5 ms·

Netflix is blatantly user-hostile. The UX is designed to get you to spend more time with Netflix, not to make you like it more. Many of the shows it suggests t

Netflix is blatantly user-hostile. The UX is designed to get you to spend more time with Netflix, not to make you like it more. Many of the shows it suggests to me are not in english, yet the UX rarely discloses this in the description or (infuriatingly auto-playing) preview. Some people don't mind reading subtitles but I detest it - they could at least tell me the show is in German before wasting my time.

lallysingh 7y ago
Yes! They've optimized for the wrong metric. Users should feel like it's time well spent. After their $1MM prize years ago, they didn't even bother implementing the winning algorithm. Then again, nobody really recommends media well. You can't mine the media directly, and people have very different preferences. It's just too many factors that you can't infer from the usage.
- ryanianian 7y ago
  I've recently started using ReelGood more often. (Not affiliated just a happy user.) You tell it which streaming services you have, what shows you've liked, etc and it gives you decent-ish recommendations from across all your services. More importantly it also shows the IMDB score, the Rotten Tomatoes score, and usually provides a trailer, and then they deep-link to the actual content so you can avoid all the Netflix dark-patterns.
  - mh- 7y ago
    Just tried this out for the first time. Am I missing something? I linked services, marked some movies as watched, but don't see any way to _rate_ movies I've watched. So it doesn't have any kind of (useful) signal from me for recommendations?
    - ryanianian 7y ago
      You just mark movies/shows as seen it or want to see it and it gives you recommendations based on that. There's no "I've seen it and I hated it" option...I wish it would take a star-rating into account but it does not. Despite this the recommendations are still pretty good. It's a much better content-discovery experience than any content provider's native experience, especially that of Netflix.
yeahforsureman 7y ago
Just out of general interest, do you watch foreign TV and movies at all then? If not, why? Or just dubbed? If so, how do you bear it?
- reificator 7y ago
  Not the GP, but: > Just out of general interest, do you watch foreign TV and movies at all then? If not, why? Because it's an additional barrier to enjoyment. Dubs are irritating and often lose cultural context. From your post I think we're in agreement there. Subs mean I have to watch intently, I can't cook dinner/play a video game/clean the house/fold laundry while I'm listening and glance over at the screen every few seconds. And I don't spend much time doing nothing but watch TV, unless it's a show I really care about. Stranger Things 3 got my uninterrupted attention this last week. I'm not against watching foreign media, but it's a negative modifier to my chances to watch it. If I get a recommendation from someone I trust, I'm much more likely, but then I have to set aside time to do nothing but watch it. As a side note, if I get a recommendation from someone with an anime avatar, I'm much less likely to watch it. I don't care that "it's not a 12 year old girl, it's a 500 year old dragon that looks like a 12 year old girl." It's still creepy.
  - ryanianian 7y ago
    Movie recommendations are either deeply generic (other movies in the same genre) or deeply personal (recommendations on myriad things apart from genre). Netflix has tried (and imho failed) at the deeply personal style. So I agree with your comment except for the anime avatar aside. I personally don't trust 90% of movie recommendations, even from friends. It has to be somebody who I know has good (for me) taste. I don't think avatar-selection would correlate one way or another with movie-selection :)
- ryanianian 7y ago
  I do watch movies with subtitles but very rarely (my vision isn't too great). (Dubbing is intolerable.) It's a terrible UX and just wastes everyone's time to not disclose the dubbing/subtitles in any way in the front-matter.
sundvor 7y ago
I personally cannot stand dubbed shows, but YMMV. It just comes across as way too fake. Also I attribute at least half of my ability to speak English well to the fact that NRK - and cinemas - in Norway never bothered to dub everything, unlike in Germany, France, etc. I just wish for dialogue only English subtitles of English language content: I'm not deaf, I just can't always hear the mumbling if I haven't turned my good old Rotel 5.1 system to 11. I have no issues hearing (clears throat), (coughs), (rain falls) and (engine rumbling) .. yet I'm forced to see these using the SDH subs as none other are available. It's great that they are there, but we also need non-SDH subs.
bayouborne 7y ago
Netflix should make its API more widely available. 20 Instantwatcher/Flickmetrix type sites, all of which would likely window into the NF dataset differently according to their creators' preferences, would seem to more adequately address users' needs than a single UI.

