57 ms·

The Clickbaitification of Netflix

346 points by thrusong 5y ago

robbedpeter 5y ago
Movie posters have used salacious and sensational words and imagery for as long as they've existed. If anything, Netflix titles have been slowly working toward parity to that standard, as opposed to devolving to actual clickbait.
- Ozzie_osman 5y ago
  I see your point, but movie posters didn't live in your home and didn't have the power of mass personalization. An analogy might be junk food. Sure, it's advertised in all sorts of tempting ways in supermarkets, but imagine if your refrigerator suddenly gained the ability to show, prepare, and serve you customized/personalized junk food whenever you opened it.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Movie posters were ubiquitous in homes, a favorite of teenagers, often the racier the better. I see your point, but I don't see a problem with Netflix content using sensationalism to drive clicks. In fact, it's probably one of the vanishingly few legitimate uses of that type of visual manipulation. They pull visually stimulating stills from the content itself, combined with text that gives you a quick indication of what's in store. I take issue with low effort or misleading titles, but it's a constrained medium in a commercial context. Not a lot of ways to vary the interface. The article just seems like a silly take, to me.
    - bryan0 5y ago
      Can confirm. I had several gratuitous movie posters in my room growing up, which told you very little about the actual content of the movie.
- bryan0 5y ago
  Yeah this makes me feel so old. This is not really different than scanning the box covers at a Blockbuster store or, as you mentioned, movie posters which have probably been misleading for nearly a century.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
Would Netflix have to do this if it actually had content people wanted to watch? It's just sad watching it double down on this pulp because every other copyright holder took their ball and went home.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Nobody was ever going to make all TV and movie content available for $9 a month to everyone. The idea that Netflix could last the way it used to be was ridiculous.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Copyright infringement makes everything ever created available for $0 a month. If streaming services can't do the same, they suck and are failing to compete.
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      The position that "theft is free, so anything not given away fails to compete" is not a realistic position to argue with.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        I don't know if that will be unrealistic in the future. Once AI is making the content you consume, the price seems like it would rapidly approach zero.
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        Too bad theft is an option then, because the paid services must compete with it. There are more dimensions than price. (Also infringement isn't theft but if you haven't been convinced by now...)
      - matheusmoreira 5y ago
        Theft is not free, copying data is. They're the ones making everything worse for everybody because they can't deal with that reality. These streaming services can't even manage to produce a video player with decent controls, we had better software in the 90s. Also, copyright infringement is not theft. It's copyright infringement and it's only a problem if you accept the notion that copyright is a legitimate system to begin with.
milleramp 5y ago
It’s also due to a lack of content from the lockdown, however this trend will continue, people will learn to navigate it. For me, I’m going with the dude.
monkeybutton 5y ago
After reading the article on my phone and hitting the back button to get back here, I'm instead presented with a screen showing more content and pleading me to stay on the site (Keep on reading!). Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I was very confused by what was happening when I encountered that screen. Is there a way to block the overriding of back buttons, particularly on smartphones?
  - dlvktrsh 5y ago
    I don't know the technicality of it but yes there definitely is
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    Its called back button hijacking. How it works or why such an abusable feature exists is a mystery to me though.
    - contravariant 5y ago
      It's probably there as a consequence of single page web apps needing the ability to store your location on the webpage. Maybe this could have been done in a way less prone to abuse, but basically you can't really trust your browser history to reflect what you think it is.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  Doesn't seem to be happening for me. Egde/Galaxy S10
darkwizard42 5y ago
I believe Netflix has talked about thumbnail experimentation at length in some of their engineering blogs [1]. To me, it seems perhaps Netflix has figured out a running theme in the author's viewing habits... perhaps the scandalous, soapy stuff is what they keep clicking. Same kind of reaction I get when a guy friend tells me they keep getting ads for women's bikinis or women's underwear in their Instagram ads. It isn't sexualization of Instagram... it is a reflection of your interaction with the platform! [1: https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-videos-through-a-b-testing-f6155c4595f6 https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-v...]
- puszczyk 5y ago
  Yeah, sure. I like desserts. I’ll eat a tasty looking one if presented with the opportunity. But it doesn’t mean I want my kitchen or living room filled with desert ads.
- watwut 5y ago
  Netflix has literally zero discoverability if you want to go outside what it suggests. If I click stuff that initially seem appealing and then based on seeing decide I dont like it, tough luck. You clicked on it, because you liked name and pic, turned out different thing that you like, but now netflix is forever convinced you want this. I tried to go through documentaries category, because I was in mood for documentary. Pure hell and every time I viewed movie detail, it jumped back to start. I dont have an option to click on something else and Netflix does everything possible in order to prevent me to find stuff I would like. The result is that I dont idle watch netflix, because it is too much work and we watch only shows someone else told us about and we searched by name.
  - biztos 5y ago
    I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since the DVD days, and for the last several years all the best shows I’ve found, I read about elsewhere first. Which is kind of insane, but I got used to it, and I will google around for interesting new Netflix content instead of bothering with their scroll-fest.
  - 5y ago
personjerry 5y ago
I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement. This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our observations only amounted to short-term gains. Although we had small long-term experiment holdout groups, the truth is they were rarely reviewed because it was unsexy. My current thinking is that features like the echo chamber effects from Facebook's algorithms, Snapchat's snap streaks, and clickbait like this, all serve to optimize short-term engagement. Yeah, I want to watch that sexy new show or keep my streak going or have my opinions validated. But there's a diminishing return on clickbait, hollow articles isn't there? I can only fill up so much time with garbage like that before I'm bored. I can only like so many posts before I feel like they're all the same. And once my snap streak is broken I hate snapping. The data/engineering/product loops at tech companies favor boosting short-term metrics; The employees are incentivized to do so and this is what they measure, so this is what they build. That's why we end up with features like this. That's why Snapchat fell off. That's why Facebook fell off. And that's why Netflix feels increasingly stale (despite there being a lot of quality content if you dig).
- vasco 5y ago
  They don't seem to have fallen off, are still the most widely used platforms in the world with billions of users in total. It is popular to think that A/B testing leaves you in local maxima, but what about alternatives? The only thing I've seen work is something like Pixar's brain trust - you do testing but you also rely on the good judgement of a small group of people with a strong sense of vision. Judging good judgement is pretty hard though, and you won't know if they're just full of it or winging it unless you try and trust. And so everyone does A/B testing which to be honest sounds much better than your average PM making decisions that are pulled out of their ass.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - 5y ago
danjac 5y ago
