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Tag: disney

  • Florida Man Accused of Hacking Disney World Menus, Changing Font to Wingdings

    Florida Man Accused of Hacking Disney World Menus, Changing Font to Wingdings

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    With just days to go until the 2024 presidential election in the United States, WIRED reported on documents that revealed US government assessments about multiple components of election security and stability. First obtained by the national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People, one report distributed by the US Department of Homeland Security in October assessed that financially motivated cybercriminals and ideologically motivated hacktivists are more likely than state-backed hackers to attack US election infrastructure. Another government memo warned of the risk to the election of insider threats, noting that such internal malfeasance “could derail or jeopardize a fair and transparent election process.”

    With so much at stake in a hyper-polarized and combative climate, US elections have become increasingly militarized, with bulletproof glass, drones, defensive blockades, and snipers protecting election offices, and election officials bracing for the possibility of violent attacks. A WIRED investigation also revealed a successful CIA hack of Venezuela’s military payroll system that was part of a clandestine Trump administration effort to overthrow the country’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro.

    In other cybersecurity news, WIRED did a deep dive into the firewall vendor Sophos’ five-year turf war to try to remove Chinese hackers running espionage operations on some vulnerable devices—and keep them out. And researchers warn that a “critical” zero-click vulnerability in a default photo app on Synology network-attached storage devices could be exploited by hackers to steal data or infiltrate networks.

    As always, there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

    A Disney employee who was fired from the company and still had access to its passwords allegedly hacked into the software used by Walt Disney World’s restaurants, according to reporting by 404 Media and Court Watch. A criminal complaint against Michael Scheuer claims he repeatedly accessed the third-party menu-creation system created for Disney and changed menus, including changing fonts to Windings—the font made up entirely of symbols.

    “The fonts were renamed by the threat actor to maintain the name of the original font, but the actual characters appeared as symbols,” the criminal complaint says. “As a result of this change, all of the menus within the database were unusable because the font changes propagated throughout the database.”

    The allegations aren’t limited to whimsical font vandalism, however. The federal complaint also details how Scheuer allegedly changed menu listings to say that foods with peanuts in them were safe for people with allergies, tried to log into Disney employees’ accounts, locked 14 employees out of their accounts by trying to log in with an automated script, and maintained a folder of personal information about employees and turned up at one person’s home. A lawyer representing Scheuer did not comment on the allegations.

    For the past few years, infostealers have become a popular tool of choice for hackers, from cybercriminals trying to make money to sophisticated nation state groups. The malware, which is often bundled into pirated software, uses web browsers to collect usernames and passwords, cookies, financial information, and other data you enter into your computer. This week, cops around the world took down the Redline infostealer, which has been used to grab more than 170 million pieces of information and has been linked to large-scale hacks. An almost identical infostealer called Meta was also disrupted. As part of Operation Magnus, US officials identified Russian national Maxim Rudometov as being behind the development of Redline. As TechCrunch reports, Rudometov was identified following a series of operational security errors, including reusing online handles and emails across social media apps and other websites. In its criminal complaint, the US Department of Justice pointed out Rudometov’s dating profile, which apparently has “liked” 89 other users and received no likes in return.

    In January 2018, it emerged that GPS data from running and cycling app Strava could expose secret military locations and the movements of people exercising around them. Officials warned that it was a clear security risk. Years later, many seemingly haven’t paid attention. French newspaper Le Monde has revealed in a series of stories that US Secret Service agents are leaking their data through the fitness app, allowing the movements of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Kamala Harris to be tracked. Security staff linked to French president Emmanuel Macron and Russian president Vladimir Putin are similarly exposing their movements. Those exposing their data used public profiles and often posted runs starting or finishing at the locations they were staying during official trips. Included in the leaks were bodyguards linked to Putin who were running near a palace the Russian leader has denied owning.

