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They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either generated better training data or more training data. They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendation

They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either generated better training data or more training data. They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the sake of it.

EpicEng 7y ago
>They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the sake of it. reply As has been mentioned before, there is at least some motivation for doing so. One, it means their originals don't rate below third party titles (as far as we can tell), and two, as they lose content the average rating of what's left will likely fall.
cle 7y ago
> They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the sake of it. Why not? Every big platform that I know of has eventually done this with either 1p or “sponsored” content (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.). In this case their incentive would be to push their own content above 3p content. What matters to them is their revenue, not maximizing the accuracy of their recommendations model.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  That still depends on a good recommendation system, it's just an extra finger on the balance. Giving a boost to first party content is very different from making it "just worse".
  - cle 7y ago
    From a customer's perspective, there's no difference. These are just rationalizations the business tells itself for those who need to reduce their cognitive dissonance.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
> They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either generated better training data or more training data. I'm guessing that the definition of "better" changed at some point, perhaps when they went from 1-5 stars to +-1 thumbs. In Netflix's early years, I was confident that their classifier's goal was to predict my future rating for a given video. I.e., it was part of a larger system designed around my viewing pleasure. Around the time they switched to thumbs, I started suspecting the classifier was being used to manipulate me towards optimizing Netflix's profitability, instead of my viewing pleasure.

They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either generated better training data or more training data. They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the sake of it.

EpicEng 7y ago

>They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the sake of it. reply As has been mentioned before, there is at least some motivation for doing so. One, it means their originals don't rate below third party titles (as far as we can tell), and two, as they lose content the average rating of what's left will likely fall.

cle 7y ago

> They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the sake of it. Why not? Every big platform that I know of has eventually done this with either 1p or “sponsored” content (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.). In this case their incentive would be to push their own content above 3p content. What matters to them is their revenue, not maximizing the accuracy of their recommendations model.

Dylan16807 7y ago
That still depends on a good recommendation system, it's just an extra finger on the balance. Giving a boost to first party content is very different from making it "just worse".
- cle 7y ago
  From a customer's perspective, there's no difference. These are just rationalizations the business tells itself for those who need to reduce their cognitive dissonance.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

> They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either generated better training data or more training data. I'm guessing that the definition of "better" changed at some point, perhaps when they went from 1-5 stars to +-1 thumbs. In Netflix's early years, I was confident that their classifier's goal was to predict my future rating for a given video. I.e., it was part of a larger system designed around my viewing pleasure. Around the time they switched to thumbs, I started suspecting the classifier was being used to manipulate me towards optimizing Netflix's profitability, instead of my viewing pleasure.