It kind of works for me when I'm tired at the end of the day and I don't want to make choices. So yeah, I'll watch that Caitlyn Jenner documentary or whatever, fine. It feels harder to find stuff on Netflix when I'm actively looking for something decent, though.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Personally although I do see “sexy” titles on Netflix strewn about, it isn’t a big distraction or problem the way this article makes it out to be. The real problem is that most of the content is B tier straight to video content. I’m drowning in choices and I don’t mean within Netflix but elsewhere - I’m simply not compelled to spend my valuable minutes there and these days I rarely load their app. I’ll probably end up cancelling it, as my household has increasingly returned to analog entertainment (books, conversations) over the pandemic, with other viewing time going to content we deliberately seek out rather than content we casually surf. At one point I was hopeful Netflix could produce first party content that was great. But each promising attempt (for example House of Cards, Marco Polo, or Altered Carbon) fizzles and gets cancelled after a season or two. Today I can’t see myself investing my time into their new content because I don’t want to be disappointed by their eventual cancellation, and I am left wondering who their service is for.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  I feel the same. I think their content is a sea of mediocrity. I cancelled my sub and I make do with Amazon Prime which is not much better but does have some good exclusives and obviously the shipping benefits. I’m also considering a return to piracy with a NAS since a lot of movies (esp. classics) are simply unavailable anywhere, even pay-per-view services like Amazon, Apple or Google.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I am wondering if this is what getting old is like. I get more enjoyment out of rewatching all the stuff from my youth than new content. And I am only mid 30s, but I would rather close my eyes and pick a random movie or tv show on my NAS from 80s/90s/00s and watch that over new content.
zz865 5y ago
Anyone have a good website that lets you find netflix shows? I like a wide variety of stuff and I think Spotify/Netflix/Youtube always gets too confused to be useful.
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  Justwatch allows you to inout your subscriptions and only shows you recommendations of the available shows in your country (based on your ratings).
- bjornlouser 5y ago
  flixable.com
  - Terretta 5y ago
    So I pulled this up, popped into Netflix tab, and… “The top suggestion, you won’t believe!” https://i.imgur.com/waixdBJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/waixdBJ.jpg
- yardie 5y ago
  I can't stand Netflix's recommendation engine. Here are a few of the sites I use because my homepage is completely filled with junk. instantwatcher.com - One of the first to do it. justwatch.com - There was a time when IW stopped working with Netflix over API access licensing. This is almost as good.
dannyr 5y ago
YouTube is pretty much like this but it's the creators selecting the thumbnails. The most common thumbnail I see is a picture of someone looks like they are blown away with their hands on their head and their mouth wide open.
- xxs 5y ago
  My version of not-logged in (which is the default) is far from that. It's regional - but again, unless you logoff on purpose, the selection is heavily based on your choices of 'creators'
- Semaphor 5y ago
  The Clickbait remover chooses a random thumbnail instead. I rarely go to youtube, but when I do, this makes it more bearable. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
  - meowface 5y ago
    In case anyone else initially misinterpreted it like I did: it replaces the thumbnail with a random frame from the video.
    - PoignardAzur 5y ago
      Oh, wow, that sounds amazing. (also, I'm kind of curious in a disgusted way about what content creators would do if they had to optimize for that metric)
  - ggggtez 5y ago
    Interesting, I wasn't sure at first how it was adjusting the title, but it seems like it lower cases it. Interesting demo, but I think you could do better by just aggressively not clicking on videos like that to begin with. I never see that style of click bait anymore, as long as I'm logged in.
    - 5y ago
ggm 5y ago
If I search for "streetcar named desire" I want a finder which says "nope, but here's the other work by {Elia Kazan, Tenesee Williams, Marlon Brando, Carl Malden, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter} Oddly, I don't want "here's the abortive experimental 1970s film shot in Russia by a drug crazed student also called "streetcar" But.. from Netflix's PoV, its equally likely I did want that because they know I watch e.g. Luis Bunel films So.. how can they know? Answer: they can't. They simply can't get my mood right, all the time. Sometimes, they will do well and guess. Sometimes, they do really badly. Another take: How many fans of the british "Office" wanted to be told to watch the American "Office" ?
- arcturus17 5y ago
  I do get a lot results that way on Netflix on failed searches… It doesn’t present only lexically similar results (“streetcar”) but thematically related films (classics, of the same era and related directors or cast) My main issue with Netflix is that where I live their movie catalog (esp. classics), is very short, seemingly in favor of Netflix’s own produced “shovelware”. Also, regarding a search for “the office”, how would Netflix know not to recommend the US version if you’re looking for the UK one and vice versa? That’s such a specific nitpick…
  - ggm 5y ago
    There are a million nitpicks in the city, this is just one of them. Netflix and Amazon both have a strong interior belief this smart referral thing is good and who knows: A/B testing may even validate it. I just know that recommendations in books film and music creep me out, maybe it's an analogue of "uncanny valley" but being told "you may also like" kills the mood for me. Dammit, I want to like what I like, not what statistics thinks I may like. "The office" thing, yes, that's the whole point: ask me Tuesday and I might say yes. Ask me Monday and Sunday, I might cancel my subscription. I talk about this with a lot of people and book and film recommendations are toxic to friendship. You love STNG? Oh you would love Babylon 5 no, just no. And I don't think "I'm zany" or anything cute. I think this is a normal reaction and a common reaction. I bet Netflix has never asked "do we creep you out a bit snooping on what you watch and recommending things" that literally.
kryz 5y ago
Optimizing the monetization of attention to serve corporate objectives. Short term priorities for short term goals (quarterly earnings). The incentive structure is functioning properly, it’s just the wrong one to build something enduring and truly great
mdoms 5y ago
Netflix has become nearly unbearable. Just... give.... me... basic... filtering... and... sorting. Please. Simple stuff, solved problems.
Gunax 5y ago
I am not sure I understand what clickbait actually is. It seems to be a term a lot of people use, but in many different ways, and often in a 'I know it when I see it' sort of way. The author claims that basically any sexiness constitutes clickbait, that a hammer is clickbait, and wield is a gun is clickbait. I think only the last of those is plausible. Title images really give very little information, and usually suggest only what genre the film is. If Netflix is nefarious, why even put genre labels on? Afterall, wouldn't that discourage people from watching films with outside of their genre? And the best example they can come up with is that a show about norse mythology has as it's cover art... a hammer? As in the object that we associate with Norse mythology? What exactly did you expect? Okay, no hammers--better show a man instead. 'oh why are you putting a man there when it's about mythology?' You can't win. I get the impression the author just wanted to beat on Netflix and tech in general.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  Take the Big Lebowski thumbnail on his screenshot. While that scene is in the movie, it’s not at all central to the plot. It’s not that remarkable or even show the main character. There is no shooting. But a man aggressively pointing a gun gets you curious, more than the actual movie poster. It’s clickbait because it is simply picking the image most likely to elicit a reaction - and misrepresenting the nature of the movie in the process. I think the article did a decent job of explaining the psychology behind it. Another simple example: imagine the title of this post was “Netflix is dying - here are three reasons why”. No actual connection to the content, just something to grab your attention. That’s clickbait.
  - Gunax 5y ago
    Yea so the Lebowski one was the only one I really agree with, and even that's is a stretch. We have to believe that the title is actually mistepresenting the genre... Maybe but it's still liated as a comedy. The other 2 examples did not make any sense to me at all. I guess to summarise what I mean: of course people want to make good covers. It seems these accusations depend on us really assuming a very nefarious intent. It just feels like any art couod be clickbait by that. Eg. If they used an image if a bowling ball, I could say 'Well, this movie isnt about bowling!'
sgt 5y ago
Netflix has also become unbearably "woke". I've simply given up on Netflix for that reason but also due to many other reasons like the what is described here.
