“People move. Families are growing. Relationships change. Life goes on.“It is not the text of one of the many motivational messages I came across on social media, but a part of an email I received the other day from Netflix in which the brand new” Profile Transfer “feature was presented to me.
If you activate this feature, all people with access to your account will be able to transfer the profile they use to a new account.
The guide
How and why to transfer the Netflix profile, before the squeeze on shared subscriptions
by Simone Cosimi
We have a few days to decide whether to activate this function, which is presented to us as a tool conceived “only” to face the changes in the relationships of our life. In fact, if we do not deactivate it within ten days of receiving the email, profile transfers will be automatically active (of course, we can always do it later). In fact, the most attentive immediately linked this function with Netflix’s announced “crackdown” on subscriptions which, apparently, are often shared among users far beyond what is allowed by the terms of the streaming service.
The conditions of use, in fact, provide that “the Netflix service and any content accessible through the service are intended for personal, non-commercial use only e they cannot be shared with people outside your home“(We are not talking about family, a concept that would have allowed even non-cohabiting family members to share the same account).
Spotify, Netflix and newspaper cookies
by Riccardo Luna
To remedy a widespread violation of this rule, Netflix has experimented in Latin America with the possibility of paying extra to allow people other than our partners to use our account (children who no longer live with their parents, friends). It seems that the launch of the “Profile Transfer” feature is preparatory to the extension of new subscriptions to users from all continents, while the platform will technologically begin to block access to offenders (for example by analyzing the IP addresses from which colleague).
In short, the profile transfer function could be part of a real “amnesty” that allows users to continue to use the app legally, without losing settings, history and saved games. A real amnesty, in short. It would not be the first time that the big platforms have behaved as states and institutions have done up to now. The big platforms have “supreme courts”, they adopt sanctions against governments, they decide what are the limits to the expression of their users’ thoughts. Now, they also allow you to condone account abuse.
But be careful: as much as it is an amnesty, as if the functionality really serves (only) to follow the evolution of relationships, the impression is that the transfer of profiles is more useful to Netflix than to the user. It is in fact indisputable that over the years relationships are born, change and end. It is equally indisputable that there is an interest of users to keep their settings and their tastes even if they leave their parents’ home or when a relationship ends. Still, the primary interest is of the platform. The algorithms on which these platforms are based, in fact, feed on data. They are greedy for data that allow profiling the more accurate the further they go back in time. So, in the event that – for example after the end of a relationship – an old user opens a new account without transferring his previous profile, it would be Neftlix who would lose more because he would not recognize that user, he would have fewer elements to keep him longer. time on the platform, she could not continue to know and profile it, being forced to start from scratch.
It is a theme that will be more and more central in the coming years, when the artificial intelligences powered by our data will increase and will always want more, to know us even better, capture our attention, sell us products or services.
This is why the Netflix algorithm wants to follow us even if a relationship is over, it wants to know it in order to accompany us in this new phase of life (who knows maybe even to console us from the trauma). In short, the algorithm wants to be “forever”, like the diamond of advertising. The choice is up to us: how valuable are our data? how much value is a software that chooses for us the films and series to see? It will not be time to “take a break” from the algorithm itself. Because it is true that relationships evolve, but tastes also change and, dear algorithm, you don’t want to leave me my space.