Remember That Creepy 'A Christmas Prince' Tweet? Netflix Is Defending It
Netflix's little marketing stunt on Twitter has backfired.
On Sunday night, Dec. 10, the streaming service called out the 53 users who watched its holiday movie, A Christmas Prince, every day for the past 18 days.
To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?
— Netflix US (@netflix) December 11, 2017
'A Christmas Prince'
The movie that some people apparently cannot stop watching, A Christmas Prince, is a holiday romance that honestly should air on Lifetime rather than the same streaming service that gifted the world Stranger Things and The Crown.
It stars Rose McIver of iZombie as Amber, a reporter who goes undercover to expose a royal scandal. Unsurprisingly, Amber and the future king, played by Ben Lamb, fall in love.
Users complained that the movie was full of old rom-com tropes (Elle listed down every tired plot points used in the movie). Some say that the movie is so bad, that it is actually good.
A Christmas Prince on Netflix is like a shit Princess Diaries 2 version of How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. Therefore I loved it and am gonna need a sequel — Meg (@megsaystweet) December 5, 2017
Watched A Christmas Prince on Netflix. The acting was terrible, the plot line was cheesy and predictable, and I absolutely LOVED IT OMG YES THE CHRISTMAS SEASON IS UPON US WE MUST APPRECIATE IT AND LOVE IT AS CHRIST LOVES US — Darg (@Emma_Dargy) December 1, 2017
Takeaways from #AChristmasPrince: - I hated it so much - I can't wait for the sequel - You bet your ass I'm watching it again before Christmas — Brendan Leonard (@shutupbrendance) November 30, 2017
Netflix Is Watching
Most of the responses are positive and playful. It made a lot of users rather curious about why a number of people have streamed the holiday movie repeatedly.
However, the move also raised concerns about user data and how the company monitors users habits. That is why the streaming service immediately sent out a statement to its millions of subscribers across the globe.
"The privacy of our members' viewing is important to us," Netflix stated. "This information represents overall viewing trends, not the personal viewing information of specific, identified individuals."
Netflix also outed a subscriber from the U.K. who watched the 2007 animated movie, Bee Movie, a staggering 357 times in the past year. Another user watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pear 365 times in a row. There was even a subscriber that binged Shameless somewhere in Antarctica.
This month, the streaming service published A Year in Bingeing, a report on users' viewing habits in 2017 based on their own data and the result of some 60,000 surveys. The company shared that its 100 million subscribers across the globe watched 140 million hours worth of content collectively every day. Mexico set the record for most number of viewers streaming at the same time.
It also named its most popular programs and divided them into four categories based on how people chose to watch them. Here are the top programs per category:
The Shows We Devoured: American Vandal
The Shows We Savored: The Crown
The Shows That Got Us Cheating: Narcos
The Shows That Brought Us Together: Stranger Things