Yet another Netflix price increase is among us
The announcement of yet another Netflix price increase has sent ripples through users of the popular streaming platform.
In its third-quarter earnings report, the streaming giant revealed its plans to adjust pricing for certain subscription tiers.
This isn't the first time Netflix has made such a move, as the company has a history of adapting its pricing to meet the changing dynamics of the streaming industry.
How much is it after the Netflix price increase?
The video streaming service announced on Wednesday that it has successfully added an additional 8.8 million customers during the third quarter, expanding its total subscriber base to 247.2 million. Netflix attributes this growth to the diversity and quality of its content offerings, as well as its efforts to combat password sharing, which have broadened its audience reach.
In an immediate move, the Netflix price increase 2023 was implemented in the United States. The costliest plan will see a monthly increase of $3, bringing it to $22.99, while the basic plan will experience a $2 monthly increase, raising its price to $11.99. The pricing for the ad-supported plan at $6.99 remains unchanged.
It's noteworthy that similar price adjustments for basic and premium plans are also taking effect in France and the United Kingdom.
In a communication to its shareholders, Netflix conveyed,
"As we continue to enhance the value provided to our members, we occasionally make modest price adjustments. Our initial pricing remains highly competitive when compared to other streaming services. For instance, at $6.99 per month in the U.S., it still represents a cost significantly lower than the average price of a single movie ticket".
Netflix price increase history
Netflix subscribers who have been with the platform for some time know that price hikes are not a new phenomenon. Since its inception in 2007, the company has made several adjustments to its subscription fees and plans.
Let's take a brief journey through the Netflix price increase history:
2007: Netflix's early days
In its initial foray into streaming, Netflix required customers to purchase a DVD subscription. Subscribers could access more hours of streaming based on their willingness to pay.
2008: The onset of binge-watching
Netflix expanded its streaming capabilities, ushering in an era of unlimited streaming for subscribers willing to commit to a $9 monthly fee.
2011: Unlimited streaming at $8/Month
Netflix introduced an $8/month "streaming only" package, but it sometimes resulted in higher costs for those seeking full access to the entire content library.
2013: The Emergence of Netflix Premium and Family Plans
Netflix introduced a $12 subscription option for larger families, allowing streaming on up to four screens concurrently. This plan later evolved into what we now know as Netflix Premium.
2014: HD streaming and a $2/Month price adjustment
Netflix raised prices for its HD streaming option, a move that received mixed reactions from subscribers.
2016: The $10/Month Standard
The price increase announced in 2014 became standard for all Netflix subscribers, eliciting diverse responses from the user base.
2017: Incremental $1 price hikes for Standard and Premium subscribers
Netflix implemented another round of price increases, adding an extra dollar per month to the Standard and Premium plans.
2019: Simultaneous price adjustments for all Netflix subscribers
Netflix raised prices for all its subscription options at once, marking a shift in its approach to pricing.
2020: Price upticks for Standard and Premium subscribers
Prices for the higher-tier plans saw another increase, reflecting the streaming giant's growing investment in original content.
2022: Across-the-board price hikes
In January 2022, Netflix introduced price increases across all its subscription plans, supporting its investment in original programming and competitive positioning.
2022: Introduction of the Basic with Ads Plan
For the first time in years, Netflix introduced a new plan featuring ads, designed to attract a wider audience with a lower pricing tier.
2023: Evolution of plans and policies
Netflix removed the Basic plan for new subscribers and restructured its offerings, underscoring its commitment to combat password-sharing and enhance user experience.
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I never said this article was a “bot article” because it was written by a “foreign name” as per [#comment-4575472]. In (#comment-4575487) I just implied this article was initiated by a human that probably used a generator for part of the text.
Rather than “1+1=2”, it is typically written “1 + 1 = 2” in English to help readability. For example, 4! = 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 = 24; 4! is pronounced ‘four factorial’.
Since you asked, I may care if it an article is mean to be factual; yet is full of misleading information, e.g. fake news. A robot doesn’t care. Neither does it comprehend, it has zero cognition.
Both you and Tom are fighting in the weeds over minutia.
It’s evident that ALL of the foreign name articles are written with “AI assistance” – these are people who you cannot interact with, they have no character, no personality, they do not read or reply to comments – the character of the articles is really trash sometimes, plus there’s often mistakes with formatting and basic logic, and a good amount of “talking out of their ass”, which comes standard with language models. A complete lack of subject knowledge is shown in all of the articles.