    Italian prosecutors placed four people under house arrest and revealed they are investigating at least 60 others after an intelligence firm in the country allegedly hacked government databases and gathered information on more than 800,000 people. Intelligence company Equalize allegedly gathered information about some of Italy’s most prominent politicians, entrepreneurs, and sports stars, Politico reported. It is alleged that the information accessed included bank transactions, police investigations, and more. The hacked information was reportedly sold or potentially used as part of extortion attempts, with those behind the scheme allegedly earning €3.1 million. The scandal, which has enraged Italian politicians, may also be wider than just its impact in Italy, with the latest reports suggesting Equalize counted Israeli intelligence and the Vatican as clients.

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  • Mapping the Marvel Universe in 6 Very Cool Charts

    Mapping the Marvel Universe in 6 Very Cool Charts

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    Mapping the Marvel universe is not the kind of thing one can do just by snapping their fingers.

    For starters, there are many Earths out there in the multiverse; there are also all kinds of mystical dimensions and other weird locations. But even on just one version of Earth there are many points of interest, from the hometowns of fan-favorite heroes to fictional nations that exist only in comic books. Trying to find every Marvel-ous hangout in New York City? Fuggedaboutit.

    Still, for his latest book of cool charts, that’s exactly what Tim Leong did: map the Marvel universe. For his new book, Marvel Super Graphic, Leong made a diagram of mystical planes, an illustration of the proximity of Kamala Khan’s New Jersey residence to Moon Girl’s Lower East Side lab, and even a Mean Girls–esque illustration of who-sits-where in the Empire State University cafeteria.

    But that’s just the beginning. Leong—who, full disclosure, once served as WIRED’s design director—filled Marvel Super Graphic with charts and graphics about many aspects of the Marvel comic book universe. Check out some geographically-focused highlights from the book above.

    —Angela Watercutter

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  • A Disney+ Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming in September

    A Disney+ Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming in September

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    The House of Mouse is getting a renovation. In an earnings call on Wednesday, Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that the company will begin a new password-sharing crackdown “in earnest” starting in September. Iger didn’t divulge how the company plans to limit password-sharing, but presumably this will mean the company will be on the lookout for logins outside of the subscriber’s home and prompt those suspected of sharing their accounts to pay a fee to do so. The announcement comes months before the company intends to increase monthly prices on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+—and their respective bundles—in October.

    What this means for most folks is higher bills and tougher decisions. As more and more streaming services enter the fray—and as many of those services also raise prices and/or introduce ad-supported tiers—people who love to watch things are increasingly left to figure out which two or three services they’re willing to pay 10 to 20 bucks a month for. Considering Disney has a pretty strong back catalog (Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars), as well as Hulu shows like The Bear and tons of sports on ESPN+, it’s likely many subscribers will shell out to keep the service—and cough up more to share their passwords.

    “The password-sharing crackdown has worked favorably for other streamers,” says Sarah Henschel, a principal analyst at Omdia who watches the streaming market closely. “It is a strategy that works well to grow revenue. However, it drives a lot of consumer frustration with streaming.” Put another way, subscribers are likely to stick around and perhaps even pay the extra fees to share their accounts, but it may mean they ultimately don’t keep every service.

    And hell, it worked for Netflix. Late last year, after a few shaky quarters and amid the streaming giant’s rollout of both ad-supported tiers and a paid sharing program, Netflix added 9 million new subscribers worldwide. It hasn’t really seen any major dents in subscriber numbers since. So far, it’s the only test case—Max seems poised to roll out its crackdown later this year or early next, and others have yet to test the waters—but it does indicate that paying to share a streaming account doesn’t always send people running for the hills. Or, at least, it hasn’t yet.

    “The password crackdown for Netflix—combined with its ad tier—has been a massive boon to subscriber growth,” says Wade Payson-Denney, an analyst at streaming industry tracker Parrot Analytics. In the year before the streamer started cracking down, Netflix’s global subscriber base grew by 11.8 million; in the four quarters after, that base grew by 39.3 million, according to Parrot. It could lead to similar growth for Disney.

