Author: guardianpub

More and more Netflix (NFLX) users are expressing their concerns (and confusion) over the streamer’s crackdown on password sharing.

Earlier this month, Netflix revealed the first details of the crackdown after an update appeared on the company’s help center which appeared to show the streamer would require users to identify a “primary location” for all accounts that live within the same household.

Netflix later clarified that information was only applicable to the test countries at the time, which included Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. Last week, however, the crackdown expanded into Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain, which set off a new wave of customer concerns.

Over the past few weeks, Netflix users have flooded our inbox with thoughts, concerns, and questions surrounding the crackdown.

Many have threatened to cancel if extra fees are implemented, with some implying the move will likely help boost competitors like Amazon Prime Video (AMZN) and Disney+ (DIS).

Yahoo Finance has reached out to Netflix for clarity surrounding the most-asked about questions and was directed to the platform’s help center pages which details the rules for each specific country where the crackdown has been rolled out. (Remember: there has been no U.S. announcement so far)

According to the help center, “a Netflix account is meant to be shared in one household (people who live in the same location with the account owner).”

“People who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch; or in some countries you can buy an extra member and add them to your account,” Netflix said.

The company added account holders can manage and update their primary location through the Netflix app. Users can also easily access their accounts while traveling or on vacation.

Still, some users remain uneasy about the changes. Below are the top thoughts and concerns from our readers:

Liz C.

I’m a Canadian that pays for a premium Netflix account, so we can have up to 4 devices logged in at a time. We watch it on our cable box, and our two children watch it on their laptops at University. So now Netflix wants us to pay an additional $7.99 for additional users? My frustration is they are not making any money because costs of their movies and series is increasing, or costing too much. …Then stop spending so much on them? This sounds like a “you problem” not a me problem. I am paying enough for tuition, groceries and rent for my kids, now you want me to pay more? Stop being so greedy.

Hunt D.

One aspect of this story that I am not seeing mentioned in Canadian media is the impact of snowbirds. Over a million Canadians travel south for much of the winter, and the Netflix changes seem to eliminate our ability to use Netflix if we are away from our Canadian homes for over a month. …We have not cancelled yet, but according to Netflix we will be locked out of our account on the 21st, so they may see a wave of cancellations at that time from Canadians who do not have access to their home wifi this time of year.

Jeff K.

I understand Netflix’s desire to stop five friends that don’t live together sharing one account login, but that is how they built their business. Families with children away at university would be considered part of the household under the Stats Can definition, since their primary residence is still with their parents. It is not a simple issue, but I feel Netflix has gone too far, unnecessarily.

I have been a Netflix customer for years and seen numerous price increases. It started at about $8/month and is now $23/month. If I need to add another location, then I will most likely put Netflix on a rotation schedule throughout the year along with the other streaming services that I do that for; Disney+, Paramount+, Apple.

Amanda G.

If the policy change makes it that we would have to pay full price for a subscription, we would not add the service. The reality is each subscription service provides limited options at this point, and frankly I believe people will be returning to illegal downloads. Netflix was a draw because it meant we could get rid of our overpriced cable service. At this point, by needing multiple streaming services it will end up as being as expensive as cable.

While I understand these are all businesses that want to make a profit, I believe it will end up being a short sighted approach.

The economy is rapidly entering a recession. Streaming services are not a need and are an easy service to cut to save money. Netflix likely will only be the first to move towards preventing account sharing, but unlike Amazon prime, which offers an additional service for the cost, or Disney plus, which has the most popular children’s programming, they have little to make themselves imperative for the viewer.

Annette C.

This password crackdown is discriminatory to families whose children live in two households. Life is disruptive and chaotic as it is for two-household children and their ability to access their own content on streaming platforms across two-households helps establish some stability and reliability in their lives.

Eric W.

I stay at three other locations beside my home each month.

This Netflix agreement is reducing my livelihood and subjecting me to hardship.

Netflix has made new agreements with actors and film production companies and piggy backing on consumers to pay for their deals through these agreements!

Peter K.