Now you come along and say: “Ah, but it’s probably a real person, they’re just using AI to help them write the article”, yeah pal, no shit!
I can’t believe it… someone says “A plane flew overhead”, and you would try to correct them, saying “the didn’t fly itself, there was a pilot inside it, which flew the plane”, a.k.a an absolutely pointless statement that helps nobody.
Someone queries an AI to produce an article, copy+pastes the article onto a website – it doesn’t become their work all of a sudden, especially where no evidence of human activity can be gleaned. It’s still the complete work of an AI, and so calling it a “bot article” is 100% accurate – I love interacting with people in the comments but some of you guys are something else… man.
To Tom, who says “who cares where the article came from, I’ll read anything”, well this is also a ridiculous notion, feel free to be some kind of “sucker” (no offence intended), but I’d rather interact with real people, and with “”content”” (i hate that word) which was produced by real people. To give any significant amount of time/effort to react to/process something that had no human involvement is very dystopian and I’ll always avoid it where possible. To treat it as real content which is worth your time is the definition of being a “sucker”.
Now, sometimes a bot article may highlight a topic that is interesting in itself, which I guess is fine, but nobody is talking about the article at that point, they’re talking about the topic presented in it, and whilst the comments are still filled with real people, that is OK.
@bruh, I newer wrote nor even thought, as you wrongly quote, that “i’ll read anything”! That’s your imagination.
I had written “Who really cares by whom or what articles are written, god, devil, he, she, AI, automatic handwriting … as long as they’re pertinent, interesting, unique.”
What I meant and mean is that focusing on text-origin could likely be considered as text-origin racism if that ever meant anything, and that IMO the only thing that matters is the text itself. From there on assuming that AI-written articles wouldsystematically, automatically craps is an assertion I wouldn’t dare myself : I’d have to have written all, every AI-written article available, have the evidence it was AI-written : quite a work. Not to mention that this could become the new rule for pointing articles we consider badly thought, poorly carried out : — Hey, i’m sure that’s AI … — Nope, wrote it myself. — Oops sorry, didn’t mean to be harsh. Lol.
Hey, Bruh, i’ve known your comments better inspired. Your work or AI assited?!
Hi Tom!
“That’s your imagination.” Well, it’s my interpretation of what you wrote… it’s definitely not the most fair characterisation, but it should tell you more about my thinking than anything else, and I don’t mind expanding on this topic, as I have some strong feelings about it.
If we’re going to use your term (it’s a fun term, lol), then I am definitely a text-racist. I try to be discerning about the origins of any given text, because I think it definitely matters – if you have any knowledge about the writer of something, you can definitely get a better understanding of why it was written, why it was written the way it was, what biases you might need to account for from the author’s side, what agendas they may be trying to push/pull, etc.
Texts are not written in a vaccuum, well, texts by human’s aren’t, but knowing whether a text is AI-influenced is also noteworthy. Sure, I’ve probably read things that are AI-assisted, without realising, because it was masked well – but if it’s noticeable, you’re done for!
Of course all of the articles “written” by Emre, Shaun, etc are AI-generated – I understand keeping an open mind, but you’d have to be silly to disagree. “I’d need proof!” nonsense, did you read the articles? I’ve read many, it’s obvious!
“Not to mention that this could become the new rule for pointing articles we consider badly thought, poorly carried out”
Ok… well the articles aren’t badly written, but they are written in a very generic style, which is not a hallmark of an inexperienced writer, “bad” writers have their own character that shows up in articles, and that’s not bad – these articles, however, are. I’d rather read articles by someone that is trying but is quite inexperienced, than an article not written by a human. Also, a fun point you neglected – if someone’s own writing is so bad it resembles a bad AI stitch-together, they certainly need some harsh criticism, and maybe to reconsider writing entirely, as they have nothing to offer.
Regarding checking tools – I rely on my own brain, if someone is offended about my accusation, and wants to tell me they didn’t use AI, they can do that, but guess what, Emre never will, I can bet you a million dollars he never will. If I am against the use of AI, and find it to write trash, why would I rely on an AI tool to help me detect AI? That is some bad recursion I wouldn’t participate in.