    All Things Must Pass

    This isn’t the first time Disney has warned of such a crackdown. Last year, Iger hinted that the company was looking into limiting the practice; in February, the company said it planned to begin a paid sharing program, but then launched it in only a few markets, in June.

    Disney has been hustling to build up its subscriber base and turn a profit from streaming since it launched Disney+ in 2019. During the past three months, Disney+ netted only about 200,000 new subscribers, for a total of 153.8 million—small potatoes compared to the more than 270 million subscribers Netflix claims, but not bad, and a marked increase over last year. Meanwhile, Max is still looking to break 100 million.

    As part of Wednesday’s earnings announcements, Disney revealed its combined streaming offerings made money for the first time ever during the last quarter, bringing in an operating profit of $47 million. This is a sharp upturn; Disney’s streaming business lost $512 million in the third quarter last year. The recent profits largely came thanks to ESPN+.

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  • Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery Just Reinvented Cable

    Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery Just Reinvented Cable

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    Said it before, will say it again: Streaming is just cable TV now. So much so that the services created to give cord-cutters the content they want have now resorted to reinventing the wheel. To wit: On Wednesday, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced a new partnership, one that will bundle Disney+, Hulu, and Max into one service. For those keeping track, it’ll theoretically put HBO, HGTV, Hulu, ABC, FX, CNN, Disney (so, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, etc.), and the DC Extended Universe into one pile, just like the cable packages of yore.

    The new service is set to launch in the summer. Specifics like pricing and whether or not it’ll be a stand-alone app with its own name (might we suggest DisneyMax±?) have yet to be announced, but there will be ad-free and ad-supported tiers. If it is a stand-alone, one can only imagine what wild color scheme it will have, but if it’s a combo of purple and that new sea-green that the Disney+/Hulu service has, I’ll scream.

    In addition to making things difficult for those of us who make all those what-to-watch guides Jack Dorsey likes to tweet about, the new bundle also sets up a face-off between streaming’s old guard and new. In a weird reversal, the old guard in this case are services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the ones who got everyone to cut the cord in the first place. The newcomers are the legacy media companies that created their own streamers to try to keep up. After a shaky start, Disney finally showed signs of turning a streaming profit in its quarterly earnings report this week. Max, meanwhile, has been making money for Warner Bros. Discovery for a while, even when it loses subscribers. (Ads, baby!)

    Combined, the offerings of these two companies might be tough to beat, a catalog to rival Netflix’s, which could cause a bit of hand-wringing at the streaming behemoth. (Apple TV+ and Amazon might care, but they both have other ways of making money, like shipping you stuff and selling you new iPads.)

    A recent Parrot Analytics report found that when the monthly cost of each streaming service is weighed against demand for its original shows and movies, Max and the Disney+/Hulu bundle are both in the bang-for-your-buck Top 3. Disney’s bundle is expensive, but it’s got a lot to offer; Max is $4 cheaper, but has less stuff. The other one? Netflix’s standard plan, which at $15.49 is 50 cents less than Max, but has more in-demand content. If the new DisneyMax± bundle (sorry, that’s its name now) is competitively priced, it could be a thorn in Netflix’s side, especially as the companies roll out the Star Wars series The Acolyte and new seasons of the hit shows House of the Dragon and The Bear.

    One thing mysteriously missing from the Disney-WBD announcement, though, is whether this new streaming bundle will offer live sports. Considering the companies are teaming up (heh) with Fox Corp. to offer a streaming sports bundle, odds are it likely won’t. But as the consolidation of streaming continues, there’s no guarantee a similar service that includes sports won’t come later,



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  • Disney+ Has a New Look—Which Is No Look at All

    Disney+ Has a New Look—Which Is No Look at All

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    Are you one of those people who arranges your apps by color? Do you keep folders? Or are you, like me, a moron who just keeps a loose memory of what color any particular app is and swipes and scrolls until their eyes catch a familiar glimpse? If you are the latter, finding Disney+—and Hulu—might be getting a little harder.

