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I don't get why they wanted to go all out on AI for this. I use Netflix, and a simple algorithm would already be an improvement: - If I watched a movie and gav

• vletal 5y ago
  - Do you really get recommenditions for movies you already watched or down voted? I'm not aware of that happening to me. It's not it the case that you use multiple different profiles within a single account? I sometimes see that for shows we finished, yet people tend to rewatch episodes... - Removing a movie based on "not payed X times" would remove all popular movies for all users in a multiple of X steps. -I agree with the new episodes banner.
  • teichmann 5y ago
    I'm not sure about down voted ones, but I can confirm that I sometimes get already watched movies recommended again (even in recommendation mails).
• klausjensen 5y ago
  Completely agree. I am constantly baffled at the bullshit Netflix suggests me. I just went to the frontpage of my Netflix and...: - "My list" recommends 3 series where I have alread watched the last episode - "Only on Netflix" recommends another two series, I have already wathed. - A section displayed is "Watch together for older kids" - I dont have kids, never watched any kids stuff on my account. - "Documentaries" contains six suggestions, 3 of which I have already watched on netflix". - I am suggested several shows, which are good - but I have already watched outside Netflix earlier - and there is no way to tell Netflix (none that I know of, anyway) 9 out of 10 times when I go to Netflix, I intend to continue watching a series - but Netflix makes me scroll past SEVEN sections of recommendations to get to "Continue watching.." before showing me the series I have watched 1-2 episodes of most days for the past two weeks. Maybe they are just too busy making sure all new series are woke-i-fied to care about how this simple stuff works?
  • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >- "Only on Netflix" recommends another two series, I have already wathed. I think the only on Netflix part works as part of positive reinforcement - it always shows me stuff it knows I watched all the way through (hence I must have liked it) mixed with things I haven't watched or haven't watched in a long time. Thus when I see that section it is reminding me they have stuff I liked that I can only get there so please don't ever change account, and here is some more of that stuff only we got - try it out!
  • rkachowski 5y ago
    I always took the "older kids" thing to mean "adults interested in cartoons" rather than "teenagers".
  • quietbritishjim 5y ago
    "My list" is not algorithmically generated; it's a list of shows you have chosen to add to it. It would be nice if have you the option to remove a show from it when you finished it but very annoying if it did it automatically behind your back. Although clearly the real problem here is that "my list" isn't a clear enough description to show you manually control it (but I don't have a better suggestion).
    • dfxm12 5y ago
      Although clearly the real problem here is that "my list" isn't a clear enough description to show you manually control it (but I don't have a better suggestion). That's the hard part about designing software for anyone - there is no average user & you can't really make assumptions about their understanding of your system. After all, I think the intention of "My list" is clear and fairly obvious, so that makes 3 people with 3 different ideas about the feature.
    • wccrawford 5y ago
      Shows need to stay in "my list" in case there's another season later.
  • oezi 5y ago
• szszrk 5y ago
  In the end they will promote what they WANT to be popular, so our suggested titles will still be a mess of shit we already watched or disliked with a button. Shows with 10 seasons you hated and disliked after 5 minutes will still be in our "continue watching" or suggested.
  • stepbeek 5y ago
    > In the end they will promote what they WANT to be popular This is a hugely important point. I'm completely uninterested in most netflix originals, but I understand why they're going to continue to recommend them to me.
    • LaundroMat 5y ago
      I'd like a way to filter out the Netflix Originals too.
      • dpwm 5y ago
        The problem with this is that Netflix Originals apparently gets slapped on stuff that Netflix bought post-production or financed as a co-production.
    • dooferlad 5y ago
      What Netflix wants to be popular also tramples over what I am already watching. I find that the UI gets in the way of enjoying several programs that I am part way through by pushing something new. If they want to continue to make series and only get me to watch half of the episodes then the algorithm is spot on. That said, Amazon Prime video is so much worse. It suggests that I would like to watch series 1 of a show when I have watched it and am part way through season 2.
