Netflix Makes Itself Less Useful, Removes Casting With No Explanation
from the enshittify-the-world dept
All out of original ideas and facing market growth saturation, we’ve noted repeatedly how streaming companies are increasingly looking like the stodgy old traditional cable TV giants they once disrupted. That means a lot of pointless mergers, endless price hikes, a steady erosion of quality, and the slow paring back of useful features (like going easy on password sharing).
The latest case in point: fresh on the heels of its latest price hike, Netflix is removing customers’ ability to cast streams to most home devices and smart televisions. The change came with absolutely no warning, removed a core feature, and Netflix refuses to tell anybody why it made the decision:
“The casting changes announced on Netflix’s support page do not explain why the feature has been removed. It follows a similar move in 2019 when Netflix removed AirPlay support, citing a desire to “ensure our standard of quality for viewing is being met.” We have reached out to Netflix for comment.”
After a week or two of pressure, Netflix will likely come out with some inane explanation about how they’re just “improving the customer experience,” despite the fact the justification makes no sense.
I suspect the real reason is Netflix is trying to make it more difficult for users to share their Netflix streaming services on their mobile phones while at other peoples’ homes, in the hopes of forcing your friends and relatives to sign up for Netflix. A choice that may or may not be supported by any actual real-world data.
This is the path of enshittification. It’s not good enough to offer a good product people like. The need for relentless quarterly growth means that inevitably companies find the easiest route is not to nurture useful and interesting new innovations, but to engage in a sort of cannibalization of the underlying brand. Endless price hikes; endless cut corners and feature erosion.
That’s likely going to accelerate with Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Brothers, which, if allowed by the Trump administration, means a massive new debt load the company will then cut even more corners to accommodate for. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Pay more, get less, then get scolded as entitled by industry executives who can no longer see the forest for the trees.
Filed Under: alternatives, cable, casting, enshittification, streaming, tv, video
Companies: netflix
Comments on “Netflix Makes Itself Less Useful, Removes Casting With No Explanation”
It says a lot that upon reading the headline, and lacking the context of the full text, I initially assumed, and found it entirely believable, that Netflix had laid off their entire casting department for all their shows as a “cost-saving” measure.
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I’m sure the higher-ups wish they could, just as soon as AI gets good enough to not require so much human intervention to look remotely passable to the average person.
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My first thought upon reading the headline was that they removed the listing of cast members for all the movies and shows so you can’t tell which actors are in anything.
Lol. How very unsurprising.
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Is there a more tedious response to an article than “I’m not surprised”?
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lol
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Huh, turns out there is!
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Good example, but you already did that one too.
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Give it a day or two, and some “shareholder” might show up with a “fuck you pirate for wanting to cast”.
I’m at the point know that I just assume that every software and service that I use will be noticeably worse than the last time I interacted with it. It seems like I fight fucking everything these days. Latest one: I tried to use a Yubikey on a Chromebook and Android phone that both had a personal Gmail account and a Google workspace account in separate profiles. It took me HOURS and Google co-developed the FIDO standard with Yubi specifically to work with their workspace services. I STILl can’t get the OTP feature of the Yubikey to work properly without removing and reinserting the key. And I wouldn’t need to use that, but fucking nobody implements passkey or FIDO properly, so they want to send you a text message. Fuuuuck.
And I know this is massively less painful than fucking with windows.
One legit reason I’ve heard for this is to stop customers from casting at locations like bars. Public viewing like that has additional rules like rebroadcast fees or whatnot.
Still sucks though.
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“Legit” is debatable, but yeah, that could be a reason.
Casting has been broken for a while
For at least the last few years you stopped being able to cast to a device that was signed into a different Netflix account. This just extends the limitation to if you are signed into your own Netflix account on the device.
Why would I want to cast to a device that is signed in on a different account? Visiting the in-laws and being able to cast from my device logged into my kids profile to cast a show they like without trashing the in-laws view history. I might not be at home, but I am using a device that is mostly at home. My in-laws Netflix account is just a sub account off of mine anyway which only allows one profile so we can’t setup a kids account on it.
This limitation decreases security as if you are using an AirBnb or hotel you now need to login to your own Netflix account on an untrusted device.
History repeating
We’ve done this dance before.
Just keep on a-pullin’ that pendulum towards yourselves, corpos.
Keeeeep a-pullin’ you greedy pigs, all of you, in all ways, in all markets. Go ahead! Only gonna make the backlash away-swing that much stronger.
There will come a new New Deal movement, and the oligarchs better pray to their mega-yachts that that’s ALL it winds up being.
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We made a mistake when we didn’t immediately side with and fight alongside the orcas. Nature warned us and we ignored it.
Casting is off?
Then I guess it’s time to cast off!