- barneybooroo 5y ago
  Is your outrage that they’re commissioning content that reflects a diversity of experience?
  - yosito 5y ago
    Not the commenter you're responding to, but I've found quite the opposite. Content on Netflix is increasingly trending towards one narrow "woke" way of seeing the world, and nothing that falls outside of the narrow, American left perspective, or encourages any diversity of thought is available anymore.
    - rchaud 5y ago
      Can you proviede some examples of this narrow way of seeing the world? TV shows tell stories. Occasionally those stories aren't going to be towards one's liking. For example, Amazon Prime is constantly spamming me with ads for Jack Ryan. My take is that they do so because they paid a lot for the IP. Not because it's trying to shove the benefits of American militarism abroad down my throat.
  - sgt 5y ago
    They're shoving the agenda down our throats. A lot of shows become overly politicized, with messages of trans rights, BLM, and other stuff being injected to such a degree that it becomes too much and frankly artificial. I'm not against political and societal messages in TV shows and movies - that has been done for decades, but not if it takes away from the writing and quality of the show. We see that in extreme levels at the moment.
    - cbg0 5y ago
      > I'm not against political and societal messages in TV shows and movies - that has been done for decades, but not if it takes away from the writing and quality of the show. I think if you replace the last part of this with "as long as it doesn't bother me" then your statement is probably more accurate. From my experience bad shows are bad because of terrible writing overall, not because one of the characters is a minority. > We see that in extreme levels at the moment. Compared to a decade or more ago when you weren't seeing trans people on TV, I guess you could say it's "extreme" nowadays.
avnigo 5y ago
Veritasium talks about thumbnail and title experimentation on YouTube, and argues for the need to do so on platforms that surface up and recommend content to users: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
- mdoms 5y ago
  Christ that guy comes across as an arrogant prick. Here, "Veritasium", let me rephrase your shitty, overly long, condescending video: "I deceive my viewers because it makes me more money".
  - xdennis 5y ago
    That's every uncharitable. I'm not going to rewatch it, because, as you said, it's long, but what he's saying is that there's a difference between baiting and never delivering and bating and delivering. Also, educating isn't just about putting forth the facts, but also persuasion and spreading. It does coincide with him making more money, but there's nothing bad about that.
ricardobeat 5y ago
> users consider each title for a whopping 1.8 seconds Users are most likely not “considering” them at all. We’re not machines going over one tile at a time and generating a score. Most of the time you’re looking for something specific and just trying to find it. This type of metric is the worst. I really hope this data-driven fad dies down and we start designing with human factors in mind again.
- fumblebee 5y ago
  I'm not certain what you mean by human factors, so correct me if I've misinterpreted. If by human factors you mean basic heuristics based on human intuition, that fails too. It might satisfy 50% of viewers but there's too much diversity in taste for this to be a good model. I'm not defending the metric as described, but there's obviously good data driven approaches and bad ones. The trick is to find a solid proxy for the business problem and to try to weed out any dark side effects by applying it.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    "Human factors" could include doing something as radical as observing how someone uses your product (no, not with a computer - just watch) and then - and this is the shocking part - speak to them. Ask them why they did that or what they liked and didn't like.
    - fumblebee 5y ago
      What fantasy world are you living in where you think Netflix and Facebook don't already do this? They constantly run paid interviews with people to source this information. The issue is many-fold: 1) formalising multiple half hour interviews into something you can A/B test is non-trivial, 2) given the logistics of these interviews the sample you end up with is small and therefore bias.
      - ricardobeat 5y ago
        I worked for the company running the most A/B tests in the industry for most of my career. Having a user testing session is relatively rare, saved for special one-off products/features. Actually having feedback from those sessions distilled into product feature proposals, and getting them into the product roadmap is even rarer. In the meantime, hundreds of A/B tests based on metrics like these would have been ran and resulted in a permanent change to the product. It’s just so much easier for everyone involved to trust “the data” vs something that requires nuanced interpretation.
de_keyboard 5y ago
I never use Netflix for discovery because the median quality is so low.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
Hollywood, of which netflix used to stand alone but has now been completely assimilated, has ceased making anything of quality in favor of only making things based on the identity politics of the people involved. There hasn't been a good netflix original since orange is the new black and there probably will never be, at least for years to come.
kindly_fo 5y ago
First of all netflix is good service. I don't like their ui. This is ridiculous to play trailer on thumbnail hover. I had almost headache first few min using their ui.
nxpnsv 5y ago
One day I realized that getting dragged into the bingebait series constantly thrown at me just made me depressed. After canceling the streaming services I feel I'm not missing any of it. Also I read more books now. Whatever makes you happy I guess..
gordon_freeman 5y ago
Maybe a bit off topic but wanted to share: For anyone who wants to watch classic and top films from across the world, please check out The Criterion Channel[1]. Their collection has movies such as Solaris and other films from Andrei Tarkovsky etc. [1] https://www.criterionchannel.com https://www.criterionchannel.com
Aissen 5y ago
Dan just outed himself as sensible to this kind of clickbait: indeed, the Netflix homepage is different for everyone. Try to have a look at your friends or partner's homepage, it's pretty interesting.
yarcob 5y ago
This is why I quit my Netflix subscription. The algorithm seems to have picked up the fact that I like watching SciFi and Zombie movies, so my Netflix homepage was this dark place filled with Sci Fi and Zombie movies. One problem with this is that Netflix only has a handful of good SciFi and Zombie movies, and I've seen them all. So the homepage was filled with movies I've seen already, or the dime-a-dozen copycat movies that just rehash some ideas from popular movies in a slightly different way. The much bigger problem is that even though I like watching Zombie movies, I actually enjoy lots of different movies. But somehow the Netflix algorithm only ever shows me this one genre. So I cancelled my Netflix subscription, and went back to occasionally renting a film on iTunes or Amazon. I watch less now, but I end up watching more diverse and more interesting films.
- joe_fishfish 5y ago
  I'm in the same boat as you. My question is, does this hyperoptimisation of preferences actually work for anyone other than children? I guess Netflix thinks it does.
- maverwa 5y ago
  I have a similar problem with amazon music and spotify: Yes, they are good at picking music I like, but really bad at adding something new. Spotify is better at this, as it does not give you the one "your radio". At amazon music it basically played only those songs I told it about, and a few very very narrow matches, but close to nothing I did not already know.
  - janfoeh 5y ago
    Nothing I've ever seen did that better than Pandora. Unfortunately I had only sporadic access via VPN because of their inability to secure international licensing, but during those times I discovered more music than ever before or since. Apple Musics "Create station from track" feature comes very close, though. Back when it appeared I remember reading they had humans tag and classify tracks manually, just like Pandora, which may explain the similar results.
- Gys 5y ago
teekert 5y ago
I really hate it that when I'm digesting an episode of Rick and Morty I have to scramble for the remote or I'm watching some completely uninteresting series about a family in the 19th century or something. I just want the end screen and sounds to finish and then turn off the telly and go to bed. In stead I feel slapped in the face. Consistently my watching experience ends with (increasingly large) negative feelings. How can that be a good choice for a company offering watching experiences?
- ghusbands 5y ago
  You can now turn off autoplay of both trailers and next episodes, in settings. (Account menu -> Account -> Profile and Parental Controls -> [your profile] -> Playback settings -> Change)
