Netflix's crackdown on password sharing is underway, leaving some to wax poetic about yesteryear, when the company promoted the practice as "love." Speaking of nostalgia, here comes Blockbuster to remind us all of the simplicity of Friday night movie rentals shared with family and friends. "A friendly reminder that when you used to rent videos from us. We didn't care who you shared it with… As long as you returned it on time," reads a Thursday tweet from Blockbuster's official Twitter account, viewed more than 10 million times. The company tagged Netflix in the tweet to ensure its dig came across.
Users responded with "forgotten memories" from childhood. "Blockbuster was a whole experience that I miss. Friday night Blockbuster and Pizza Hut nights were the best," one wrote, per Livemint.com. Netflix might have the last laugh, however, and not just because it predicts that cracking down on password sharing in the US will boost subscriptions and revenue. Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph recently spoke of how he tried to sell the company to Blockbuster for $50 million in 2000. Executives "laughed us out of the room," he said, per Yahoo.
"Given Netflix's lack of profitability at the time, the proposed amount might have appeared too high," according to Yahoo. Two decades later, however, Netflix is valued at nearly $160 billion and Blockbuster has a single store left. Alerted to this, Blockbuster's Twitter account replied, per Livemint: "I'm an intern. I barely have permission to have a lunch break. I didn't pass on anything." Amazon Prime Video UK also got in a dig at Netflix, tweeting a rather snarky image to highlight that it's fine with password sharing. Dexerto notes that though Netflix is the first streaming platform to block password sharing, others may follow suit in light of Netflix's claimed success. (More Netflix stories.)
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