Also, a family plan doesn't have to be 4x cheaper, even a 2x discount might do the trick if we're talking a family of 3-5.
I highly doubt this would put a "huge dent" in their revenues if all the nerds who are currently using their standard plans solo will invite their family members in and would start paying a little bit more than they currently do (e.g. 1.5x); what it would do though is it would earn them some positive karma and visibility on hn, reddit and other corners of the net.
So your hutch goes counter to their direct declaration at the time (I'm a long time customer, don't have references ready, but I can look if you want).
"Positive karma and visibility on HN/Reddit" is laughable. Don't get me wrong, but I see a lot of self-entitlement on these threads, with people supposedly blocking ads for privacy reasons and due to not having a way to give money, yet when something like YouTube Premium happens, they still don't subscribe, because fuck them, too expensive. Brings the "eating your cake and having it too" ideal to a whole new level.
As a matter of fact the cheap or free users generate over 80% of the support tickets, always. And if it's free or too cheap, it means you're the product.
What gets actual positive karma is staying in business and not milking user data in order to serve ads. If you want your data to be milked, Gmail is still free.
In a very simple example though: I'm currently considering getting a FM account, but I would only get it for the whole family, e.g. of 4. As of right now, I probably won't because 4 x $50/y is a tad too much.
So, in the one extreme, FM has to support +0 extra customers and gets $0. I'm not happy, they lose a customer, noone wins.
If I subscribe alone, FM has to support +1 customer and gets $50. Since it's their current plan, they are happy with it. FM wins.
Another unrealistic extreme, the whole family is free, FM has to support +4 customers and still gets $50. Obviously they aren't happy with it.
However, if the family gets a discount K, so that a family of four pay (K * $200), where K < 1, we get examples like e.g. they get +4 customers and +$150. If that's above their profit margins, they're happy and we're happy, everybody wins. I'm pretty sure even if K was something like 0.8 this would already attract many, the question is finding a number that suits everyone. Or it could be - get discount X% for family of size Y, so the discount is dynamic, e.g. 0.9 for 2, 0.85 for 3, etc.
I wouldn't categorize these users as "cheap" (why?) since it's not a whole lot cheaper than buying the normal plan X times. As long as there's a non-zero discount, it would be viewed differently by the users (as opposed to the current "fuck off, we don't care" approach).