      • szszrk 5y ago
        To their defense - their catalog in some countries (like mine) is so small that I was able to just ... browse through the whole offer in 10 minutes. I've managed to binge-watch everything I liked in two months (while working full time remotely) and cancel Prime. With such a small catalog suggestions will mostly be wrong, as there isn't enough content to fill the whole suggestions tab :)
• laurent92 5y ago
  I suspect their algorithm is stuck in a local minimum, where it has proven to itself that, if a movie is presented to you hundreds of time, there will be a moment where you click, either inadvertently or because there is nothing else presented to you, and it counts as a validation of their engine. It is so optimized for this that it doesn’t try just presenting all movies anymore - which is a recurrent problem in A/B testing in general. Yes, Netflix’ engine is the reason I left Netflix…
  • dspillett 5y ago
    > Yes, Netflix’ engine is the reason I left Netflix That seems rather odd to me. I can believe it was a final straw after other reasons like running out of content you particularly want (absolutely or in comparison with other services), but not it begin "the" reason. I don't particularly pay attention to the recommendations on either Netflix or Amazon, instead picking up things I might like to try from external sources (friends & family, discussions or records in various media, having liked something or some part of it looking into what else the performers/writers/directors/other have done it are involved in now, sometimes the does own external advertising). I feel that the recommendation systems are more optimised for people who use TV/movies as background noise rather than actively watching. That would explain re-recommending long running series that they have already watched, amongst other things people have mentioned in this discussion. Maybe my behaviour is a vestige from the life of piracy back when content was less readily available otherwise (somehow region locked, or simply not available on local channels yet, etc, so I often couldn't get things I cared about more legitimately for many months, if ever, and back in the scheduled TV days things were often in at inconvenient times). I seek out what I want rather than waiting for it to be handed to me by the service(s).
    • matkoniecz 5y ago
      I cancelled Netflix subscription because I was not finding anything worth watching. I tried downvoting unwanted featured movies, they continued to be featured. Once my listing was filled solely with already watched or downvoted movies I cancelled account. I suspect that Netflix had some movies that I would gladly watch, but if they show what I explicitly marked as invented...
• j7ake 5y ago
  The great thing with these transparent parameters is that it can be user-adjusted to people's preferences. For example, maybe don't recommend if watched < x months ago.
• jerzyt 5y ago
  What Netflix is doing is hiding the fact that they have very little new content. If they implemented all your suggestions, I'd have about 3 titles to watch, which I would like, but they're worried that I'd cancel the subscription.
  • shard 5y ago
    Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't care that much about new content, I care about good content. For quite a while I thought Netflix had a very small catalog, until I started deliberately going to specific categories that the recommendation engine never show me, then I realized that there is actually a fairy extensive back catalog of shows that are interesting, especially various shows in non-English languages.
  • dpwm 5y ago
    The kind of content that works well for Netflix does not work so well for me. They introduce just enough content that works for me that I don’t cancel the subscription. I still find it a marvel that despite the majority of content introduced being not for me, I have been able to watch something unseen approximately every night and have given up on so little. In that sense, it is better than TV – even if the impression I get from the new content I scroll past is that it appears to be following all the same trends that made TV less appealing to me. The most irritating consequence of this content problem for me is that nothing remains in the same place. Is continue watching going to be one, two or even three down button presses tonight? The reward is occasionally something gets suggested that is worth watching that would have been found anyway within a few minutes of searching. I would imagine what they’re doing makes sense for the majority, but it would be wonderfully nice if there were some kind of alternate "advanced" mode for people who understand the lack of content where all this suggested and popular stuff went away and the search filter improved.
• TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I wonder if there's space for a proper, quality recommendation engine for Netflix. In my books, it would do exactly what you described here, plus provide way for user to input persistent constraints (e.g. "Don't show me movies from 'Horror' genre") and queries (e.g. "genre: sci-fi, after: 2010"). How could it work with Netflix without their explicit support? For the movie database, I assume there's some data source somewhere that lists all the movies and series Netflix currently has in any given region. As for ingesting watching history, it could parse Content Interaction History exported from Netflix via their GDPR Subject Access Request flow. Sure, they have up to 30 days to process such request, but I'd happily accept a recommendation system I have to manually update every month, over the disaster Netflix has been offering to its users.
• snissn 5y ago
  i wish they would expand out their browsing and browsing by genre too!
• manigandham 5y ago
  There’s not enough content for completely new listings every time, and people do watch things repeatedly, especially TV shows.
  • birdyrooster 5y ago
    I get the value of rewatching stuff, but some people take it to an extreme and I suspect these were the same people whose parents let them watch the same children’s show/movie over and over and over.
    • eythian 5y ago
      My understanding is that children rewatching things over and over is healthy for them, as it aids in things like language learning. Anecdotally, in my own experience learning a second language, the online part of the course will play an audio or video clip, then play it again and have you answer questions on it, then do it again having you fill out missing words in a transcript, then play it again as you read the text along. I've found this extremely helpful to tune my ears.
    • alexilliamson 5y ago
      I was one of those kids and hate rewatching things now.
      • birdyrooster 5y ago
        I’m glad you got out of it
• fighterpilot 5y ago
  The most annoying thing about these streaming platforms is no IMDB rating being displayed. I have to type in every suggestion one by one which is annoying, or use a third party search engine. It'd be such a huge UX boost to simply include the rating, and better yet allow filtering by rating, I really don't get it. Perhaps they're trying to build network effects around their own rating system but it really detracts from the UX.