One of our two sons attends university locally and lives at home (no Netflix problem there) The other one studies in another province. But although he’s at home occasionally, most of his Netflix use is away from home (Netflix will likely force him to get his own account- as if students these days have more money to spend…)

My wife and I are retired and travel a lot. Months at a time. But we live on a budget. …We enjoy our Netflix account, but overall, the whole family is a rather occasional user.

Phil K.

My brother and I share a Netflix account. He lives elsewhere in the city.

I pay for the entire HD package. I have decided if they implement this I will cancel. We currently have Prime, Crave & Apple at times. So don’t need Netflix. Paying $23.30 a month is not worth not being able to share. We both live alone. Those are my thoughts.

Donna M.

As a snowbird on a fixed income, I have chosen Netflix as my streaming service. The new Netflix changes do not accommodate individuals/couples that spend part of the year out of their primary residence and they are asking snowbirds to pay the additional $7.99 monthly user fee to be able to stream when away from their primary residence, despite the primary residence not using Netflix during that time. …I was told by Netflix customer service that I couldn’t share between my two residences unless I added the second one to my plan.

I get them trying to reduce password sharing outside the home, but am really disappointed in them restricting the use of the primary account holder who travels.

I will be canceling the service and really hope these changes prove to be disappointing to them.

Julie W.

One extremely important aspect of password sharing I have yet to see addressed, are those serving in the military, especially those who have spouses on deployment and can access Netflix.

Patrick C.

I feel like my issue with Netflix is a first world problem since we have 2 homes but I believe there are enough of us that Netflix will need to have a solution. I doubt we would cancel if they come up with a reasonable fix.

Cara L.

I’m wondering if this crackdown includes the account access that’s included with some contract phone companies now because Verizon and T-Mobile include Netflix and Paramount+ with their plans. I share a phone plan my friends and don’t live in the same household because if so then that’s not fair since it was included in our phone plan when my friend signed us up through T-Mobile.

Michael J.

While I respect and appreciate where Netflix is coming from I also have a serious question.

My parents and I do not share an account they have their own they pay for it and we pay for ours but they snowbird between a Northern State and a Southern state half the year. They own property in both places they use one Netflix account though. They don’t bother to change their primary address they forward their mail for 6 months out of the year. Changing their primary residence location would be very difficult and require them to change their credit card information and the bank information just so that they could tie it to something like Netflix and set an address half the year to something else.

They’re really worried about this change in Netflix I don’t know how to contact Netflix and tell them my concerns about this but I liked your article and I just wanted to tell our story. I was thinking about how I’m going to help my parents they’re obviously not going to be able to go home and get on their Wi-Fi to get recertified and I’m not going to tell them they should change their address and billing information just to cope with the new rules so what should they do? They’re legitimate paying customers who migrate and if migrating is going to be difficult they’ll probably just cancel the account and I wouldn’t blame them.

I believe Netflix has a right to curtail their service to prevent theft of their service of a sort. But they’ve got to find a balance between doing what’s right for them and what’s fair for their customers. We don’t all live the same life or in the same way. If people pay for the service they should be able to use it no matter where they are.

Source: finance.yahoo.com

Employers who use chat bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to screen job seekers should prepare for new laws geared to prevent bias in the hiring process.

In April, a New York City law that regulates how companies use AI in hiring is expected to kick in. The Biden Administration and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) also recently published initiatives to make employers responsible for monitoring the tools—and any discriminatory practices they might trigger before a candidate even connects with a hiring manager.

“Nearly 1 in 4 organizations use automation or AI to support HR-related activities, with roughly 8 in 10 of those organizations using AI in recruitment and hiring,” Emily M. Dickens, chief of staff and head of public affairs at SHRM, The Society for Human Resource Management, told.

“Regulation is coming and it’s going to be messy,” said Avi Gesser, partner at Debevoise & Plimpton and co-chair of the firm’s Cybersecurity, Privacy and Artificial Intelligence Practice Group.

Starting in April, employers in New York City will have to tell job candidates and employees when they use AI tools in hiring, perform an independent bias audit—and notify them about “the job qualifications and characteristics that will be used by the automated employment decision tool,” according to a draft of the new Automated Employment Decision Tool law. The final set of rules has yet to be published.