lallysingh 7y ago

Yes! They've optimized for the wrong metric. Users should feel like it's time well spent. After their $1MM prize years ago, they didn't even bother implementing the winning algorithm. Then again, nobody really recommends media well. You can't mine the media directly, and people have very different preferences. It's just too many factors that you can't infer from the usage.

ryanianian 7y ago
I've recently started using ReelGood more often. (Not affiliated just a happy user.) You tell it which streaming services you have, what shows you've liked, etc and it gives you decent-ish recommendations from across all your services. More importantly it also shows the IMDB score, the Rotten Tomatoes score, and usually provides a trailer, and then they deep-link to the actual content so you can avoid all the Netflix dark-patterns.
- mh- 7y ago
  Just tried this out for the first time. Am I missing something? I linked services, marked some movies as watched, but don't see any way to _rate_ movies I've watched. So it doesn't have any kind of (useful) signal from me for recommendations?
  - ryanianian 7y ago
    You just mark movies/shows as seen it or want to see it and it gives you recommendations based on that. There's no "I've seen it and I hated it" option...I wish it would take a star-rating into account but it does not. Despite this the recommendations are still pretty good. It's a much better content-discovery experience than any content provider's native experience, especially that of Netflix.

yeahforsureman 7y ago

Just out of general interest, do you watch foreign TV and movies at all then? If not, why? Or just dubbed? If so, how do you bear it?

reificator 7y ago
Not the GP, but: > Just out of general interest, do you watch foreign TV and movies at all then? If not, why? Because it's an additional barrier to enjoyment. Dubs are irritating and often lose cultural context. From your post I think we're in agreement there. Subs mean I have to watch intently, I can't cook dinner/play a video game/clean the house/fold laundry while I'm listening and glance over at the screen every few seconds. And I don't spend much time doing nothing but watch TV, unless it's a show I really care about. Stranger Things 3 got my uninterrupted attention this last week. I'm not against watching foreign media, but it's a negative modifier to my chances to watch it. If I get a recommendation from someone I trust, I'm much more likely, but then I have to set aside time to do nothing but watch it. As a side note, if I get a recommendation from someone with an anime avatar, I'm much less likely to watch it. I don't care that "it's not a 12 year old girl, it's a 500 year old dragon that looks like a 12 year old girl." It's still creepy.
- ryanianian 7y ago
  Movie recommendations are either deeply generic (other movies in the same genre) or deeply personal (recommendations on myriad things apart from genre). Netflix has tried (and imho failed) at the deeply personal style. So I agree with your comment except for the anime avatar aside. I personally don't trust 90% of movie recommendations, even from friends. It has to be somebody who I know has good (for me) taste. I don't think avatar-selection would correlate one way or another with movie-selection :)
ryanianian 7y ago
I do watch movies with subtitles but very rarely (my vision isn't too great). (Dubbing is intolerable.) It's a terrible UX and just wastes everyone's time to not disclose the dubbing/subtitles in any way in the front-matter.

sundvor 7y ago

I personally cannot stand dubbed shows, but YMMV. It just comes across as way too fake. Also I attribute at least half of my ability to speak English well to the fact that NRK - and cinemas - in Norway never bothered to dub everything, unlike in Germany, France, etc. I just wish for dialogue only English subtitles of English language content: I'm not deaf, I just can't always hear the mumbling if I haven't turned my good old Rotel 5.1 system to 11. I have no issues hearing (clears throat), (coughs), (rain falls) and (engine rumbling) .. yet I'm forced to see these using the SDH subs as none other are available. It's great that they are there, but we also need non-SDH subs.

bayouborne 7y ago

Netflix should make its API more widely available. 20 Instantwatcher/Flickmetrix type sites, all of which would likely window into the NF dataset differently according to their creators' preferences, would seem to more adequately address users' needs than a single UI.