7 ms·

I have noticed I avoid watching "inappropriate" things on netflix because I am afraid of the suggestions they will generate, which inevitably everyone will see

by zmmmmm 6y ago

I have noticed I avoid watching "inappropriate" things on netflix because I am afraid of the suggestions they will generate, which inevitably everyone will see when I bring it up on the TV. The few times I did, I thumbs-downed it to avoid that. I wonder how much unconventional content is being harmed by this. It's really annoying.

conception 6y ago
You can remove items from your Netflix watched history on their website. :)
- ohazi 6y ago
  Now that storage is infinite and cheap, it's become trendy for engineers to never actually remove anything, but to just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere. This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls. Years later, in the fifteenth re-implementation of some part of some service, somebody is going to forget to read that bit. Or an errant database migration isn't going to transfer it properly. Or the database will be leaked, and all of the "deleted" content will still be there (e.g. the Parler dump). Or a race condition will cause the check to occasionally be ignored every other Sunday. Discovering that this is happening can be next to impossible. An application might read the deleted bit correctly when generating the ordered list of stuff you've looked at, but might not read it correctly (or might deliberately ignore it) when generating your advertising profile or when making content recommendations. I swear I've seen this on Amazon, though of course, I'll never be able to prove it. Chilling effects / social cooling includes stuff like this. "I'm not even going to click on that, because I don't trust the platform to clear my history properly."
  - genghizkhan 6y ago
    Just look at Parler. That's the same thing which happened there.
  - debaserab2 6y ago
    Soft deletes have been popular since the internet became accessible to the average person. When I was younger I was a huge advocate for soft deleting pretty much everything. It felt like the obvious, easy choice - why not retain the data incase you need to use it for something else down the road? It took years to understand the ramifications of storing that data in a secure way really means, and that often times the reason it gets used later isn't something you intended it to be used for when you designed the data structure. I don't think that way anymore and I truly believe hard deletes should be the default unless you have a very compelling reason to soft delete (and you should usually only soft delete with some guarantee of future deletion via a publicly accessible data retention/erasure policy)
    - 05 6y ago
      It's not rocket science - encrypt with a one time symmetric key, encrypt the key with a public key, store blob and key marked as deleted. Store the corresponding private asymmetric key on a hardware token to be used when you decide you need the deleted data. That way no db hack exposes any usable data.
      - debaserab2 6y ago
        DB hacks aren't even close to being the only (or worst) threat. Encryption means nothing in a company or bankruptcy buyout where the purchaser may have a completely different set of ethics than yours.
      - WJW 6y ago
        That is all good and well against simple actors, but does not defend against the company being bought out and the new owner(s) deciding to decrypt and sell the entire database to some shady data broker. Or against the FBI/your local equivalent coming over for a friendly visit and confiscating both the hardware token and the database.
  - dexen 6y ago
    >This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls. Some people are calling excessive data "toxic asset", due to the future risks of it causing unexpected breaches of privacy, damage to reputation, or other losses. We'll certainly develop standard technical means of handling that in due time, quite possibly ones based on cryptography. A common scenario at present: instead of trawling all backups & distributed stores to laboriously expunge every bit of deleted data, you could delete the relevant encryption keys - a small piece of data, a known quantity - rendering the encrypted data inert. This is particularly suited for systems that use WORM approach to backing up & distributing data.