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    Take a moment to think about having to go through six layers of menu tree to access a frequently requested feature. Now imagine explaining this step to someone who doesn't intuitively understand computers and whose children bought them a Roku for Christmas. I'm not fussing at you, just thinking about this first-world hell.
    - fisf 5y ago
      Also: the fact that it's hidden under 'parental controls' speaks volumes.
debarshri 5y ago
One of the things I have been struggling with Netflix, YouTube and other platform's recommendation systems is serendipity. It is clickbaity, but after a while you get bored or saturated.
dangus 5y ago
Let's be real about Netflix: after looking like it was going to disrupt the media conglomerates, I now think that all it has managed to do is wake the sleeping giants. Long-term, I am bearish on Netflix. I would go as far to say that Netflix is slow-declining its way into being eventually acquired by a member of the big six. Here are the issues: First: it's basically the most expensive streaming service, topping out at $18/month. Hulu's most expensive plan is $12. Discovery+ is $7. Disney+ is $8. HBO Max is $15. Paramount+ is $10. (All prices ad-free plans) I think an argument could be made that all or nearly all of those services are offering a better content library at a lower price when compared to Netflix. Discovery+ especially...holy hell if you are into reality shows it's endless. And it's $7. I would pay $7/month just for access to every House Hunters episode imaginable without ads, lo and behold my dream came true. Netflix is doing this clickbait stuff because their content sucks. Clickbait is what you do when your content doesn't speak for itself. Sure, every content business has to make a "headline" to draw your attention. But when you see a "clickbait" headline in something like The New York Times you know you're being drawn into something that can be potentially rich in effort, and therefore the term "clickbait" doesn't really apply. At least there's an article behind the hook. "Clickbait" more specifically means you're being tricked into visiting something that everyone knows definitely sucks, including its creator. Netflix knows their content sucks, and I'm not sure they care or can think of a viable business model to improve it.
scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
The way Netflix presents thumbnail images custom tailored to the user is ingenious. There is a lot of insight there on how people choose content based on preferences for star actors, subject matter, tone etc. Personally however, as an avid film viewer, this massive algorithmic curation is completely not for me. A cool example and complete opposite of the Netflix approach is the Mubi approach. There, the focus is not on giving me exactly what I think I want, but instead on offering this narrow curated selection along with content written by actual film critics. As a result I watch things that I did not expect. This curation aspect is something Netflix strategically completely opted out of. And this makes sense - their goal is to have an active subscriber base and achieving that goal doesn't factor in the existing film/tv culture.
mumblemumble 5y ago
It's interesting, because one of the earliest lessons I was taught in college was that greedy algorithms tend to lead to sub-optimal results. Is the problem that they're not teaching that in college anymore, or is it that the people in charge of these things are non-engineers who don't necessarily even know what a greedy algorithm is, let alone that the principle might apply to business practices and not just software implementations.
rchaud 5y ago
I dumped Netflix the second it became clear that they were pulling a bait-and-switch, replacing AAA content from major networks with their own material. Algorithm-driven content feeds simply do not work for me. I don't want to watch TV all day, nor do I have a genre that I watch to the exclusion of all others.
boredumb 5y ago
towards the end of 2018 netflix took a nosedive
marshray 5y ago
> The network’s own research shows that users consider each title for a whopping 1.8 seconds Funny, that's almost exactly how long it takes for the promo video to start auto-playing. I know for myself I try to skip past titles before getting barraged with the promo.
kbos87 5y ago
I found this article to be so spot on. There’s a mindset often found in tech companies that essentially comes down to “in every decision the data must win.” I see this in my day to day working at a large saas company all the time, and pushing back against this mindset is akin to heresy on some teams. What the author points out is happening to Netflix is the inevitable late stage of this mindset. To me it looks like the home screen in Netflix is optimized for superficial engagement, at the expense of the actual value and joy customers get from the service.
meowface 5y ago
>The Clickbaitification of Netflix >The same tricks that nearly destroyed online journalism now threaten to take over the streaming service. One of the current front page headlines on slate.com: >I’ve Been Telling a Lie to Trick Men Into Sex With Me. Is This Really So Bad?
noisy_boy 5y ago
I think I know why Netflix keeps showing movies that we have already seen. There is just not enough high quality movies that we haven't already seen (speaking for avid movie watchers). So if they skip all the good ones that we have probably already seen, it'll be a sea of mediocre ones with an occasional unwatched gem. Then we will say Netflix has mostly B-grade junk. And they can't have that truth out in plain sight.
dcow 5y ago
Here’s what I don’t understand (either about the premise of the article if incorrect or Netflix as a business if correct): why does Netflix need to drive proactive short-term engagement? They don’t make money from ads. If I’m subscribed (I’m not anymore) then their business is accounted for. I’m subscribed because they’re a better platform than TV and when I want to watch a show they have, I will. They’re getting my money regardless and they aren’t getting more if it the more I watch. Maybe they really feel pressure from other streaming platforms?
- kenjackson 5y ago
  They do have pressure. But here’s my theory: The big complaint they get about content is that there isn’t anything that is appealing enough to get customers to start watching. Once people start watching a show they usually are pretty happy. But they spend 30 minutes trying to find a show. This is why they implemented the button to pick a show for you. In short, they want you to start something. They think you’ll like most of the stuff they recommend to you. The worst case is you click nothing and then go to Hulu and browse there. Note: Every assertion I made is made up by me. Just my theory.
- potamic 5y ago
  They don't want you to use other platforms at the same time. Because if you spend too much time outside and start liking them, you will be at risk of unsubscribing. Heaven forbid they need to compete on content quality to retain you. This will be much easier and cheaper.
jellicle 5y ago
> "The network’s own research shows that users consider each title for a whopping 1.8 seconds, and that if users don’t find anything in a minute and a half, they’re gone." It's Netflix's fault this is true! There's no way to review the content that is actually on the service. I look at an item for 1.8 seconds because I keep being shown the same five promoted shows and I've already decided about them two weeks ago, or already seen them, or whatever. I click off after a minute and half because I'm seeing the same shows and there's no way to find different ones or scroll through all the content. What these streaming services actually need is a thorough catalog listing with a text description of each show. People will occasionally spend 20 minutes scrolling through that, tagging what they want to see (like the old TV guide). And then on a day to day basis, they'll spend 20 seconds deciding which of the already-tagged-by-yourself content they want to watch today. All the streaming services are way over-optimized and it hurts them badly. One complete scrolling catalog with lots of ways to search it, lots of ways to page through it, and easy "I want to watch it" tagging.
jedberg 5y ago
FWIW, this isn't new. Netflix has been showing custom thumbnails for almost a decade now. If the author is getting nothing but scantily clad people, it's because they mostly click on thumbnails with scantily clad people.
lurtbancaster 5y ago
[REQUEST] a userscript that replaces the thumbnails with the description of the video/film/TVShow for YouTube and other streaming services. I feel like replacing all thumbnails with useful text that describes what the video's going to be about would help reduce analysis paralysis for at least some people. I still use my RSS Reader(QuiteRSS) to "subscribe" to YouTube channels, and I'm never unsure about which video to watch. I think that's due to the fact that RSS is mostly text, and I'm not overwhelmed with images from everywhere all at once. A good description sells me on a video more than thumbnails ever could. So my Solution: Replace images with descriptive text on every video streaming platform.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

