It's amazing how people are still thinking about themselves even in this situation. I guess a crisis will show the true colors of people. Because who cares about the network infrastructure, I want my netflix to be in 4K!
No, you must understand that a lot of people are unhappy about this because they're paying for a service. If Netflix would suddenly say
"look folks, we all have to dial back a bit on data consumption, so we're defaulting everyone to the lower resolution plan for a month or two", I am sure a lot of folks would be pretty understanding of the situation. However, according to the article that is not what's happening. It's a bit like paying for 1 full litre of milk (4K video) and only getting 250ml (SD video) in the bottle. You wouldn't like that would you? Also, Netflix, as far as I know, has sent out no messaging to users about reducing quality during this period, which they are required to do contractually.
The article itself is also somewhat confusing, at one point saying users would need to watch content in standard definition (SD) while Netflix allegedly says they're only reducing quality by 25%, which I agree would not be hugely noticeable, however, they are still required to notify their users of these changes.
Just because there is a crisis, it does not mean that laws and regulations go out the window. The rules around the sale of goods, and services, consumer rights, etc are all still 100% valid and applicable. This is not suddenly the wild west.
I would also agree with some of the comments here around the robustness of ISPs and networks. I am certified in small and large scale networks, and any ISP or network that is not set up to intelligently deal with traffic, have adequate redundancies built in and ample band-width set up, should not exist in the first place. I would also highlight that many claims around extra network usage are false. You see, a lot of people suddenly stop using the office network, and use their home network, but it's often the same ISP anyway. In fact, offices tend to have higher bandwidths allocated compared to regular household connections, which means things even out a lot more than one would expect. Is there a usage increase? Of course. But it's likely around 10-25% which should be well within the capabilities of any ISP. What worries me a little bit more is VPN usage and how well companies and their VPNs are prepared to deal with all the remote workers. Technically, at the office you route through the same VPN (without manually connecting to the VPN), but this could in theory be a more brittle situation.