  - deckard1 6y ago
    > just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere this has been a thing since the 1980s, at least. It's not new, and it's often important for auditing purposes and because mistakes happen. What's new is the ease with which databases can be accessed and hacked over a global public network. > Or an errant database migration isn't going to transfer it properly. Or the database will be leaked, and all of the "deleted" content will still be there Backups are a thing, you know. When you issue a delete command to your database it's not reaching back to time immemorial through the archives and ripping out those records. If we're playing what-ifs, then backup databases can just as easily be leaked.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    It's not trendy, it's how I've been doing databases my whole life. You don't let users actually delete stuff from your database. That's crazy.
    - Lio 6y ago
      How would you handle a user ceasing their account and asking you to remove data you no longer need to provide them with service? Under GDPR you'd be required to really delete that. Obviously GDPR laws don't hold everywhere but are you saying you'd just hold the user's data forever or that you'd have a later clean up process or something?
      - globular-toast 6y ago
        You wouldn't. GDPR didn't exist. That was my point. We've been doing this for ages and only recently had to worry about actually deleting stuff. This is why I've never advocated "deleting" Facebook accounts etc. If you "delete" it you're just giving them another piece of information about you. Namely that you want your account to be deleted. The GDPR has not yet been shown to have any teeth, so I assume nothing has really changed in this respect. And, yes, holding users' data forever is normal. Storage cost has only decreased relative to the size of these databases. I've worked in places with customer data going back decades.
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    > Now that storage is infinite and cheap, it's become trendy for engineers to never actually remove anything, but to just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere. This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls. Also deleting stuff for real for real immediately is really hard. You need to delete it from the database, the one that's replicating to, caches, online backups AND offline backups. And that's after you've confirmed and reconfirmed from the user that they actually want to delete the data, not just store it in the recycle bin or something idiotic like that. The easiest way is just to flag as deleted and prune on some kind of schedule. Backups will be overwritten at some point and the data will go away eventually.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Or, though a more technically complex, encrypt every "deletable" unit of data with its own key, have a different backup policy for encrypted data and for keys to it - one which, upon user request, would allow you to quickly purge every trace of relevant keys.
      - jandrewrogers 6y ago
        This doesn't work well in practice at any kind of scale -- these types of databases have existed for many years. The key management overhead is considerable, causing integer factor loss of performance for database-y systems. Additionally, it very significantly increases the storage footprint since most techniques for minimizing storage utilization no longer work given this requirement. It isn't just "technically complex", the limiting factor is your system may be 10x slower and use 10x more storage. The economics of operating these systems is so poor that they are only used in extremely niche environments where the requirements justify the extreme cost and performance limitations.
  - parliament32 6y ago
    This is exactly what happened with the AshleyMadison hack. In fact, users explicitly paid for a "delete my account permanently" action.. yet it was just that, a "deleted" flag added to the DB which eventually got leaked.
bitwize 6y ago
Weird Al: "But I only watched Will and Grace one time, one day! Wish I hadn't, 'cause TiVo now thinks I'm gay!"
- nickt 6y ago
  WEIRD AL or WEIRD AI either way works...
lazyasciiart 6y ago
