Social & Online Media

Netflix is making it easier to boot moochers out of your account while still letting them hang onto their viewing preferences. So, when you get fed up of an ex continuing to use your account, you can send them on their way with their recommendations, viewing history, saved titles in My List, game saves, subtitle appearance and other settings intact when they start their own account. That’s assuming you ended things on good terms, anyway — you might still want to kick them out without warning.

The feature is rolling out to all users starting Monday after Netflix initially tested it in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru. Profile transfers will be enabled automatically in all countries except South Korea and the US. You’ll need to activate it from your settings in those two nations.

You’ll get an email when the profile transfer tool is available on your account. After that, you’ll be able to access the Transfer Profile option from the drop-down menu that appears when you hover over your profile icon on the homepage. From there, it’s a case of following the directions to set up a new account. 

Netflix confirmed to Engadget that you won’t be able to transfer a profile to an existing account. This process will only work when you’re transferring a profile to a new account.

Netflix

Netflix says this is a long-awaited feature and the company is framing it as a helpful option for those going through some changes in their life, such as a relationship ending or someone moving away from their parents’ account to start a new one with profiles for all their own family members. However, Netflix is also looking to crack down on password sharing.

In August, it started charging users in five Latin American countries more if they share their accounts on an ongoing basis with people who live outside of the primary residence. That came after a trial run in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, which suggests that account sharing fees may be coming to more territories after the broader rollout of profile transfers. We may soon start hearing about people getting kicked out of Netflix accounts because their friends or parents don’t want to pay extra.

Netflix is taking account sharing more seriously, particularly in light of the fact that its total number of subscribers dropped for the first time this year. It lost around 1.2 million in the first six months of 2022.

If you do suddenly find yourself having to pay for your own Netflix account, though, you’ll soon have the option to transfer your profile to a cheaper, ad-supported plan. That tier will be available starting on November 3rd. It costs $7 per month, but it won’t include access to the full Netflix library or offline viewing.

Update 10/17 11:15PM ET: Added clarification from Netflix that profiles can only be transferred to new accounts.

Meta will end support for Instant Articles by mid-April, the company confirmed to Engadget. It introduced the format to Facebook in 2015 to help news articles load quickly on mobile devices. However, the company is said to be restructuring and directing more resources into its core products — including video-focused features like Reels.

“Currently less than 3% of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed are posts with links to news articles,” a Meta spokesperson told Engadget. “And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences.” The company pointed out that its users are spending more time watching videos, especially short-form ones, and that they want to see less news and political content on Facebook.

Axios, which first reported the news, noted that Meta has been reducing its investment in news content, such as by ending the payments it gives to US publishers for including their articles on the News tab. The company also said last week that it will shutter the Bulletin newsletter platform by early 2023.

The mid-April timeline for winding down Instant Articles support will give publishers six months to reassess their Facebook strategies. After that, when you tap a link to a news article on Facebook’s mobile apps, you’ll be taken to publishers’ own websites.

Meta noted that since it debuted Instant Articles, the mobile web experience has broadly improved due to faster internet speeds and more powerful devices. As such, it suggested that these upgrades have rendered Instant Articles unnecessary for many people who access text-based stories. However, you may soon find that some articles take longer to appear on your screen, depending on the page load of publishers’ websites.

Google effectively made a similar switch last year when it no longer made its AMP format worthwhile for news publishers. The company said it would stop prioritizing news articles that use the format in its search rankings.