Netflix has suffered a wave of subscription cancellations in the US since the streaming platform’s chairman endorsed Kamala Harris for president and donated millions of dollars to her campaign, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing research by Antenna.
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings made the announcement in July, a day after US President Joe Biden withdrew from the election race and endorsed Vice President Harris.
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”Congrats to Kamala Harris – now it is time to win,” Hastings wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on July 22.
A day later, the billionaire businessman announced in an interview that he had donated $7 million to a pro-Harris political action committee (PAC), an organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates them to candidates’ campaigns.
Shortly afterwards, supporters of the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, began urging people to boycott Netflix, Bloomberg wrote.
The cancellation rate nearly tripled in the US, the outlet noted, citing data from the research firm Antenna, which pointed to July 26 as the worst day for subscription cancellations this year.
Harris was officially nominated as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate on August 5.
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The #CancelNetflix hashtag is still trending on X, with users claiming to have ended their subscriptions due to Hastings’s support for Kamala Harris.
However, Bloomberg noted that another reason for the cancellations was a phasing out of the basic tier, the cheapest advertising-free version of Netflix, in July.
The company has declined to give a statement on the story, and Hastings has not responded to a request for comment, Bloomberg said.