Create a profile to share and a profile for what you want to watch. This helps get better targeted recommendations in general, because even aside from stuff you don't want to tell people you watch, IME there's stuff you like that don't suit the people you watch with.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  > Create a profile to share and a profile for what you want to watch. This helps get better targeted recommendations Or you know we could just have a proper advanced search within Netflix rather than me going through hoops with flixable etc or trying to play 4d chess to second guess how Netflix ML might give me the content I actually want to watch. Perhaps I am a minority contrarian (In fairness I was pretty much coerced to get Netflix by my family) but it just feels like there is so much accidental complexity in this Netflix paradigm of 'we non-negotiably must cleverly guess what you want to watch'.
  - stdbrouw 6y ago
    You're free to like or dislike Netflix's recommendation algorithms, of course, but does creating two profiles really feel like playing 4d chess to you... or do you simply refuse to countenance a solution out of annoyance and spite? :-)
    - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
      Arguably you could make the same argument to Netflix Product Managers with regards to an advanced search feature with some added basic filters. :-)
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    You do you, but I like having a list of stuff I want to watch separated from a list of stuff to watch with the family. I’m not planning to memorize those lists and search every time, that would be insane.
jtsiskin 6y ago
Same with YouTube. I’m kind of curious to watch a QAnon conspiracy video but don’t want the suggestions. I guess that’s what incognito mode is for, but I don’t trust them to not match based on IP address...
- agiroth 6y ago
  Incognito won't help unfortunately. I've tried this on a few occasions and it still pollutes my suggestions. I've noticed that using Brave seems to blunt it -- I have to watch alot more to notice the pollution. Can't say more than that, I stopped experimenting and basically stopped using Youtube except for the same music I listen to over and over now. Nothing new.
  - hkon 6y ago
    What kind of person uses Brave? What are you hiding? /s (for now)
  - kilroy123 6y ago
    Wait are you sure opening in an incognito window does work? How would it not?
- dexen 6y ago
  Tor Browser is a good option to avoid generating "inappropriate" suggestions - decouples tracking from both your login cookies (permanent incognito mode) and also from your IP address. Even better, restarting the browser clears the cookies & other stored data, making tracking across session highly unlikely. YouTube videos take fractionally longer to load, but it's manageable.
- godmode2019 6y ago
  YouTube algo is pretty quick to respond. You just click 'Don't show me videos like this' a few times and they won't show you videos like this. Make sure you don't comment, that shows strong engagement which they like.
  - 6y ago
baxtr 6y ago
How is this different from having “inappropriate” books in your book shelf?
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Because your bookshelf doesn’t automatically rearrange itself, then send the data to a corporation optimized for making you read as many books as possible?
  - griffoa 6y ago
    Yet...
    - drdeadringer 6y ago
      ... I need you to finish because I can't read your mind.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        That wasn't a "yet" like "and yet, [something]", but a "yet" like "[something isn't happening]... yet".
        drdeadringer 6y ago
        Ah. Thank you.
    - musingsole 6y ago
      This year from IKEA, introducing the subscription powered AutoShelf! Tired of curating your own collection? This bookshelf keeps track of what and how long you read using ultrasonic pulses to determine spine-crackage. Once a month, a crate of new books will arrive. Simply attach the crate to the AutoShelf to restock your collection. Once its done, leave the crate (now filled with your old, dusty books) on the curb for our gig-service to pick up!
    - 6y ago
watwut 6y ago
I did pirated some shows I had legal access to for exactly that reason.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
lol, I do the same with my browser, going to anonymous browser if I'm looking up shit on youtube or google I don't want to show up in my suggestions or history.