    This week, Disney rolled out Hulu on Disney+ in the US. Ostensibly part of company CEO Bob Iger’s promise of a “one-app experience,” the launch basically just means that if you have one of the Disney “bundles” you can now watch Hulu stuff while you’re in Disney+. OK, cool. Along with the change, though, Disney+ got a new logo, one awash in what it is calling “aurora,” a swampy blue-green hue that looks like what would happen if the eyes of Tammy Faye were imprinted on your device’s screen like it was the Shroud of Turin.

    As with any minor change to their digital experience, internet people have noticed this shift. And commented. Some called it “bland,” while others called it “lifeless.” More nuanced and jugular-aiming takes went like this: “I mean, it’s Disney. Making new versions of stuff that’s worse than the original is what they do.” A hot take for a cool color.

    Courtesy of Disney+

    Disney’s shift here isn’t entirely insignificant. It involved modifying everything, from re-encoding Hulu’s video files to work on Disney+ to updating the metadata attached to shows and movies. The idea is that one day Disney will have “one master media library for the entire company,” Aaron LaBerge, president and CTO of Disney Entertainment and ESPN, told the Verge. It is, in other words, about making Disney+ a bigger trove of content than it already is.

    This is where, metaphorically, the Disney+ color change takes on a different tone. It serves as a reminder of the flattening of the streaming experience. In the app libraries of our minds, Netflix is red, Apple TV+ is black, Hulu is green, Paramount+ and Amazon Prime Video have a very similar blue hue, Peacock and Discovery+ have a rainbow-and-black thing going on. These visual signifiers indicate what kind of experience will emerge when clicked. (I don’t know about you, but I now associate perfectly zestless television with RGB 229 9 20, aka Netflix Red.)

    As the streamers have consolidated or changed their identities, they’ve muddied the nonverbal cues that have set our expectations around what they offer. Had HBO kept that old black-silver-blue look from the Go days, maybe, coupled with Apple TV+, black would be the official color of prestige television. But it’s not.

    The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.



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  • A Max Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming

    A Max Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming

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    Be warned, all ye who watch House of the Dragon thanks to your parents’ Max account: A password-sharing crackdown is coming.

    Warner Bros. Discovery, Max’s parent company, plans to launch the restrictions in late 2024, WBD’s head of global streaming and games, JB Parrette, said at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Monday. Details on the crackdown are scant, but the push toward paid sharing is expected to roll out more widely next year.

    Max, formerly HBO Max, is just the latest streamer to look to password-sharing limitations to keep streaming viable. Netflix started cracking down on users sharing their passwords outside the household last year. Disney recently informed Disney+ and Hulu subscribers of plans to convert suspected account sharers to paid subscribers. Disney emailed customers in February letting them know that their terms of service would be changing and that the sharing of login information with anyone outside their household would be forbidden starting March 14. Netflix, similarly, rolled out its restrictions last year by emailing users suspected of sharing their login details and telling them users outside the household would be shut out.

    These moves come as providers struggle to hang on to their user bases and streaming becomes an even more crowded field, forcing consumers to make tough choices about which services they can afford. Netflix, following a couple rough years, bounced back and saw a boost in subscribers and revenue late last year following its password crackdown.

    Disney+ has been adding subscribers but struggling to hit profitability. Still, Disney CEO Bob Iger believes streaming can start making money by the end of 2024, thanks in part to its new ad-supported tiers and a combined Disney+/Hulu “one-app experience” coming this year.

    Meanwhile, Max has changed shape repeatedly following the Warner Bros. merger with Discovery, which ultimately combined HBO Max and Discovery+ into one streamer. The move yucked the yum of longtime HBO Max fans, but it led WBD to become the first Hollywood heavyweight to turn a full-year profit from streaming.