346 points by thrusong 5y ago

Movie posters have used salacious and sensational words and imagery for as long as they've existed. If anything, Netflix titles have been slowly working toward parity to that standard, as opposed to devolving to actual clickbait.

Ozzie_osman 5y ago
I see your point, but movie posters didn't live in your home and didn't have the power of mass personalization. An analogy might be junk food. Sure, it's advertised in all sorts of tempting ways in supermarkets, but imagine if your refrigerator suddenly gained the ability to show, prepare, and serve you customized/personalized junk food whenever you opened it.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Movie posters were ubiquitous in homes, a favorite of teenagers, often the racier the better. I see your point, but I don't see a problem with Netflix content using sensationalism to drive clicks. In fact, it's probably one of the vanishingly few legitimate uses of that type of visual manipulation. They pull visually stimulating stills from the content itself, combined with text that gives you a quick indication of what's in store. I take issue with low effort or misleading titles, but it's a constrained medium in a commercial context. Not a lot of ways to vary the interface. The article just seems like a silly take, to me.
  - bryan0 5y ago
    Can confirm. I had several gratuitous movie posters in my room growing up, which told you very little about the actual content of the movie.
bryan0 5y ago
Yeah this makes me feel so old. This is not really different than scanning the box covers at a Blockbuster store or, as you mentioned, movie posters which have probably been misleading for nearly a century.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

Would Netflix have to do this if it actually had content people wanted to watch? It's just sad watching it double down on this pulp because every other copyright holder took their ball and went home.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Nobody was ever going to make all TV and movie content available for $9 a month to everyone. The idea that Netflix could last the way it used to be was ridiculous.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Copyright infringement makes everything ever created available for $0 a month. If streaming services can't do the same, they suck and are failing to compete.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    The position that "theft is free, so anything not given away fails to compete" is not a realistic position to argue with.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I don't know if that will be unrealistic in the future. Once AI is making the content you consume, the price seems like it would rapidly approach zero.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Too bad theft is an option then, because the paid services must compete with it. There are more dimensions than price. (Also infringement isn't theft but if you haven't been convinced by now...)
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Theft is not free, copying data is. They're the ones making everything worse for everybody because they can't deal with that reality. These streaming services can't even manage to produce a video player with decent controls, we had better software in the 90s. Also, copyright infringement is not theft. It's copyright infringement and it's only a problem if you accept the notion that copyright is a legitimate system to begin with.

milleramp 5y ago

It’s also due to a lack of content from the lockdown, however this trend will continue, people will learn to navigate it. For me, I’m going with the dude.

monkeybutton 5y ago

After reading the article on my phone and hitting the back button to get back here, I'm instead presented with a screen showing more content and pleading me to stay on the site (Keep on reading!). Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.

throwawaysea 5y ago
I was very confused by what was happening when I encountered that screen. Is there a way to block the overriding of back buttons, particularly on smartphones?
- dlvktrsh 5y ago
  I don't know the technicality of it but yes there definitely is
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  Its called back button hijacking. How it works or why such an abusable feature exists is a mystery to me though.
  - contravariant 5y ago
    It's probably there as a consequence of single page web apps needing the ability to store your location on the webpage. Maybe this could have been done in a way less prone to abuse, but basically you can't really trust your browser history to reflect what you think it is.
perryizgr8 5y ago
Doesn't seem to be happening for me. Egde/Galaxy S10

darkwizard42 5y ago

I believe Netflix has talked about thumbnail experimentation at length in some of their engineering blogs [1]. To me, it seems perhaps Netflix has figured out a running theme in the author's viewing habits... perhaps the scandalous, soapy stuff is what they keep clicking. Same kind of reaction I get when a guy friend tells me they keep getting ads for women's bikinis or women's underwear in their Instagram ads. It isn't sexualization of Instagram... it is a reflection of your interaction with the platform! [1: https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-videos-through-a-b-testing-f6155c4595f6 https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-artwork-for-v...]

puszczyk 5y ago
Yeah, sure. I like desserts. I’ll eat a tasty looking one if presented with the opportunity. But it doesn’t mean I want my kitchen or living room filled with desert ads.
watwut 5y ago
Netflix has literally zero discoverability if you want to go outside what it suggests. If I click stuff that initially seem appealing and then based on seeing decide I dont like it, tough luck. You clicked on it, because you liked name and pic, turned out different thing that you like, but now netflix is forever convinced you want this. I tried to go through documentaries category, because I was in mood for documentary. Pure hell and every time I viewed movie detail, it jumped back to start. I dont have an option to click on something else and Netflix does everything possible in order to prevent me to find stuff I would like. The result is that I dont idle watch netflix, because it is too much work and we watch only shows someone else told us about and we searched by name.
- biztos 5y ago
  I’ve been a Netflix subscriber since the DVD days, and for the last several years all the best shows I’ve found, I read about elsewhere first. Which is kind of insane, but I got used to it, and I will google around for interesting new Netflix content instead of bothering with their scroll-fest.
- 5y ago

personjerry 5y ago

I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement. This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our observations only amounted to short-term gains. Although we had small long-term experiment holdout groups, the truth is they were rarely reviewed because it was unsexy. My current thinking is that features like the echo chamber effects from Facebook's algorithms, Snapchat's snap streaks, and clickbait like this, all serve to optimize short-term engagement. Yeah, I want to watch that sexy new show or keep my streak going or have my opinions validated. But there's a diminishing return on clickbait, hollow articles isn't there? I can only fill up so much time with garbage like that before I'm bored. I can only like so many posts before I feel like they're all the same. And once my snap streak is broken I hate snapping. The data/engineering/product loops at tech companies favor boosting short-term metrics; The employees are incentivized to do so and this is what they measure, so this is what they build. That's why we end up with features like this. That's why Snapchat fell off. That's why Facebook fell off. And that's why Netflix feels increasingly stale (despite there being a lot of quality content if you dig).

vasco 5y ago
They don't seem to have fallen off, are still the most widely used platforms in the world with billions of users in total. It is popular to think that A/B testing leaves you in local maxima, but what about alternatives? The only thing I've seen work is something like Pixar's brain trust - you do testing but you also rely on the good judgement of a small group of people with a strong sense of vision. Judging good judgement is pretty hard though, and you won't know if they're just full of it or winging it unless you try and trust. And so everyone does A/B testing which to be honest sounds much better than your average PM making decisions that are pulled out of their ass.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

danjac 5y ago

It kind of works for me when I'm tired at the end of the day and I don't want to make choices. So yeah, I'll watch that Caitlyn Jenner documentary or whatever, fine. It feels harder to find stuff on Netflix when I'm actively looking for something decent, though.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Personally although I do see “sexy” titles on Netflix strewn about, it isn’t a big distraction or problem the way this article makes it out to be. The real problem is that most of the content is B tier straight to video content. I’m drowning in choices and I don’t mean within Netflix but elsewhere - I’m simply not compelled to spend my valuable minutes there and these days I rarely load their app. I’ll probably end up cancelling it, as my household has increasingly returned to analog entertainment (books, conversations) over the pandemic, with other viewing time going to content we deliberately seek out rather than content we casually surf. At one point I was hopeful Netflix could produce first party content that was great. But each promising attempt (for example House of Cards, Marco Polo, or Altered Carbon) fizzles and gets cancelled after a season or two. Today I can’t see myself investing my time into their new content because I don’t want to be disappointed by their eventual cancellation, and I am left wondering who their service is for.