by zmmmmm 6y ago

conception 6y ago

You can remove items from your Netflix watched history on their website. :)

ohazi 6y ago
Now that storage is infinite and cheap, it's become trendy for engineers to never actually remove anything, but to just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere. This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls. Years later, in the fifteenth re-implementation of some part of some service, somebody is going to forget to read that bit. Or an errant database migration isn't going to transfer it properly. Or the database will be leaked, and all of the "deleted" content will still be there (e.g. the Parler dump). Or a race condition will cause the check to occasionally be ignored every other Sunday. Discovering that this is happening can be next to impossible. An application might read the deleted bit correctly when generating the ordered list of stuff you've looked at, but might not read it correctly (or might deliberately ignore it) when generating your advertising profile or when making content recommendations. I swear I've seen this on Amazon, though of course, I'll never be able to prove it. Chilling effects / social cooling includes stuff like this. "I'm not even going to click on that, because I don't trust the platform to clear my history properly."
- genghizkhan 6y ago
  Just look at Parler. That's the same thing which happened there.
- debaserab2 6y ago
  Soft deletes have been popular since the internet became accessible to the average person. When I was younger I was a huge advocate for soft deleting pretty much everything. It felt like the obvious, easy choice - why not retain the data incase you need to use it for something else down the road? It took years to understand the ramifications of storing that data in a secure way really means, and that often times the reason it gets used later isn't something you intended it to be used for when you designed the data structure. I don't think that way anymore and I truly believe hard deletes should be the default unless you have a very compelling reason to soft delete (and you should usually only soft delete with some guarantee of future deletion via a publicly accessible data retention/erasure policy)
  - 05 6y ago
    It's not rocket science - encrypt with a one time symmetric key, encrypt the key with a public key, store blob and key marked as deleted. Store the corresponding private asymmetric key on a hardware token to be used when you decide you need the deleted data. That way no db hack exposes any usable data.
    - debaserab2 6y ago
      DB hacks aren't even close to being the only (or worst) threat. Encryption means nothing in a company or bankruptcy buyout where the purchaser may have a completely different set of ethics than yours.
    - WJW 6y ago
      That is all good and well against simple actors, but does not defend against the company being bought out and the new owner(s) deciding to decrypt and sell the entire database to some shady data broker. Or against the FBI/your local equivalent coming over for a friendly visit and confiscating both the hardware token and the database.
- dexen 6y ago
  >This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls. Some people are calling excessive data "toxic asset", due to the future risks of it causing unexpected breaches of privacy, damage to reputation, or other losses. We'll certainly develop standard technical means of handling that in due time, quite possibly ones based on cryptography. A common scenario at present: instead of trawling all backups & distributed stores to laboriously expunge every bit of deleted data, you could delete the relevant encryption keys - a small piece of data, a known quantity - rendering the encrypted data inert. This is particularly suited for systems that use WORM approach to backing up & distributing data.
- deckard1 6y ago
  > just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere this has been a thing since the 1980s, at least. It's not new, and it's often important for auditing purposes and because mistakes happen. What's new is the ease with which databases can be accessed and hacked over a global public network. > Or an errant database migration isn't going to transfer it properly. Or the database will be leaked, and all of the "deleted" content will still be there Backups are a thing, you know. When you issue a delete command to your database it's not reaching back to time immemorial through the archives and ripping out those records. If we're playing what-ifs, then backup databases can just as easily be leaked.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  It's not trendy, it's how I've been doing databases my whole life. You don't let users actually delete stuff from your database. That's crazy.
  - Lio 6y ago
    How would you handle a user ceasing their account and asking you to remove data you no longer need to provide them with service? Under GDPR you'd be required to really delete that. Obviously GDPR laws don't hold everywhere but are you saying you'd just hold the user's data forever or that you'd have a later clean up process or something?
    - globular-toast 6y ago
      You wouldn't. GDPR didn't exist. That was my point. We've been doing this for ages and only recently had to worry about actually deleting stuff. This is why I've never advocated "deleting" Facebook accounts etc. If you "delete" it you're just giving them another piece of information about you. Namely that you want your account to be deleted. The GDPR has not yet been shown to have any teeth, so I assume nothing has really changed in this respect. And, yes, holding users' data forever is normal. Storage cost has only decreased relative to the size of these databases. I've worked in places with customer data going back decades.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  > Now that storage is infinite and cheap, it's become trendy for engineers to never actually remove anything, but to just set a "deleted" flag in a database somewhere. This makes a lot of tricky things easier, but there are pitfalls. Also deleting stuff for real for real immediately is really hard. You need to delete it from the database, the one that's replicating to, caches, online backups AND offline backups. And that's after you've confirmed and reconfirmed from the user that they actually want to delete the data, not just store it in the recycle bin or something idiotic like that. The easiest way is just to flag as deleted and prune on some kind of schedule. Backups will be overwritten at some point and the data will go away eventually.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Or, though a more technically complex, encrypt every "deletable" unit of data with its own key, have a different backup policy for encrypted data and for keys to it - one which, upon user request, would allow you to quickly purge every trace of relevant keys.
    - jandrewrogers 6y ago
      This doesn't work well in practice at any kind of scale -- these types of databases have existed for many years. The key management overhead is considerable, causing integer factor loss of performance for database-y systems. Additionally, it very significantly increases the storage footprint since most techniques for minimizing storage utilization no longer work given this requirement. It isn't just "technically complex", the limiting factor is your system may be 10x slower and use 10x more storage. The economics of operating these systems is so poor that they are only used in extremely niche environments where the requirements justify the extreme cost and performance limitations.
- parliament32 6y ago
  This is exactly what happened with the AshleyMadison hack. In fact, users explicitly paid for a "delete my account permanently" action.. yet it was just that, a "deleted" flag added to the DB which eventually got leaked.