    Password-sharing crackdowns also come at a time when piracy is on the rise—something that’s keenly impacted WBD’s offerings. For years, HBO’s Game of Thrones was one of the most pirated shows on TV. More recently, The Last of Us and House of the Dragon have taken the top spots.

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  • The Disney Imagineer Building You a Real-Life Holodeck

    The Disney Imagineer Building You a Real-Life Holodeck

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    Though ideas at Disney aren’t always developed in a linear fashion—a prototype of an invention might be started years before the company finds the place to put it into action, or an idea for something artistically cool might germinate for a bit before Research figures out the technology—Smoot has worked on a few things with a hard deadline, including the lightsabers for the Star Wars Launch Bay in 2015 and the Galactic Starcruiser in 2022.

    While one could argue that not everything Disney makes is pure, inspirational magic, Smoot designs everything he works on to either entertain or spark joy. “There are engineers that have to work on things that can hurt people or that aren’t necessarily that good, and that’s never something I have to worry about,” Smoot says. Instead, he jokes, he just concerns himself with how Madame Leota will “float” through her seance room every few minutes for years on end. (He also had a hand in the operation of the Haunted Mansion’s stretching paintings, which were refurbished a few years back.)

    Citing Arthur C. Clarke’s third law that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Smoot says part of his work is about conveying a smooth and perfect sheen of surprise. When parents take their kids to a Disney park, they want those kids to have the same experience they did, even if all of the tech has been replaced.

    Smoot points to Madame Leona as an example. Online, people had all kinds of theories about how Disney made the Haunted Mansion character fly—proof that Smoot’s tricks worked. “I read some descriptions from people who loved it and how they thought it worked, and without going into too much detail, I’ll say they were completely wrong and completely simplistic,” he says. “That’s when I said, ‘OK, yeah, what we did was good.’”

    It’s this kind of impact that moves Smoot’s work beyond the realm of cool gadgetry. Paiva says that “when we look at potential inductees, we’re looking for inventors who have US patents that cover their work, which certainly Lanny has, but beyond that, we’re looking for inventors whose work has made societal, economic, and cultural impact.”

    While Smoot’s Disney career has certainly wowed and enriched the lives of park goers and cruise ship passengers over the years, his work on teleconferencing at Bell was also an important factor into his induction, as was his work with aspiring young inventors.

    “I’ve become a bit of a role model for young Black kids and people of color and women who have been looked over or not been in the room where things are done,” Smoot says. “I came from Brownsville, and I didn’t have a lot of money. Even today, I am one of the most thrifty people when it comes to building things. Some people say, ‘I can’t start my work unless I have this much money,’ but I’m like, ‘OK, I have a broomstick and I can take the keyboard apart…’”

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  • Live TV Is the New Streaming

    Live TV Is the New Streaming

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    “Biggest audience since the moon landing.” That was the headline when Nielsen released viewership numbers for Super Bowl 2024. About 123.7 million people in the US watched the game, more than any other game since Nielsen started keeping track and, yes, close to the 125 to 150 million people in the US who watched the moon landing in July 1969. Despite the scores of streaming options and other things to watch, people still tuned in to watch live—to see the Kansas City Chiefs win in overtime, to see Taylor Swift, to watch Usher, to see Martin Scorsese’s alien-invasion ad, to catch the new Deadpool & Wolverine trailer.

    Maybe live TV isn’t dead after all.

    It is, of course, easy to chalk this up to the event being, well, the Super Bowl, which is still the single most popular US sporting event of the year. Also of note: A billion-plus people watch events like the World Cup globally. Still, the Big Game wasn’t the only thing people tuned in for this week. On Monday, Jon Stewart reclaimed his place at The Daily Show desk and brought in 1.9 million viewers—the most the show has seen since 2018. It’s an election year, and as Alison Herman wrote in Variety, “anyone who has living memories of the War on Terror is powerless to resist Stewart’s particular blend of cynicism and moral righteousness.” Or, maybe after seeing Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, they’re just longing for the days when Stewart would go on CNN to call Carlson a “dick” on Crossfire.

