[Melatonic]

I would disagree - when average Joe loses his job due to a recession they are going to need some form of entertainment to fill their now wide-open schedule. People here might find torrenting and piracy pretty trivial but the average Joe is going to find it a much bigger hurdle than simply logging into Netflix and pressing go.

[laverix]

But how does average Joe pay for the account, if the prices for groceries, electricity, heating and transportation explode? If things go really south, average joe will be happy if he can afford food and heat his rented flat at least a little bit in winter.

[yywwbbn]

We already know that governments are likely to just start throwing loads money in every direction if they believe that things are going to go ‘really south’.

[Melatonic]

He probably will keep paying for a single service he really likes and share it with a bunch of people/family and split the costs. But yeah of course if it is between beans and rice and Netflix the person is gonna choose food. But that would be extreme poverty

[giantg2]

I think this assumes they can't get food through other programs (unemployment, snap, food bank, etc). They could have their food and Netflix too.

[whiplash451]

Average Joe will use the cheaper, ad-based plan that Netflix is working on.

[jallen_dot_dev]

He'll finance it with credit card debt.

[jallen_dot_dev]

I agree with you. The rational HNer thinks of course streaming services should be the first to go when money gets tight. But people don't behave rationally.

The cord-cutting trend didn't really kick off during the depths of the Great Recession, but in the years after when better online alternatives came around.

[bart_spoon]

I agree most people won’t turn to privacy. I still think streaming services like Netflix will take a massive hit though, not because people are turning to privacy but because the market is saturated and people have lots of different streaming subscriptions. If a recession hits, I think it’s unlikely every user cancels all their subscriptions, but many will likely reduce the number to just one or two. For some people, they might axe Disney+ and keep Netflix. Others may opt for Hulu and get rid of Netflix. I think virtually all of them will see a sizable loss of subscribers.