Disney+ is doing Family Profiles all Wrong

Oct 3, 2019

From what I can see, Disney+ is likely one of the smartest moves Disney has ever made. Disney's upcoming streaming service is currently available as a beta test for everyone in the Netherlands, and the responses so far have been positive.

Due to the excitement that was brought upon by the test in the Netherlands, I decided to go ahead and put in my preorder. After signing up, I noticed one problem. The problem lies within Disney's multiuser account system. Let me explain.

What's the problem?

Disney+’s multiuser profiles work very similarly to that of Netflix. You have one main account, under one email address, that everyone signs into. From there you can make individual profiles under that one email. That means that if I want to share the account with my family, I would have to give each member my Netflix email and password. So if you are the kind of person that likes to go against the password gods, using the same password for everything; you're out of luck. You need to think of something else.

This also means that anyone can just hop onto your account and start messing with your recommendations. Yes you can set up a parental control pin, but those aren't implemented very well.

The solution.

So what should Disney do instead? The YouTube TV method. YouTube implements it the right way. Each user uses their own account with their own email and password. To get it set up, all the host account has to do is send an invite to the people they would like to share the service with. Once set up, everyone can sign in with their own credentials and have their own curated content.

You don't have to worry about people having access to your stuff. Another benefit is that you don't have to share an updated password if you ever decide to change it.

To conclude.

The likelihood of Disney actually changing this aspect of the service is very slim at this point. It would likely require that they rework a good chunk of what they have already accomplished. And I don't think they care enough to put in that work at the moment, especially when they are still trying to get the service launched.
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