    While this may seem like a yearning for the days of more appointment television and setting our VCR to tape My So-Called Life, and it is, there’s something else at play. There is a malaise associated with streaming these days, when scrolling through the endless libraries of “Eh, OK, Sure” TV on Netflix or Hulu doesn’t feel all that different from the mindless channel-surfing people did in the ’90s while they were waiting for Friends to start. With streamers raising prices and adding commercials, maybe the urgency of watching something as it’s happening has the juice to bring people back to broadcast.

    Streamers certainly think so. In a quest to get more subscribers, one of their biggest plays has been to secure the rights to live sports. Apple TV+ has baseball and soccer, Amazon Prime Video has Thursday Night Football, Netflix just landed WWE wrestling. Hulu and Disney+ can be bundled with ESPN. Outside of sports, Max has the CNN live feed. Netflix just hosted the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The Oscars will air on ABC on March 10, but you can also watch them on Hulu or YouTube TV.

    All of which to say, even if live TV is making a comeback, it’s a comeback buoyed by streaming. One of the reasons, beyond Taylor Swift and Usher, that lots of people tuned in to the Super Bowl was that, in addition to CBS, the game also aired on Nickelodeon, where it was hosted by SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star. (I’m told it was fun to watch on edibles.) The game also streamed on Paramount+, and although some viewers reported glitchiness early in the game, the easy access across multiple platforms boosted the game’s viewership numbers. HBO’s current Sunday Night Sad show True Detective: Night Country has surpassed the first season in total viewers. A lot of them watch the show when it airs on Sunday, and a big chunk watch on Max. Nearly a million people—930,000—watched Stewart’s return to The Daily Show; some 6 million more have watched his return monologue on YouTube.

    The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

    For years we’ve been debating whether the watercooler show is over. Was Game of Thrones the end? Has Last of Us revived that zombie concept? I remain on the fence. There’s far more niche programming for niche interests than seemingly ever before, but global sporting events and world news events will always capture the public’s attention in a way viral moments can’t. People watching the Super Bowl still knew the Chiefs won in overtime before they saw it on X.

    On Wednesday, my phone buzzed with an alert from The New York Times. Something awful had happened during the Chiefs’ victory celebration in Kansas City. Later, I learned that one person, a popular local radio DJ, had been killed, and more than 20 others were injured, in a mass shooting at the event. But I didn’t learn that by diving further into my phone. I turned on MSNBC.

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  • ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer Hopes Pegging Can Save the MCU

    ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer Hopes Pegging Can Save the MCU

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    As with most movie commercials that dropped during Super Bowl 2024, the new trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine was only advertised with a teaser. Makes sense considering trailers are usually a couple minutes and Big Game ads are decidedly 30-second spots. But there was a different reason it was only a teaser that aired on television and encouraged fans to watch the full trailer online: The full trailer introduces pegging to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

    The trailer opens on Wade Wilson’s birthday party. There’s a knock at the door. Wilson (aka Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds) answers and is greeted by agents from the Time Variance Authority, the timeline-policing outfit at the center of Loki. As the TVA agents whip out their glowing Time Sticks, Wade retorts “Pegging isn’t new for me, friendo. But it is for Disney.” Then he looks directly at the camera.

    We won’t get into pegging here (IYKYK), but suffice to say, Wade’s right. While it might be a run of the mill joke for Deadpool, it’s something new for MCU/Disney offering. Deadpool & Wolverine is the first Deadpool movie to hit theaters (it drops in July) since Disney completed its $52 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox and brought Deadpool and the X-Men into the MCU fold. Doing so, and bringing Wolverine into the mix, was always going to require some sort of timey-wimey retconning—he’s had two movies worth of adventures while the other Avengers were out chasing Thanos—so tying Deadpool to the TVA makes sense from a continuity (and Kang Dynasty) perspective. It’s also a sign that at least someone at Disney knows the MCU needs to be shaken up.

