What you state is true, yes. There have even been many reports of Netflix account credentials being outright stolen or otherwise hijacked somehow without the legitimate owners’ knowledge.

But I’d guess that this kind of access is extremely limited in scope compared to the actual, deliberate account sharing happening. I don’t know what is happening in every country in the world, of course, but e.g. in the US most of the “freeloading” is happening on a friendly, casual basis, as in “yeah, man, here, have my login if you want to Netflix and chill some time”.

In Greece, where I live, a lot of people share accounts in order to share the monthly cost of the subscription, e.g. four friends get a Premium plan and each one pays for one-fourth of its cost so it becomes more affordable.

If Netflix decides to implement those changes worldwide, it will probably score a number of new subscribers — even of the Basic plan — but they will most likely be people of the second case I mentioned, practically forced to become customers. Very few of the “casual freeloaders” of the first case will actually subscribe. That’s my view, of course.

Netflix will annoy the legitimate subscribers of the first case, though, who will either have to accept the $2.99 “penalty” of sorts or tell their “freeloader” friends to pay for it or cut them off altogether…? The latter two scenarios will not be to many people’s liking, so they will probably pay up but be pissed about it. If Netflix attempts another price hike after that, those people may feel they’ve had enough.