Netflix’s ‘Love Is Sharing a Password’ Tweet Comes Back to Haunt Streamer as Crackdown Looms

Netflix is feeling the sting of a poorly aged tweet.

In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that the streaming giant intended to updates its U.S. policy on password sharing in an effort to generate more profits. The company confirmed it was moving forward with those plans in a letter to shareholders earlier this month, stating it would crack down on password sharing by the end of March. 

Netflix has not formally announced the ways it intends to limit access to a single household; however, a number of outlets point to company policies in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, where accounts are sharable within a single home. According to the streamer’s “Sharing your Netflix account” page, customers who reside in the aforementioned countries must identify their “primary location.” Netflix uses information such as IP addresses and device IDs to determine that the accounts are being used within the household.

“When someone signs into your account from a device that is not part of your primary location, or if your account is accessed persistently from another location, that device may be blocked from watching Netflix,” the website states.

The potential changes have, of course, upset some users, many of whom partake in the time-honored tradition of subscription-mooching. Plenty have expressed their frustrations via Twitter, and pointed to a time when Netflix encouraged—or at least winked at—password sharing.

“Love is sharing a password,” the company tweeted on March 10, 2017.

The post has come back to haunt Netflix as it prepares to crack down. Check out some of the amusing reactions below.