    As it stands, Deadpool & Wolverine is the only Marvel movie coming out this year, and the last one—The Marvels—didn’t exactly light the world on fire, despite being a really good time. Many speculated in 2023 that Marvel was losing its way. Introducing a foul-mouthed horny hero, one that builds on the rather queer themes of the Thor movies and Loki, seems to be Disney’s plan for injecting some excitement into the franchise.

    When I interviewed Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy last year, I asked him about bringing some bite to the gentle world of Marvel. When I asked if the movie would be R-rated, he said, “Fuck yes.” When I asked about Deadpool’s identity, he perked up, noting that “the pansexual openness of Deadpool is delightful. … [he’s] so audaciously ahead-of-his-time fluid.” Ideologically, he stood on the side of Disney in being against legislation like Florida’s “Don’t say gay” bill, which has put the Mouse House in a legal standoff with the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

    It would be easy to write off the queering of the MCU under the auspices of Disney as an empty attempt at “edginess”—one that only winks at LGBTQ+ fans without actually representing them. There is something to the cynical view, but given the blowback Disney is likely to receive for releasing Deadpool & Wolverine during Hot Election Year Summer, the effort appears genuine.

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  • The Hulu and Disney+ Password Crackdown Is Coming. Here’s What You Need to Know

    The Hulu and Disney+ Password Crackdown Is Coming. Here’s What You Need to Know

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    Hulu and Disney+ subscribers have until March 14 to stop sharing their login information with people outside of their household. Disney-owned streaming services are the next to adopt the password-crackdown strategy that has helped Netflix add millions of subscribers.

    An email sent from “The Hulu Team” to subscribers this week and viewed by Ars Technica tells customers that Hulu is “adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household.”

    Hulu’s subscriber agreement, updated on January 25, now states that users may not share their subscription outside of their household, with household being defined as the “collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.”

    The updated terms also note that Hulu might scrutinize user accounts to ensure that the accounts aren’t being used on devices located outside of the subscriber’s residence:

    We may, in our sole discretion, analyze the use of your account to determine compliance with this Agreement. If we determine, in our sole discretion, that you have violated this Agreement, we may limit or terminate access to the Service and/or take any other steps as permitted by this Agreement (including those set forth in Section 6 of this Agreement).

    Section 6 of Hulu’s subscriber agreement says Hulu can “restrict, suspend, or terminate” access without notice.

    Hulu didn’t respond to a request for comment on how exactly it will “analyze the use” of accounts. But Netflix, which started its password crackdown in March 2022 and brought it to the US in May 2023, says it uses “information such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to determine whether a device signed in to your account is part of your Netflix Household” and doesn’t collect GPS data from devices.

    According to the email sent to Hulu subscribers, the policy will apply immediately to people subscribing to Hulu from now on.

    The updated language in Hulu’s subscriber agreement matches what’s written in the Disney+/ESPN+ subscriber agreement, which was also updated on January 25. Disney+’s password crackdown first started in November in Canada.

    A Disney spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that Disney+ subscribers have until March 14 to comply. The rep also said that notifications were sent to Disney+’s US subscribers yesterday; although, it’s possible that some subscribers didn’t receive an email alert, as is the case with a subscriber in my household.

    The representative didn’t respond to a question asking how Disney+ will “analyze” user accounts to identify account sharing.

    Push for Profits

    Disney CEO Bob Iger first hinted at a Disney streaming-password crackdown in August during an earnings call. He highlighted a “significant” amount of password sharing among Disney-owned streaming services and said Disney had “the technical capability to monitor much of this.” The executive hopes a password crackdown will help drive subscribers and push profits to Netflix-like status. Disney is aiming to make its overall streaming services business profitable by the end of 2024.

    In November, it was reported that Disney+ had lost $11 billion since launching in November 2019. The streaming service has sought to grow revenue by increasing prices and encouraging users to join its subscription tier with commercials, which is said to bring streaming services higher average revenue per user than non-ad plans.

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