arcturus17 5y ago
I feel the same. I think their content is a sea of mediocrity. I cancelled my sub and I make do with Amazon Prime which is not much better but does have some good exclusives and obviously the shipping benefits. I’m also considering a return to piracy with a NAS since a lot of movies (esp. classics) are simply unavailable anywhere, even pay-per-view services like Amazon, Apple or Google.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I am wondering if this is what getting old is like. I get more enjoyment out of rewatching all the stuff from my youth than new content. And I am only mid 30s, but I would rather close my eyes and pick a random movie or tv show on my NAS from 80s/90s/00s and watch that over new content.

zz865 5y ago

Anyone have a good website that lets you find netflix shows? I like a wide variety of stuff and I think Spotify/Netflix/Youtube always gets too confused to be useful.

drexlspivey 5y ago
Justwatch allows you to inout your subscriptions and only shows you recommendations of the available shows in your country (based on your ratings).
bjornlouser 5y ago
flixable.com
- Terretta 5y ago
  So I pulled this up, popped into Netflix tab, and… “The top suggestion, you won’t believe!” https://i.imgur.com/waixdBJ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/waixdBJ.jpg
yardie 5y ago
I can't stand Netflix's recommendation engine. Here are a few of the sites I use because my homepage is completely filled with junk. instantwatcher.com - One of the first to do it. justwatch.com - There was a time when IW stopped working with Netflix over API access licensing. This is almost as good.

dannyr 5y ago

YouTube is pretty much like this but it's the creators selecting the thumbnails. The most common thumbnail I see is a picture of someone looks like they are blown away with their hands on their head and their mouth wide open.

xxs 5y ago
My version of not-logged in (which is the default) is far from that. It's regional - but again, unless you logoff on purpose, the selection is heavily based on your choices of 'creators'
Semaphor 5y ago
The Clickbait remover chooses a random thumbnail instead. I rarely go to youtube, but when I do, this makes it more bearable. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
- meowface 5y ago
  In case anyone else initially misinterpreted it like I did: it replaces the thumbnail with a random frame from the video.
  - PoignardAzur 5y ago
    Oh, wow, that sounds amazing. (also, I'm kind of curious in a disgusted way about what content creators would do if they had to optimize for that metric)
- ggggtez 5y ago
  Interesting, I wasn't sure at first how it was adjusting the title, but it seems like it lower cases it. Interesting demo, but I think you could do better by just aggressively not clicking on videos like that to begin with. I never see that style of click bait anymore, as long as I'm logged in.
  - 5y ago

ggm 5y ago

If I search for "streetcar named desire" I want a finder which says "nope, but here's the other work by {Elia Kazan, Tenesee Williams, Marlon Brando, Carl Malden, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter} Oddly, I don't want "here's the abortive experimental 1970s film shot in Russia by a drug crazed student also called "streetcar" But.. from Netflix's PoV, its equally likely I did want that because they know I watch e.g. Luis Bunel films So.. how can they know? Answer: they can't. They simply can't get my mood right, all the time. Sometimes, they will do well and guess. Sometimes, they do really badly. Another take: How many fans of the british "Office" wanted to be told to watch the American "Office" ?

arcturus17 5y ago
I do get a lot results that way on Netflix on failed searches… It doesn’t present only lexically similar results (“streetcar”) but thematically related films (classics, of the same era and related directors or cast) My main issue with Netflix is that where I live their movie catalog (esp. classics), is very short, seemingly in favor of Netflix’s own produced “shovelware”. Also, regarding a search for “the office”, how would Netflix know not to recommend the US version if you’re looking for the UK one and vice versa? That’s such a specific nitpick…
- ggm 5y ago
  There are a million nitpicks in the city, this is just one of them. Netflix and Amazon both have a strong interior belief this smart referral thing is good and who knows: A/B testing may even validate it. I just know that recommendations in books film and music creep me out, maybe it's an analogue of "uncanny valley" but being told "you may also like" kills the mood for me. Dammit, I want to like what I like, not what statistics thinks I may like. "The office" thing, yes, that's the whole point: ask me Tuesday and I might say yes. Ask me Monday and Sunday, I might cancel my subscription. I talk about this with a lot of people and book and film recommendations are toxic to friendship. You love STNG? Oh you would love Babylon 5 no, just no. And I don't think "I'm zany" or anything cute. I think this is a normal reaction and a common reaction. I bet Netflix has never asked "do we creep you out a bit snooping on what you watch and recommending things" that literally.

kryz 5y ago

Optimizing the monetization of attention to serve corporate objectives. Short term priorities for short term goals (quarterly earnings). The incentive structure is functioning properly, it’s just the wrong one to build something enduring and truly great

mdoms 5y ago

Netflix has become nearly unbearable. Just... give.... me... basic... filtering... and... sorting. Please. Simple stuff, solved problems.

Gunax 5y ago

I am not sure I understand what clickbait actually is. It seems to be a term a lot of people use, but in many different ways, and often in a 'I know it when I see it' sort of way. The author claims that basically any sexiness constitutes clickbait, that a hammer is clickbait, and wield is a gun is clickbait. I think only the last of those is plausible. Title images really give very little information, and usually suggest only what genre the film is. If Netflix is nefarious, why even put genre labels on? Afterall, wouldn't that discourage people from watching films with outside of their genre? And the best example they can come up with is that a show about norse mythology has as it's cover art... a hammer? As in the object that we associate with Norse mythology? What exactly did you expect? Okay, no hammers--better show a man instead. 'oh why are you putting a man there when it's about mythology?' You can't win. I get the impression the author just wanted to beat on Netflix and tech in general.

ricardobeat 5y ago
Take the Big Lebowski thumbnail on his screenshot. While that scene is in the movie, it’s not at all central to the plot. It’s not that remarkable or even show the main character. There is no shooting. But a man aggressively pointing a gun gets you curious, more than the actual movie poster. It’s clickbait because it is simply picking the image most likely to elicit a reaction - and misrepresenting the nature of the movie in the process. I think the article did a decent job of explaining the psychology behind it. Another simple example: imagine the title of this post was “Netflix is dying - here are three reasons why”. No actual connection to the content, just something to grab your attention. That’s clickbait.
- Gunax 5y ago
  Yea so the Lebowski one was the only one I really agree with, and even that's is a stretch. We have to believe that the title is actually mistepresenting the genre... Maybe but it's still liated as a comedy. The other 2 examples did not make any sense to me at all. I guess to summarise what I mean: of course people want to make good covers. It seems these accusations depend on us really assuming a very nefarious intent. It just feels like any art couod be clickbait by that. Eg. If they used an image if a bowling ball, I could say 'Well, this movie isnt about bowling!'

sgt 5y ago

Netflix has also become unbearably "woke". I've simply given up on Netflix for that reason but also due to many other reasons like the what is described here.

