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I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my sub
by hyencomper 7y ago
I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my subscription recently as I realized that while Netflix has a lot of shows, there is a dearth of quality content and the search function is not useful. With shows like Friends and Office leaving, there is not much to draw people who like leaving it on in the background. Also, the auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying.
- mrexroad 7y agoThe auto playing of trailers has been enough to curtail my casual browsing of their app.
- protomyth 7y agoYeah, I go to Netflix if I know what I want to watch not to browse. It is very much like a DVD that won't let you skip the trailers.
- smolder 7y agoI just made a quick greasemonkey script that disables the autoplay at the top but leaves up the jpg splash. If anyone's interested I can share it.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago>If anyone's interested I can share it. No thanks, I don't use Netflix.
- fpalmans 7y agoI'm interested...
- smolder 7y agoI posted it here: https://paste.ee/p/8xg54 https://paste.ee/p/8xg54
- happytoexplain 7y ago>the auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying. This was baffling to me. I've rarely had such a stressful user experience as a trailer playing every single time I stop pressing the arrow buttons for a few seconds. Just because I stopped pressing buttons doesn't mean I want to see a trailer for whatever I happened to stop on - it means I'm thinking about something, or reading something, or looking at some other part of the screen, or am not even looking at my TV any more. It's hard to imagine a more malicious UX than one that plays video and audio at you every time you are not giving input. And because it's difficult to even find a state in that UI where you don't have something selected, I found it impossible to "escape" the trailers. It made me feel like I was in an advertising dystopia.
- jhallenworld 7y agoMy theory is that it increases the likelihood that you'll stop browsing and just watch something. This would reduce the variety of shows that people watch and ease the requirements on their servers.
- cameronbrown 7y agoIf this is true it's a perfect example of Goodheart's law. Maybe they assumed they were making it faster to choose content.
- afiori 7y agoI think more than server strain it could be meant to avoid the "mah, I looked for 20 minutes and found nothing, maybe I should just delete the subscription"
- m463 7y ago> the auto-playing of trailers There's a case to be made that this is advertising (for shows on netflix)
- opencl 7y agoIt is definitely advertising. Back when streaming services were new, the lack of advertising was a major selling point of streaming services vs cable but now they're stuffed full of ads and for some reason the ads are for content you've already paid for.
- _bxg1 7y agoTheir dark patterns have definitely pushed me to use Hulu more often, but I don't think anything could convince me that traditional networks will have better offerings
- beepboopbeep 7y agoThe auto-playing is straight up infuriating to me. I now mute my tv as soon as netflix loads up.
- inopinatus 7y agoI’ve tried providing specific and constructive feedback to Netflix but it turns out their senior executive team only understand thumbs up or down as a primary form of communication. Instead I asked their customer frontline to pass on an appropriately oriented finger.
- tptacek 7y agoI hate the auto-playing trailers too, but in the spirit of the kind of analysis HN is actually good at: auto-playing trailers seems like an extraordinarily straightforward feature to collect and analyze metrics on, and Netflix does not strike me as the kind of company that is utterly ambivalent about metrics, so "hating the auto-playing trailers" might not be the strong indication of loss-of-touch that it seems; like, it seems more likely that for the majority of Netflix's user-base, the trailers increase engagement.
- stallmanite 7y agoPerhaps they are measuring engagement in some perverse way.
- marcosdumay 7y agoIt extraordinarily difficult to use metrics to improve a UI aimed at entertainment.
- tptacek 7y agoIt's not my claim that they've made Netflix more entertaining, just that it's likely made it more sticky.
- wayne_skylar 7y agoThis kind of thinking is the problem though. Like YouTube they don't care about the quality of the experience you're having. Where Netflix might see a very satisfied customer others might see a depressed individual binging a show for the 10th time as a way to escape reality.
- kevinmchugh 7y agoauto-playing trailers seem like a move to encourage people to try something new instead of rewatching the same show over and over
- 7y ago
- epiphanitus 7y ago>> with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized Being a dinosaur, I remember when Netflix would let users write reviews for shows/movies they'd seen. Does anybody know why they discontinued their review system? Did they not want to deal with all the sticky content moderation issues?
- choward 7y agoI bet it had to do with losing content. If you review something and Netflix removes it you either lose that data or Netflix has to display shows they don't carry anymore.
- rdschouw 7y agoThis is THE reason I stopped using Netflix. Besides being bombarded with sound, I was actually halfway reading the description when it is replaced with a running video. When my CC was stolen (and blocked), Netflix was the only company who put my service on hold instead of a small grace period which fits the non-customer centric direction they take nowadays, but also my opportunity to see if I could live without Netflix. After 2 months, I do not miss Netflix at all. I deleted the apps and I am now on Hulu and Amazon Video. I've also started a small collection of DVD/Blu-rays with my favorite shows which I lost. You can pick up complete series on eBay for affordable prices.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fullshark 7y agoTheir customer base is millions of people across the globe now, not just the early adopters.
- SkyPuncher 7y agoI think Netflix is the perfect example of where being data driven completely fails. If you listen to podcasts with important Netflix people everything you hear is about how they experiment and use data to decide what to do. Every decision is based on some data point. At the end of the day, they just continue to add features that create short term payoffs and long term failures. Pennywise and pound foolish. My wife and I recently cancelled Netflix. Partly because we felt content was disappearing and partly because it felt hostile to actually use Netflix. We got absolutely fed up with all of the autoplay crap, UI restrictions, and other BS that clearly drives "some" stat for them.
- TheLime 7y agoI couldn't agree more. Additionally it feels that for each content that disappears Netflix is replacing it with yet another generic series whose formula has been repeated time and time again.
- imgabe 7y agoThe auto-playing trailers truly baffle me. I can't think of any more user-hostile move they could make. What are they hoping to gain from this? Are there people who wanted this? Why isn't there at the very least a setting to turn it off?
- ux-app 7y ago>auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying. I mute the TV when browsing.