Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 015a 545 days ago
Its a lot harder to share the passkey for e.g. your Netflix account among friends.
2 comments

So you think that Netflix has gone to Microsoft to start a multi-year industry-wide standardization process to change how people login because that’s easier than looking at their own log files?

Netflix didn’t crack down on shared passwords when they were growing rapidly but that’s not because they couldn’t.

I don't, but yes; many seriously actually believe this is why the industry is moving to passkeys. It isn't logical, it isn't reasonable, but these are your customers.
I haven't tried--cant you share passkeys stored in your password manager?
Yes, if you're both using the same password manager. But, while you live in Silicon Valley bubbleland, most people don't. The world's most popular password manager is Excel; and sadly it does not support sharing passkeys (or, really, passkeys at all).
By now, wouldn’t the most popular password manager be the one builtin to Chrome, followed by Microsoft and Apple’s?
So that sounds like an argument for better education, not recirculating baseless conspiracy theories.
Baseless? Can you think of a reason why Netflix wouldn't support it for precisely this reason? Their campaign against account sharing is widely publicized. Do you think account sharing is easier or harder under passkeys? Just because it's a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it's false.
It’s baseless because it’s pure speculation without any evidence, or even a coherent argument for why they’d go to so much work for something they already do at much lower cost.
I think the argument is misunderstood here. I'm not saying this is the only reason that Netflix would be in favor of passkeys, just that it's one reason, not even the main one.

Here's the argument. I guess it's up to you whether you think it's coherent.

1. Netflix dislikes account sharing. They'd rather have two people pay for two subscriptions. They're a business, and are in favor of higher subscription numbers. 2. Passkeys make account sharing harder. Customer behavior modeling probably suggests that some fraction of account share-ers would create new subscriptions if they switched to passkeys. 3. Of all the reasons Netflix is in favor or against passkeys, this reason is in favor of them, via 1. and 2.

You just hit the share button for the passkey in Apple/Google Passwords/your password manager
That only works if the share target is using the same password manager.

If you asked most people "what password manager do you use" they would give you a blank stare; but sadly, the answer is rarely "I'm not using one" the answer is usually Apple or Chrome or whatever is built in and most convenient.