barneybooroo 5y ago
Is your outrage that they’re commissioning content that reflects a diversity of experience?
- yosito 5y ago
  Not the commenter you're responding to, but I've found quite the opposite. Content on Netflix is increasingly trending towards one narrow "woke" way of seeing the world, and nothing that falls outside of the narrow, American left perspective, or encourages any diversity of thought is available anymore.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Can you proviede some examples of this narrow way of seeing the world? TV shows tell stories. Occasionally those stories aren't going to be towards one's liking. For example, Amazon Prime is constantly spamming me with ads for Jack Ryan. My take is that they do so because they paid a lot for the IP. Not because it's trying to shove the benefits of American militarism abroad down my throat.
- sgt 5y ago
  They're shoving the agenda down our throats. A lot of shows become overly politicized, with messages of trans rights, BLM, and other stuff being injected to such a degree that it becomes too much and frankly artificial. I'm not against political and societal messages in TV shows and movies - that has been done for decades, but not if it takes away from the writing and quality of the show. We see that in extreme levels at the moment.
  - cbg0 5y ago
    > I'm not against political and societal messages in TV shows and movies - that has been done for decades, but not if it takes away from the writing and quality of the show. I think if you replace the last part of this with "as long as it doesn't bother me" then your statement is probably more accurate. From my experience bad shows are bad because of terrible writing overall, not because one of the characters is a minority. > We see that in extreme levels at the moment. Compared to a decade or more ago when you weren't seeing trans people on TV, I guess you could say it's "extreme" nowadays.

avnigo 5y ago

Veritasium talks about thumbnail and title experimentation on YouTube, and argues for the need to do so on platforms that surface up and recommend content to users: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

mdoms 5y ago
Christ that guy comes across as an arrogant prick. Here, "Veritasium", let me rephrase your shitty, overly long, condescending video: "I deceive my viewers because it makes me more money".
- xdennis 5y ago
  That's every uncharitable. I'm not going to rewatch it, because, as you said, it's long, but what he's saying is that there's a difference between baiting and never delivering and bating and delivering. Also, educating isn't just about putting forth the facts, but also persuasion and spreading. It does coincide with him making more money, but there's nothing bad about that.

ricardobeat 5y ago

> users consider each title for a whopping 1.8 seconds Users are most likely not “considering” them at all. We’re not machines going over one tile at a time and generating a score. Most of the time you’re looking for something specific and just trying to find it. This type of metric is the worst. I really hope this data-driven fad dies down and we start designing with human factors in mind again.

fumblebee 5y ago
I'm not certain what you mean by human factors, so correct me if I've misinterpreted. If by human factors you mean basic heuristics based on human intuition, that fails too. It might satisfy 50% of viewers but there's too much diversity in taste for this to be a good model. I'm not defending the metric as described, but there's obviously good data driven approaches and bad ones. The trick is to find a solid proxy for the business problem and to try to weed out any dark side effects by applying it.
- mdoms 5y ago
  "Human factors" could include doing something as radical as observing how someone uses your product (no, not with a computer - just watch) and then - and this is the shocking part - speak to them. Ask them why they did that or what they liked and didn't like.
  - fumblebee 5y ago
    What fantasy world are you living in where you think Netflix and Facebook don't already do this? They constantly run paid interviews with people to source this information. The issue is many-fold: 1) formalising multiple half hour interviews into something you can A/B test is non-trivial, 2) given the logistics of these interviews the sample you end up with is small and therefore bias.
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      I worked for the company running the most A/B tests in the industry for most of my career. Having a user testing session is relatively rare, saved for special one-off products/features. Actually having feedback from those sessions distilled into product feature proposals, and getting them into the product roadmap is even rarer. In the meantime, hundreds of A/B tests based on metrics like these would have been ran and resulted in a permanent change to the product. It’s just so much easier for everyone involved to trust “the data” vs something that requires nuanced interpretation.

de_keyboard 5y ago

I never use Netflix for discovery because the median quality is so low.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

Hollywood, of which netflix used to stand alone but has now been completely assimilated, has ceased making anything of quality in favor of only making things based on the identity politics of the people involved. There hasn't been a good netflix original since orange is the new black and there probably will never be, at least for years to come.

kindly_fo 5y ago

First of all netflix is good service. I don't like their ui. This is ridiculous to play trailer on thumbnail hover. I had almost headache first few min using their ui.

nxpnsv 5y ago

One day I realized that getting dragged into the bingebait series constantly thrown at me just made me depressed. After canceling the streaming services I feel I'm not missing any of it. Also I read more books now. Whatever makes you happy I guess..

gordon_freeman 5y ago

Maybe a bit off topic but wanted to share: For anyone who wants to watch classic and top films from across the world, please check out The Criterion Channel[1]. Their collection has movies such as Solaris and other films from Andrei Tarkovsky etc. [1] https://www.criterionchannel.com https://www.criterionchannel.com

Aissen 5y ago

Dan just outed himself as sensible to this kind of clickbait: indeed, the Netflix homepage is different for everyone. Try to have a look at your friends or partner's homepage, it's pretty interesting.

yarcob 5y ago

This is why I quit my Netflix subscription. The algorithm seems to have picked up the fact that I like watching SciFi and Zombie movies, so my Netflix homepage was this dark place filled with Sci Fi and Zombie movies. One problem with this is that Netflix only has a handful of good SciFi and Zombie movies, and I've seen them all. So the homepage was filled with movies I've seen already, or the dime-a-dozen copycat movies that just rehash some ideas from popular movies in a slightly different way. The much bigger problem is that even though I like watching Zombie movies, I actually enjoy lots of different movies. But somehow the Netflix algorithm only ever shows me this one genre. So I cancelled my Netflix subscription, and went back to occasionally renting a film on iTunes or Amazon. I watch less now, but I end up watching more diverse and more interesting films.

joe_fishfish 5y ago
I'm in the same boat as you. My question is, does this hyperoptimisation of preferences actually work for anyone other than children? I guess Netflix thinks it does.
maverwa 5y ago
I have a similar problem with amazon music and spotify: Yes, they are good at picking music I like, but really bad at adding something new. Spotify is better at this, as it does not give you the one "your radio". At amazon music it basically played only those songs I told it about, and a few very very narrow matches, but close to nothing I did not already know.
- janfoeh 5y ago
  Nothing I've ever seen did that better than Pandora. Unfortunately I had only sporadic access via VPN because of their inability to secure international licensing, but during those times I discovered more music than ever before or since. Apple Musics "Create station from track" feature comes very close, though. Back when it appeared I remember reading they had humans tag and classify tracks manually, just like Pandora, which may explain the similar results.
Gys 5y ago

teekert 5y ago

I really hate it that when I'm digesting an episode of Rick and Morty I have to scramble for the remote or I'm watching some completely uninteresting series about a family in the 19th century or something. I just want the end screen and sounds to finish and then turn off the telly and go to bed. In stead I feel slapped in the face. Consistently my watching experience ends with (increasingly large) negative feelings. How can that be a good choice for a company offering watching experiences?

ghusbands 5y ago
You can now turn off autoplay of both trailers and next episodes, in settings. (Account menu -> Account -> Profile and Parental Controls -> [your profile] -> Playback settings -> Change)
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Take a moment to think about having to go through six layers of menu tree to access a frequently requested feature. Now imagine explaining this step to someone who doesn't intuitively understand computers and whose children bought them a Roku for Christmas. I'm not fussing at you, just thinking about this first-world hell.
  - fisf 5y ago
    Also: the fact that it's hidden under 'parental controls' speaks volumes.