  • computerphage 5y ago
    IMDb is owned by Amazon. Amazon Prime shows IMDb ratings in its app.
    • rajasimon 5y ago
      They display IMDB rating only for some titles and it has to pass certain level of rating ( 6 +)
      • fighterpilot 5y ago
        And at least when I'm on it through my browser, I need to actually click on the title to see the rating, which makes it difficult to use it to filter out junk quickly.
  • michaelt 5y ago
    > I really don't get it Presumably poorly rated movies are a lot cheaper to license; and when you're licensing 2/10 rated movies, user satisfaction is a lot higher if you don't show the ratings.
  • SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Maybe it's because filtering by rating would expose how shallow the catalogue is? At least in my locale a good way to be reminded of this is searching for any movie you'd like to watch but isn't on the front page of netflix, typically they won't have it.
    • 5y ago
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >- If I watched a movie < 1 month ago, don't recommend it yeah some movies might be more likely to be rewatchable quicker by a larger amount of the population, and some people might be more likely to be able to rewatch movies they like more quickly than a month - and those people might have preferences that indicate their liking to rewatch more often. Thus it might be nice to do AI on this.
  • TeMPOraL 5y ago
    All the AI you need for this is an input box: Wait [ ] months before recommending again a show I already watched. Alas, giving users control is anathema to this industry.
    • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      as I said >yeah some movies might be more likely to be rewatchable quicker by a larger amount of the population, >Wait [ ] months before recommending again a show I already watched. does not handle that scenario, furthermore I am perhaps more pessimistic about user self knowledge than you are. I would probably make that box some high number but I am a sucker for rewatching some movies very often.
  • BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    Netflix already gives you a way to add things to a personal list of things you want to watch soon and already has a category for things that you've already seen and enjoyed in case you want to watch them again. There's no need to pollute the general recommendations to scratch this itch.
  • bl5THJUSFXWy4ii 5y ago
    Why would you need to be recommended a movie you already watched? You know about it and if you want to watch it again just search for it. Recommendations should be for discovery of new content.
• RandomLensman 5y ago
  Yes, I got annoyed, too, by the suggestions on Netflix. However, what they do might actually work for them, i.e. (1) The HN is probably not representative of their audience as a whole (2) What they do now might be RoE accretive for them, but not so great even for a wider section of their customers Could still be suboptimal and probably is...
• codesternews 5y ago
  How the heck youtube algo is so good? Just start with incognito tab and once it hints your interest he can put you in Rabit Hole. I really dislike it. I wanted it to be more like netflix so I don't get suck in.
  • adwww 5y ago
    YouTube's is rubbish for discovery though I think, it just sucks you deeper and deeper into what you're already interested in.
  • oezi 5y ago
    Since Youtube's inception I have never wanted to watch a single video that was suggested. I am really baffled how anybody can consider it good. Could be a location issue since I am not in the US.
    • codesternews 5y ago
      You just need to watch few videos. Than it'll make suck you. I don't think it depends on the location. Just browse some of your interest and you'll be in rabit hole. I don't know its so addictive for me.
• codingdave 5y ago
  Keep in mind the prize started before streaming did. You did not have the same data points they do today, as they were reading the thumbs up/down from DVDs shipping. Nor was the UI full of the same level of marketing as it is today, especially for all their original content, as none of that existed.
• mhb 5y ago
  Your reference is whatever crap Netflix currently uses. The algorithm they were using at the time of the prize was actually good to begin with. I think they may also have a smaller catalog of movies now. So that wouldn't help.
  • jmilloy 5y ago
    Yes, the streaming movie catalogue today is probably <1% of the DVD catalogue from the AI challenge days.
    • capitainenemo 5y ago
      The DVD catalogue is still available. They even have an app for impulse adds :) https://dvd.netflix.com/App https://dvd.netflix.com/App
      • jmilloy 5y ago
        Yeah. I finally gave up on it last year not because of the catalogue, but because the turnaround got too slow. Individually renting movies to stream is better all-around.
        • capitainenemo 5y ago
          It's still working out ok for us. We're doing the 2 DVDs at a time, and while I understand netflix always was suspected of "rate-limiting" people who had too much churn, we must not be anywhere near that since turnaround is still just a few of days. We're not impulse watchers so it's fine. It's still tons cheaper than individual stream rentals, there's more device flexibility, a lot more choice, doesn't require blackbox DRM on the devices (they are probably going to force secure enclaves on linux for their DRM at some point once the kernel patches propagate).
