I don't personally think that (nor do I work for any of those businesses directly), that's just the design goal of streaming platforms. They're hyper optimized

I don't personally think that (nor do I work for any of those businesses directly), that's just the design goal of streaming platforms. They're hyper optimized to keep users subscribed, and whether or not natural viewing/discovery habits play into that and are exploited is up for debate. >It may be true for enough of your users that it looks like a good idea in A/B testing It's really impossible to say since everyone's numbers are biased and no one shares them. But what I was getting at originally was that the use case highlighted by OP was not the common case. Users don't search various services looking for a specific piece of content, they usually pull up to follow what they were watching previously or to browse a catalog, where the twisted incentives come into play is when a user finishes the content and the platform tries to keep them hooked. >I'd guess there are enough users who don't want to be treated like a child being told what to watch I mean that's fair, but also a bad characterization. There are certainly bad incentives at play when you want to do everything to keep content discovery in a feedback loop, but there's not exactly an alternative when the people you need to license content from are your streaming competitors. >Ultimately, I think bundling content with your platform and trying to force users to buy one to have the other is anticompetitive I get the arguments for that, and I agree with some of them. But right now services compete on the merits of content itself, and as a result we have more content being created that's more diverse and at lower prices. When HBO Max and Disney+ go up we'll see how massive back catalogs affect the space, but right now the prevailing wisdom is to throw money at content creators - and I appreciate that as a content consumer. If you want the opposite of streaming, look at movie theaters. They don't compete on content availability - yet the diversity of content is down, barrier to entry is high, and prices have been rising for years.