To say that these articles are bot-written is not a conspiracy theory, it is a simple observation that has been reinforced over months of analysis by myself. This is quite a weird stance from you Tom… but it’s fun to talk about it nonetheless. Seems I am just saying what others don’t want to, but also believe.
@bruh, I get your point but I’d fully agree if we were considering literature, not technological articles. What has style anything to do when writing an article about technology, I’d even say what has it to do with journalism unless editorials written by some talented journalists in some high-standard media (I’m referring to french papers, not sufficiently fluent in English to appreciate “author-journalism” if you understand what I mean). I can even say that when a topic becomes complex, when a novel is rich, an essay meaningful then perhaps would AI interference become flagrant. Bus as i see it anything to do with scientific matters is not the haven of style, we hardly care for it when we expect the article to be clear, understandable. From there on I’ll consider the “content” of a scientific article, far less the “container” (as “content” for the information, “container” for the writing, the style, syntax, rhetoric). AI-driven/assisted or 100% human generated articles about technological, scientific or everyday news, when they don’t include a narcissistic author’s strive for fame (I have in mind some french journalists who write as if they never recovered from not being an acclaimed author), make no difference to me. Information is cold, never meant to be hot otherwise it’s not information, or not only information.
“what has style anything to do when writing an article about technology”, are you saying that the articles on ghacks don’t provide any commentary alongside the news they cover? Because that is not true.
I previously wrote “” “bad” writers have their own character that shows up in articles, and that’s not bad – these articles, however, are “”
I never said that decent, professionally written articles will be full of personal commentary and artistic style, as you and I both know, ashwin’s and martin’s articles are quite dry, for the most part. But these AI articles are filled with really garbage throw-away statements and embellishments that not only distract, but severely annoy. So “what does style have anything to do with X”? It really doesn’t, until it is so bad, that it does. I hope that makes sense.
But I also don’t believe that “tech news” is such a cold topic that an AI can write about it, at least not well, at least not yet. A real person may be able to compare news, claims from companies, collate data points and evidence from different sources, from different times, and provide a due diligence that an AI cannot.
For example, how often have you seen Ashwin spin up a W11 VM to test a new feature? That is a hands-on reporting style which will lead to better news coverage, and something AI cannot do – this is just an example, to prove to you that style does matter!
If a company makes a claim, and the writer of the article can recall a previous time when a company made a similar claim, and it turned out to be a lie, and they reference this old news in their current article? That is another human mannerism which certainly falls under “style” for me, and again it’s something an AI is not doing.
Let’s return to what started this topic: The no username guy made a comment directly towards this article’s “”author””, as if they thought they might get a reply, or that it may be read by the author, my reply was basically a very shortened version of my full opinion: “do not waste your breath writing such a thing, the “”author”” of this article will never read your comment because the “”author”” of the article is hardly a human, only the guy that clicked ctrl+v is, and he definitely doesn’t care”. This started the debate, yet it is hardly wrong. It’s highly correct, even if you think it can’t be 100% correct because “we do not know for sure”, yeah…
Now on a personal note, I think the use of AI to write articles intended to be written by humans is wrong, and I do judge humans who do not care about discerning whether they are reading AI “content” as opposed to human generated content. We as humans should want to interact, communicate, and get our news from other humans, as we are the only things on this planet with true sentience, something LLMs do not have.
Where possible, we should avoid being manipulated, steered or influenced by “algorithms” of any sort, this is a slow grinding process that takes self-determination away from people, and makes large amounts of the population malleable and susceptible to influence. It started years ago with social media where something would be on the tip of everyone’s tongues because it became “viral” and appeared in everyone’s “feeds” (like a feeding trough for farmyard animals).
Content generated by an algorithm that doesn’t truly know what the hell it is writing, briefly looked over by someone who probably has a poor grasp of english and an even poorer understanding of the topic, is the digital equivalent of “slop”, absolute bottom of the bin garbage that should be disposed of safely lest it hurts local wildlife when it seeps into the ground. To use it as a “launching point” for real discussion, or to use it for entertainment, this is fine, but to pretend it is anything more than slop is delusional.
Sorry for such strong opinions, but they are at least not AI generated opinions :)
@bruh, I definitely do no agree. I could maybe if the idea was that we are meant to believe everything we read and that, given AI-written articles are less reliable than human-written ones, we’d be more likely to be misled by the former.