• jmilloy 5y ago
  The Netflix catalogue, and the movie rental/streaming ecosystem in general, was completely different when the AI challenge was going on. It was a DVD postal service. Your ratings mattered, and almost any movie you wanted was available. No one was bored scrolling Netflix trying to decide how to kill two hours before bed. They are clearly not using the ratings based automatic recommendations any more. It's not even relevant given the limited and generally low-quality content available. It's just about keeping enough people paying.
  • PaulHoule 5y ago
    The current "Netflix Optimization Problem" is how to spend the minimum amount on content but still keep you subscribing. The Netflix prize also put Netflix on the map in terms of being a company that solves hard problems. We are still talking about it today and you'd better believe it has inspired talented people to work at Netflix; they could easily blow $1M on recruiting people and have much less to show for it. It's why Netflix is part of "FAANG". Reed Hastings genius is that he led Netflix through a number of transitions between fundamentally different businesses: he built a strong brand with the DVD-based business without permission from the studios, transferred that brand to streaming when the studios saw it as "free money". By the time the studios understood what it was worth Netflix decided it was cheaper to buy than rent. (just as a consequence of having more customers) The new frontier is that they use your engagement data not just to "suggest" the next movie but to design movies that will keep you engaged. It's a little bit scary with these services that are "all you can eat" games for $10 a month because you're giving up "voting with your dollar" but creating a trail of engagement that will be fed back into satisfying your narcissism. Taking screenshots and videos of games seems fun and harmless at first but somebody knows I had a big crush on Nikola and Chiara from Valkyria Chronicles 4.
    • jareklupinski 5y ago
      > The new frontier is that they use your engagement data not just to "suggest" the next movie but to design movies that will keep you engaged. Personally, the opposite has been happening in my recommendations. I've been switching over to Netflix less and less as its library thins, and the replacements seem not as compelling... can't even remember the last time I watched a full movie or TV show season on Netflix. Guess I'm not the target demographic :( but it's not like I personally pay 'the Netflix bill' anyway. Toddlers seems to enjoy the procedurally generated content though; maybe they're mistaking toddlers randomly bashing their screen for audience engagement?
• Consultant32452 5y ago
  I’d settle for being able to filter out movies that are not available in my language.
• sonofaragorn 5y ago
  All these rules determine what it shouldn't recommend. What rules would you use to determine what it should recommend? Would you agree that these rules will quickly become unwieldy and a pain to maintain? And that these will be personalized to your taste but not to someone else's? Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to maintain those rules and if the system were tailored to every user? Congratulations, you've just realized you'd like to use ML/AI.
  • hateful 5y ago
    Based on the previous posts rules, for me it would be: Recommend anything else you have that's not excluded by those rules. And give me a "remove" like Amazon does and I'll be happy. I don't actually want recommendations, I want a catalog with exclusions.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      Eventually, you will be presented a blank page with a bit of text "You have consumed all of the internet. There is no more for you." You can read into that however dark you want to take it.
• okprod 5y ago
  I think we all have personal preferences; for example: If I watched a movie and gave it a thumbs down, don't recommend it I sometimes click thumbs down by accident, or upon rewatching change my opinion. If I watched a movie < 1 month ago, don't recommend it I like to rewatch movies, sometimes more than once in a month. If I browsed over a movie 50 times, read the info, and still didn't play it, stop recommending it. I have a terrible habit of browsing Netflix and watching trailers right before falling asleep, and I'm sure I've done this to the same titles over and over again. If I watched the last episode, remove the "new episodes" banner. I'm not in front of Netflix right now; what happens if new episodes are added while you're watching the series?
  • BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    The engine would be better not doing silly things just because of a "sometimes" fetish or bad faith. It's also trivial to put all of the things you watched recently into their own subcategory in case you want to watch them again, which is in fact something that Netflix already does. It's called "Watch It Again". There's no reason to pollute recommendations for that. > I sometimes click thumbs down by accident The recommendation engine should be obeying your explicit actions, not trying to subvert them. Accidentally clicking thumbs down is an outlier action that is trivial for you to rectify on your own as soon as it happens. > or upon rewatching change my opinion. Intentionally rewatching a movie that you expressly disliked is an outlier position. > I like to rewatch movies, sometimes more than once in a month. Netflix already has a personal queue+favorites list called "My List" that you can add things to. If it has been less than a month since you last watched something, the reason you're watching it again so soon is because it's on your mind already and you don't need the recommendation engine for that.
• ciupicri 5y ago
  You forgot the "Hidden Gems" section with movies that you had already watched and even rated.
• anonu 5y ago
  There's movies you watched and there's movies you never watched and/or never heard of. Its that latter group that the netflix prize was designed for. The former group is just simple filters as you point out - which informs the ranking of the second group.