'll play around with it in smaller regions to see the effect and run a cost-benefit analysis before they risk angering their primary money maker

I disagree, if cracking down on friends and different households sharing passwords means I get it cheaper than I’m ok with that.

Their implementation allows people to use their tablet / phone / setup box/ streaming device in multiple locations. Since the technology isn’t available to cater for people living and paying for multiple house holds the options are everyone pays extra or the very very few people that can afford it or an anomaly pay extra

To be frank for the case of someone living 6 months here 6 months there They can sign-up and cancel cause it’s a month by month subscription

You get it cheaper? How? We even have inflation caused by greed and greed only.

Inflation is caused by the Covid fiscal policies and the money the government gave out to keep those financially impacted afloat but was also abused by many people

A Netflix account is supposed to be one per family, it was never supposed to be tied to an individual person. Who in their right mind would assume that a package that allowed four simultaneous streams would be for a single person watching four shows at once?

No, it’s clearly supposed to be that one account covers multiple people. GP is fine to complain whether they have enough money for two houses at once.

What about kids who have divorced parents and stay at a different house on the weekend? Do they need to get two separate accounts because “their parents can afford two houses?”

>A Netflix account is supposed to be one per family, it was never supposed to be tied to an individual person. Who in their right mind would assume that a package that allowed four simultaneous streams would be for a single person watching four shows at once?

Like cable, internet connection, or Costco membership - it's per household not per family.

The addition of "household" is a new addition they made, likely coupled with this change in direction about password sharing. The word household does not appear in archived versions of their page discussing streaming plans.

2017 (https://archive.is/KFZtP) "No matter which plan you choose, you can install the Netflix app on as many devices as you want, and enjoy as many TV shows and movies as you want, anytime, anywhere." In 2017, not only were they not talking about households, they were explicitly bragging about how you can watch on any device in multiple locations, which conflicts with the concept of a household they are pushing now.

2021 (https://archive.is/OzbRU) "The plan you choose will determine the number of devices that you can watch Netflix on at the same time. With all of our plans, you can download the Netflix app on all your favorite devices and watch unlimited movies and TV shows."

But now in 2022 (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926) "As a Netflix member, you are charged monthly on the date you signed up. A Netflix account is for people who live together in a single household. Learn more about sharing Netflix."

Can you pay for multiple households under a shared account so it combines your watch history?

It always used to be that you paid for the number of streams, and Netflix encouraged it https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712

So I cannot use it on my IPad on on the train?

Why bothering with mobile apps then? They should make a desktop decoder box like the old times…

The latter is me. I'll be watching this closely, for my son.

Hulu Live TV is even better regarding location. I have it and had Google Fiber and AT&T fiber at the same address. If I watched live on one it would report on the other than the home location changed and it only gives you so many of those for free before they prevent you from viewing the content (Live TV) you pay them for. So it's only IP and no taking into consideration geo-location at all.

I don’t have a static ip-address. I am curious to see how they will deal with that.

I'd imagine they stick some kind of device fingerprint and only start bothering user if there is too many of new devices that never share same network.

Or maybe ping lan for other netflix app. Or remember the MAC address of router or something.

> Or maybe ping lan for other netflix app. Or remember the MAC address of router or something.

Things that an app or website shouldn't even be able to do without clear permissions.

https://amiunique.org/ is fun thing to look at.

Thankfully getting MAC of router or other similar network stuff would be hard from browser.

Perhaps you have to designate a primary device, and then any of the secondary devices that access from the same IP can migrate for X weeks/months before having to be on the same IP as the primary?

That is going to be quite the schlep with his second houses tv every couple of weeks. I would cancel too

I assume he wouldn't care if TVs in other homes stay logged in when he's not there. As long as they work when he visits, wouldn't that be enough? It could be annoying if another family member goes there for a week and it won't log in because the primary device isn't present.

I guess I misunderstood then. So you mean you activate the network with your primary phone and then it stays active for some time. That would actually work for me.

You sure? That hasn't been an issue for me, although I don't know if my parents (in another country) are actually using the account.

The catalog will be different in each country, but that's expected. It's also quite annoying when you get addicted to a show and fly to the other country where it isn't available...

Which is totally stupid because IP geo-location do not exist and everything is based on isp headquarter's address. IP addresses do not have physical location and ISP now have global presence.

According to many websites I come from another country in eastern europe. Which is not true.

If you are maintaining a website and rely on IP geo location, which should really be called "IP crappy geo guess", you are doing it wrong, especially if you set the default language based on this.

> IP geo-location do not exist and everything is based on isp headquarter's address

There are definitely edge cases (specifically for mobile data), but on average, IP geolocation is much more accurate than "the ISP‘s headquarters".

I live nowhere near my ISPs corporate or even regional office(s), yet my IP location is accurate within a few hundred meters.

Has geolocation gotten a little bit worse in recent years? I understand IP blocks may change phisical location, and don't know if it's IPv4 scarcity or whatever, but apps that use IP location services seem to be mislocating me (like in cities 300km away)

I haven't seen it gotten any better (or worse). It still puts me regularly in other far away cities, in the south of the country, or just in the country. Never in my town. I will never trust GeoIP to figure out anything other than the country.

Even for this it isn't reliable. Depending on the service I can be in different countries. Which is a clear no if you are trying to decide which content you can offer to your customer.