Would you share your Netflix faves on Facebook? Many wouldn't

Anyone who's accrued a decent number of friends on Facebook knows that short of blocking people it's impossible to avoid a glut of awkward status updates and relationship changes. Meanwhile, Netflix wants to give its customers one more thing to share: their favorite movies and TV shows. The company is pushing for Congress to amend a 1980s pro-consumer privacy law that now, more than two decades later, unintentionally prevents subscribers from sharing the movies they're watching over social networking services.

Unfortunately, a new study paints the novel feature as relatively undesirable.

ADVERTISEMENT

AllThingsD cited results of a Citi survey that found most Netflix streaming customers would be perfectly happy if the company continued to be disallowed from letting Facebook users share the movies and TV shows they're currently watching, with 71 percent saying they're "not at all interested" in the option. The next highest answer, "slightly interested," only managed to garner 16 percent of votes. Just two percent responded that they were "extremely interested" in such a feature.

Netflix is unable to offer the feature to U.S. subscribers (its bread and butter) thanks to the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which limits the customer information that video rental services are allowed to share. A Netflix-backed amendment to the law, H.R. 2471, was introduced last summer to grant the company leeway. The proposal passed in the House of Representatives last December, but is currently awaiting Senate approval.

ADVERTISEMENT

A Netflix app for Facebook was introduced last year for Canadian and Latin American subscribers.

Would you share what you're watching on Netflix with your Facebook friends? Or would you rather keep that information out of your news feed? Let us know in the comment section.

No posts to display