First, we have the liberty to exercise caution in believing or not , in doubting of, in being skeptical of whatever information we perceive.
Second, a human may lie and mistake as an AI may mistake and lie.
Third, an AI-written article, correctly built, may offer information summarized from a multitude of sources which a human may not be able to perform unless his knowledge of facts is that of an encyclopedia.
In my view all this is conditional, it ‘may be’ as it ‘may be not’. What bothers me are dogmas, what I call sovereign certitudes, I remain convinced that the best way to discover an article as well as any information on whatever media is to forget the media, the author (if human, if human: who; if not, what AI, what algorithm) and to concentrate on the information only : is it plausible, do I basically agree or not and in both cases, why. I have in mind an analogy with our sources of information, but also our literary lectures : many, perhaps most of us tend to remain in the inner circle defined as the area of our favorites, themselves based on affinities. I think we shouldn’t abandon ourselves to such blindness, a blindness which may participate to intolerance for the worst, tolerance for naturally tolerant minds perhaps, but seldom to interest for the differences, for otherness which is the next step after tolerance.
> “Where possible, we should avoid being manipulated, steered or influenced by “algorithms” of any sort […]”
I agree, but no need for algorithms to be manipulated : manipulation and disinformation have always existed, nowadays these may be AI-assisted, or not. Again : view, listen, read what is filmed, said, written and try to exercise caution, and that means be neither cynical, systematically skeptical, hysterically enslaved to conspiratorial anarchy, nor naive. Take information as it comes and without evidence (what is evidence? a topic of its own), keep it in a brain drawer we’d call “Doubt, lack of evidence”. What more to say? Certitudes parasite our thoughts, need of certitudes even more. Keep your doubts in mind and as time passes by new information will be combined to your doubts and may even happen to make you change the probability you grant to each of them, upwards or downwards. We need time, the era nowadays proposes your one-a-day truth as medicine it’s one-a-day pill. People think less and less, they want certitudes, here and now, and rely on “feelings” to decide who’s saying that truth and who’s lying : the rise of brainwashed idiocy, that which has nothing to do with academic education, wealth, social status but with basic good sense accessible to all once we decide to exercise our freedom of thoughts.
I’ve been lengthy as well.
EDIT : “I’d have to have written all” which was of course “I’d have to have read all”
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Regarding AI written texts, several checking tools. There’s one I used to check articles written here by one author or “author’ (I won’t say who, that’s not the point”) and from one article to another the authenticity checker displauyd “99+% its fake” to “99+%” it’s true. if the checker is correct that would mean that a same author can write some articles himself and some others assisted by AI.
GPT-2 Output Detector [https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/]
So, if we like the article it’s be human-written, if we dislike it it’d be AI written, when in fact it could possibly the opposite… Now, for those who’d score 10/10 for guessing correctly ai or human : congratulations. My belief is that stigmatizing AI-written articles is in the scope of today’s trend : spitting as much as we can especially without evidence, for the sake of crying out loud to all : “hey, fake, I spotted, I ain’t no idiot” very much like conspiracy maniacs. let’s cool down!
Martin, Wordfence “(HTTP response code 403)” is erroneously triggering for gHacks. Check your server’s filter settings.
Emre Çitak is a likely a person, and a freelancer. Several of the “newer writers” that appeared here after Shaun, have personal social media profiles and family photos elsewhere. (I cannot link to them from here for legal reasons, but it’s not too difficult to do the detective work and join-the-dots.)
I am not saying their articles aren’t heavily AI-assisted though. Because sometimes the writing comes across as “soulless”. Many of those the articles by the “newer writers” are influenced by what’s “trending” rather than about a topic they actually understand… Yes, it certainly gives me that impression those articles have been through a generator.
Who really cares by whom or what articles are written, god, devil, he, she, AI, automatic handwriting … as long as they’re pertinent, interesting, unique. 1+1=2 be it stated by god, devil, you, he, she, me, AI, automatic handwriting. I guess stating that 1+1=2 is not unique though. True, but not a scoop, but true. But not a scoop. Not a scoop. But true.
“Yet another Netflix price increase is UPON us” not “among us”, chat gpt fails basic english again.
Ashwin, just did an article on this topic today, why not link to that.
because this is a bot article – foreign name = chat gpt