bitwize 6y ago

Weird Al: "But I only watched Will and Grace one time, one day! Wish I hadn't, 'cause TiVo now thinks I'm gay!"

nickt 6y ago
WEIRD AL or WEIRD AI either way works...

lazyasciiart 6y ago

Create a profile to share and a profile for what you want to watch. This helps get better targeted recommendations in general, because even aside from stuff you don't want to tell people you watch, IME there's stuff you like that don't suit the people you watch with.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago
> Create a profile to share and a profile for what you want to watch. This helps get better targeted recommendations Or you know we could just have a proper advanced search within Netflix rather than me going through hoops with flixable etc or trying to play 4d chess to second guess how Netflix ML might give me the content I actually want to watch. Perhaps I am a minority contrarian (In fairness I was pretty much coerced to get Netflix by my family) but it just feels like there is so much accidental complexity in this Netflix paradigm of 'we non-negotiably must cleverly guess what you want to watch'.
- stdbrouw 6y ago
  You're free to like or dislike Netflix's recommendation algorithms, of course, but does creating two profiles really feel like playing 4d chess to you... or do you simply refuse to countenance a solution out of annoyance and spite? :-)
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    Arguably you could make the same argument to Netflix Product Managers with regards to an advanced search feature with some added basic filters. :-)
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  You do you, but I like having a list of stuff I want to watch separated from a list of stuff to watch with the family. I’m not planning to memorize those lists and search every time, that would be insane.

jtsiskin 6y ago

Same with YouTube. I’m kind of curious to watch a QAnon conspiracy video but don’t want the suggestions. I guess that’s what incognito mode is for, but I don’t trust them to not match based on IP address...

agiroth 6y ago
Incognito won't help unfortunately. I've tried this on a few occasions and it still pollutes my suggestions. I've noticed that using Brave seems to blunt it -- I have to watch alot more to notice the pollution. Can't say more than that, I stopped experimenting and basically stopped using Youtube except for the same music I listen to over and over now. Nothing new.
- hkon 6y ago
  What kind of person uses Brave? What are you hiding? /s (for now)
- kilroy123 6y ago
  Wait are you sure opening in an incognito window does work? How would it not?
dexen 6y ago
Tor Browser is a good option to avoid generating "inappropriate" suggestions - decouples tracking from both your login cookies (permanent incognito mode) and also from your IP address. Even better, restarting the browser clears the cookies & other stored data, making tracking across session highly unlikely. YouTube videos take fractionally longer to load, but it's manageable.
godmode2019 6y ago
YouTube algo is pretty quick to respond. You just click 'Don't show me videos like this' a few times and they won't show you videos like this. Make sure you don't comment, that shows strong engagement which they like.
- 6y ago

baxtr 6y ago

How is this different from having “inappropriate” books in your book shelf?

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Because your bookshelf doesn’t automatically rearrange itself, then send the data to a corporation optimized for making you read as many books as possible?
- griffoa 6y ago
  Yet...
  - drdeadringer 6y ago
    ... I need you to finish because I can't read your mind.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      That wasn't a "yet" like "and yet, [something]", but a "yet" like "[something isn't happening]... yet".
      - drdeadringer 6y ago
        Ah. Thank you.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    This year from IKEA, introducing the subscription powered AutoShelf! Tired of curating your own collection? This bookshelf keeps track of what and how long you read using ultrasonic pulses to determine spine-crackage. Once a month, a crate of new books will arrive. Simply attach the crate to the AutoShelf to restock your collection. Once its done, leave the crate (now filled with your old, dusty books) on the curb for our gig-service to pick up!
  - 6y ago

watwut 6y ago

I did pirated some shows I had legal access to for exactly that reason.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

lol, I do the same with my browser, going to anonymous browser if I'm looking up shit on youtube or google I don't want to show up in my suggestions or history.