debarshri 5y ago

One of the things I have been struggling with Netflix, YouTube and other platform's recommendation systems is serendipity. It is clickbaity, but after a while you get bored or saturated.

dangus 5y ago

Let's be real about Netflix: after looking like it was going to disrupt the media conglomerates, I now think that all it has managed to do is wake the sleeping giants. Long-term, I am bearish on Netflix. I would go as far to say that Netflix is slow-declining its way into being eventually acquired by a member of the big six. Here are the issues: First: it's basically the most expensive streaming service, topping out at $18/month. Hulu's most expensive plan is $12. Discovery+ is $7. Disney+ is $8. HBO Max is $15. Paramount+ is $10. (All prices ad-free plans) I think an argument could be made that all or nearly all of those services are offering a better content library at a lower price when compared to Netflix. Discovery+ especially...holy hell if you are into reality shows it's endless. And it's $7. I would pay $7/month just for access to every House Hunters episode imaginable without ads, lo and behold my dream came true. Netflix is doing this clickbait stuff because their content sucks. Clickbait is what you do when your content doesn't speak for itself. Sure, every content business has to make a "headline" to draw your attention. But when you see a "clickbait" headline in something like The New York Times you know you're being drawn into something that can be potentially rich in effort, and therefore the term "clickbait" doesn't really apply. At least there's an article behind the hook. "Clickbait" more specifically means you're being tricked into visiting something that everyone knows definitely sucks, including its creator. Netflix knows their content sucks, and I'm not sure they care or can think of a viable business model to improve it.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago

The way Netflix presents thumbnail images custom tailored to the user is ingenious. There is a lot of insight there on how people choose content based on preferences for star actors, subject matter, tone etc. Personally however, as an avid film viewer, this massive algorithmic curation is completely not for me. A cool example and complete opposite of the Netflix approach is the Mubi approach. There, the focus is not on giving me exactly what I think I want, but instead on offering this narrow curated selection along with content written by actual film critics. As a result I watch things that I did not expect. This curation aspect is something Netflix strategically completely opted out of. And this makes sense - their goal is to have an active subscriber base and achieving that goal doesn't factor in the existing film/tv culture.

mumblemumble 5y ago

It's interesting, because one of the earliest lessons I was taught in college was that greedy algorithms tend to lead to sub-optimal results. Is the problem that they're not teaching that in college anymore, or is it that the people in charge of these things are non-engineers who don't necessarily even know what a greedy algorithm is, let alone that the principle might apply to business practices and not just software implementations.

rchaud 5y ago

I dumped Netflix the second it became clear that they were pulling a bait-and-switch, replacing AAA content from major networks with their own material. Algorithm-driven content feeds simply do not work for me. I don't want to watch TV all day, nor do I have a genre that I watch to the exclusion of all others.

boredumb 5y ago

towards the end of 2018 netflix took a nosedive

marshray 5y ago

> The network’s own research shows that users consider each title for a whopping 1.8 seconds Funny, that's almost exactly how long it takes for the promo video to start auto-playing. I know for myself I try to skip past titles before getting barraged with the promo.

kbos87 5y ago

I found this article to be so spot on. There’s a mindset often found in tech companies that essentially comes down to “in every decision the data must win.” I see this in my day to day working at a large saas company all the time, and pushing back against this mindset is akin to heresy on some teams. What the author points out is happening to Netflix is the inevitable late stage of this mindset. To me it looks like the home screen in Netflix is optimized for superficial engagement, at the expense of the actual value and joy customers get from the service.

meowface 5y ago

>The Clickbaitification of Netflix >The same tricks that nearly destroyed online journalism now threaten to take over the streaming service. One of the current front page headlines on slate.com: >I’ve Been Telling a Lie to Trick Men Into Sex With Me. Is This Really So Bad?

noisy_boy 5y ago

I think I know why Netflix keeps showing movies that we have already seen. There is just not enough high quality movies that we haven't already seen (speaking for avid movie watchers). So if they skip all the good ones that we have probably already seen, it'll be a sea of mediocre ones with an occasional unwatched gem. Then we will say Netflix has mostly B-grade junk. And they can't have that truth out in plain sight.

dcow 5y ago

Here’s what I don’t understand (either about the premise of the article if incorrect or Netflix as a business if correct): why does Netflix need to drive proactive short-term engagement? They don’t make money from ads. If I’m subscribed (I’m not anymore) then their business is accounted for. I’m subscribed because they’re a better platform than TV and when I want to watch a show they have, I will. They’re getting my money regardless and they aren’t getting more if it the more I watch. Maybe they really feel pressure from other streaming platforms?

kenjackson 5y ago
They do have pressure. But here’s my theory: The big complaint they get about content is that there isn’t anything that is appealing enough to get customers to start watching. Once people start watching a show they usually are pretty happy. But they spend 30 minutes trying to find a show. This is why they implemented the button to pick a show for you. In short, they want you to start something. They think you’ll like most of the stuff they recommend to you. The worst case is you click nothing and then go to Hulu and browse there. Note: Every assertion I made is made up by me. Just my theory.
potamic 5y ago
They don't want you to use other platforms at the same time. Because if you spend too much time outside and start liking them, you will be at risk of unsubscribing. Heaven forbid they need to compete on content quality to retain you. This will be much easier and cheaper.

jellicle 5y ago

> "The network’s own research shows that users consider each title for a whopping 1.8 seconds, and that if users don’t find anything in a minute and a half, they’re gone." It's Netflix's fault this is true! There's no way to review the content that is actually on the service. I look at an item for 1.8 seconds because I keep being shown the same five promoted shows and I've already decided about them two weeks ago, or already seen them, or whatever. I click off after a minute and half because I'm seeing the same shows and there's no way to find different ones or scroll through all the content. What these streaming services actually need is a thorough catalog listing with a text description of each show. People will occasionally spend 20 minutes scrolling through that, tagging what they want to see (like the old TV guide). And then on a day to day basis, they'll spend 20 seconds deciding which of the already-tagged-by-yourself content they want to watch today. All the streaming services are way over-optimized and it hurts them badly. One complete scrolling catalog with lots of ways to search it, lots of ways to page through it, and easy "I want to watch it" tagging.

jedberg 5y ago

FWIW, this isn't new. Netflix has been showing custom thumbnails for almost a decade now. If the author is getting nothing but scantily clad people, it's because they mostly click on thumbnails with scantily clad people.

lurtbancaster 5y ago

[REQUEST] a userscript that replaces the thumbnails with the description of the video/film/TVShow for YouTube and other streaming services. I feel like replacing all thumbnails with useful text that describes what the video's going to be about would help reduce analysis paralysis for at least some people. I still use my RSS Reader(QuiteRSS) to "subscribe" to YouTube channels, and I'm never unsure about which video to watch. I think that's due to the fact that RSS is mostly text, and I'm not overwhelmed with images from everywhere all at once. A good description sells me on a video more than thumbnails ever could. So my Solution: Replace images with descriptive text on every video streaming platform.

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