“The New York law is the first time you have a broadly applicable set of restrictions on AI hiring in the way it’s normally used by lots of companies, which is to source and sort resumés in order to decide who you are going to interview for efficiency purposes,” Gesser said.

The aim of the New York law is transparency. “People who are using these tools need to disclose that they’re using the tools,” Gesser added. “They need to give people a chance to request an alternative arrangement if they don’t feel like the tools are going to be fair to them.”

And it means that employers will be the ones responsible for meeting the legal requirements around these AI tools, rather than the software vendors who create them, he said.

Employers on ‘warning’

New York City isn’t the only one putting employers on notice. Last fall, the White House released a blueprint of its AI Bill of Rights and recounts how a “hiring tool for a firm that had a predominately male workforce rejected resumés with the word “women’s,” such as “women’s chess club captain.”

In January, The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published its Strategic Enforcement Plan in the Federal Register. The focus: artificial intelligence tools used by employers to hire workers that can also introduce discriminatory decision-making. And last spring, the EEOC issued guidance on the use of AI in hiring tools that focuses on the impact on people with disabilities.

Human reviewers aren’t perfect

The biggest concern about AI screening tools is that they can be biased against certain applicant classes–from race and gender to age and disability to those who have gaps in their resumés. This is what regulators want to fix.

Of course, AI isn’t alone in the business of bias. Human resumé sorters have been guilty as well.

In 2021, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago sent more than 83,000 fictitious applications with randomized characteristics to geographically dispersed jobs posted by 108 of the largest U.S. employers. The findings: Distinctively Black names reduce the probability of employer contact by 2.1 percentage points relative to distinctively White names.

“It’s a mistake to judge these AI tools against some aspirational standard that humans aren’t meeting anyway,” Gesser said. “If you give the exact same resumé to two different companies and just change the name, you may find that the human reviewers treat those differently.”

Still, the AI tools are getting more sophisticated and that’s what worries regulators and prospective employees. “Today’s AI models evaluate candidates just like a recruiter, comparing the full resumé against the job description,” Morgan Llewellyn, chief data scientist at recruiting technology company Jobvite, told.

The most widely used AI tool, the automated-hiring technology known as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), has caused job seekers the most angst — and is what the new regs for now are aiming to eliminate. They are designed to pare down the droves of applications and resumé employers receive electronically for open positions.

In addition to screening resumés, another concerning issue highlighted in the EEOC-issued AI guidance is the increasing use of AI-led automated video interviews and the impact on people with disabilities in particular.

Candidates may be appraised by a computer algorithm on their speech cadence, facial expressions and word selection.

For example, the video interviewing software can analyze applicants’ speech patterns in order to reach conclusions through the algorithmic decision-making tool about their ability to solve problems. It is “not likely to score an applicant fairly if the applicant has a speech impediment that causes significant differences in speech patterns,” according to the EEOC publication.

More than 90% of employers use this type of screening to filter or rank potential candidates, according to a study by Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and the consulting firm Accenture; the organizations surveyed 8,000 workers and more than 2,250 executives.

Another problem: ATS can dismiss applications because of resumé gaps. That’s troubling, especially for women who have stepped out of the workforce for caregiving of children or aging relatives.

Onerous for employers?

“In order to use these tools going forward, you’re going to need to conduct a fairly onerous audit of how those tools’s results filter candidates by race, by gender, by ethnicity, and intersectionality by combinations of race, gender, and ethnicity,” Gesser predicted. “That’s going to be a big shift for a lot of companies who are using these tools and a pretty heavy burden.”

He added: “Every job, every candidate is different, and there’s a risk that there’ll be grounds for lawsuits and claims of discrimination.”

HR departments know the guard rails are coming. Little wonder that nearly half of employers surveyed by SHRM last year said they would like to see more information on how to identify any potential bias when using these tools.

And that may explain why the New York City law has pushed back enforcement of the law until April 15, 2023, despite the law’s January 1, 2023, effective date.

Said Dickens of SHRM: “We need to be assured the tools we use do not lead to bias in the hiring process.”

Source: finance.yahoo.com