Our time together has come to a halt, and I think it’s only appropriate that we talk about the creator of all of this blog’s issues: Netflix. The amount of scandals this company has been through is concerning, though some are more serious than others. Due to this, over time, the company has lost viewers, causing them to make some changes to their brand. These changes, however, have been deemed useless. 

In the past, Netflix has been called out for various allegations that nearly ended their platform, which range from underpaying their content partners to predatory content within their series selection. Just recently, they lost over 200,000 subscribers due to another scandal involving sharing accounts with friends.

This scandal entails Netflix enabling a new password lock, which was announced to the company’s shareholders on April 19. Originally, this would only allow viewers to sign in and use accounts at its billing address; if you were to try to sign into an account at a different address, Netflix would force you to create your own account. Now, Netflix plans on charging consumers extra for sharing their password. Upon hearing this news, a large number of subscribers canceled their subscriptions, including my own family. Though they are only testing the new regulation now, it’s confirmed that the official security measure will be in place sometime in 2023. 

In addition, during 2020, a movie called “Cuties” was released on Netflix which caused an uproar against the streaming platform. Though there weren’t any extremely explicit scenes in the movie, it still held scenes that sexualized preteen actors, causing discomfort toward its director. For about a week, thousands of people unsubscribed to Netflix after the company defended the movie and its questionable pedophilic content. Matters only got worse when Netflix defended the film saying “Cuties” is a “powerful story about the pressure young girls face on social media and from society.” The thing is, there are other ways to show this without visibly sexualizing young girls. In the film, it showed the objectification of these young girls and the directors even zoomed in on it.  

Getting away from that heavy topic, Netflix and I have always had a love/hate relationship. For years, my family has canceled and renewed their Netflix subscriptions because of the streaming platform’s lack of good content, rising subscription costs and aforementioned scandals. Netflix is always in some form of trouble or getting on someone’s nerves, yet they seem to get away with their shenanigans. 

Though, if I’m being honest, the scandals aren’t what bother me entirely, it’s the content. Netflix fails to cater to all of its subscribers’ interests. If you’re really into bad movies, then, yeah, you’ll probably like it, but if you want a good action film that keeps you engaged, then you’re going to have a hard time finding it there. This applies to Netflix originals, featured films and TV shows. Netflix just isn’t consistent when it comes to having quality content. 

Speaking of inconsistencies, something that also irritates me the most about Netflix is their content cycle. Why do you have the first and third movies of a trilogy for months, and then when you finally get the second one you take off the third? (Cough, cough the “Fallen” trilogy starring Gerald Butler.) That makes no sense. I don’t care about the fact that they can only have a certain amount of movies, or whatever their excuse is, there are many movies that Netflix can take off due to their low ratings. I’m sorry, but no one genuinely wanted three seasons of “Too Hot to Handle.” I would rather be confined to watching “Manifest” for the rest of my life, and that says a lot. 

All in all, Netflix needs a better PR and marketing team and a better system when it comes to choosing and producing the content they put out. There’s no reason to keep movies that have low ratings when you know that there are better options, and there is definitely no reason to lay your business on the line to defend a movie or show that you know is bad.