Elon Musk fires off eight-word tweet about why Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers
Published on Apr 20, 2022 at 12:53 PM (UTC+4)
by Louise Cheer
Last updated on Jan 02, 2023 at 12:05 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
Tesla boss Elon Musk has never been shy about giving his opinion, especially on Twitter.
So when it was reported Netflix subscriptions had dropped for the first time in more than 10 years, the billionaire couldn’t resist and weighed in.
“The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable,” Musk tweeted in response to a story about the news.
READ MORE: Elon Musk doesn’t own a home, says he sleeps on couches at his mates’ place
Netflix lost 200,000 subscriptions from January to March this year, according to the streaming giant.
In a video interview with investors earlier this week, CEO Reed Hastings said this slowing growth was a combination of people sharing passwords and competition from other services.
“Covid created a lot of noise and how to read the situation, boosted us a lot in 2020 and then in 2021 we thoughtfully said it was mostly pull forward, which was the logical conclusion,” he said.
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“But now coming into 2022 that doesn’t really hold.
“With all the account sharing, which we’ve always had… and that combined with the competition is really what we think is driving the lower acquisition and the lower growth.”
But Netflix isn’t the first high-profile company that has come into the crosshairs of Musk.
The billionaire has been very vocal about his criticism of Twitter, which he offered to buy last week.
He thinks the platform needs to be more open to free speech.
Netflix looks to monetise account sharing
It’s a stance that Netflix has previously revealed before, but Hastings reiterated the company was working on strategies to crackdown on account sharing.
“On the two parts, we are working on how to monetise sharing,” he said.
“We’d been thinking about that for a couple of years but when we growing fast it wasn’t the high priority to work on. And now we’re working super hard on it.”
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Louise Cheer oversees and writes stories about the latest headlines on topics such as automotive, technology, gaming, watches, movies and lifestyle. Louise has been a news editor at Yahoo and Daily Mail in Australia, with more than 10 years of experience in the media industry.
