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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

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.
- aaronax 5y ago
  I unsubscribed many years ago but occasionally I am tasked by my significant other to find something on Netflix (shared account with her family). I actually have pretty good luck with searching for random things. Like I searched for "cool" the other day and found something good that would have never shown up otherwise. Seems like a way to substantially bypass the recommendation engine "smarts".
  - Terretta 5y ago
    Yep. You can also search by genres including their ridiculously detailed sub genres or cross-over genres. From what I’ve observed, though, normals consider TV such a “lean back” they won’t even go to the trouble to pick Movies or TV before browsing thumbnails for 1.8 seconds each…
    - watwut 5y ago
      I tried to browse be genre documentary. If there is subgenre, it was well hidden and did not shown up on my tablet. Oh, and apparently documentary genre means also action movies. I don't know why there were also action movies. Oh, and the more you browse the more it shows the same movie again and again. Oh, and when I click on thumbnail, then the list jumps back to start, forcing me to browse the same movies again. I ended up watching YouTube.
1123581321 5y ago
That response to complaining about Instagram is becoming a frustrating meme because it isn’t true that Instagram doesn’t offer sex appeal to the uninitiated, and rather than discussing that issue, this simple response just shuts down criticism of the social network by embarrassing the person who brings the issue up. Lest you turn the meme on me, I’ll say don’t have an account.
- bertil 5y ago
  I don’t think this response is dismissive: it’s a technical explanation of what is happening. Understanding it helps us find a solution. Netflix (of Facebook) rates content along embeddings, and highlights content along embeddings that users engage with. If a given user engages with clips featuring people in bikini, that system won’t pass the judgement (one that the author is passing, a judgement you dearly regret, ‘Lest…’) — but one that the commenter didn’t pass. No one in that process (at Facebook, Instagram or Netflix Tech team) is choosing to make things sluttier, or asks someone to bend over a little more (Netflix being a film and series producer too, I’ll reserve there). Given that context, if, like the author, you believe that the content should not engage along certain dimensions then there’s several possible takes: * a paternalistic approach to downgrade dimensions that are deemed unhelpful; that would have been popular in my Catholic school, less so on Hacker News, I’d expect; * a empowering approach that either: * name the dimensions and let users downgrade them; that’s harder than one would expect for many reasons, but roughly: naming is power and embeddings are not human-legible; * let users downvote some recommendation, even if they’ve engaged with it. Both Facebook and Netflix but also YouTube, Google Search engine, all have strangely avoided building those negative feedback for click-baits. It many ways, it’s a mystery to me, especially as someone who built so many recommendation systems. I’ve always used implicit or explicit negative feedback, to just engagement and the recommendations were meaningfully better. I’d love to hear from people who have explored that approach if there have encountered issues implementing them. I can share two details that are not sufficient but I hope are relevant: * The biggest problem at Facebook has always been that Likes were performative: your friends saw them, by design; people refused to use them as a way to improve their recommendation because of that. When we discussed a drop in posting, or when the five other reactions where debated, there were several suggestion to make a parallel form of Like invisible. I’ve seen those ideas being shot down repeatedly; I was never told why. I assumed there was a fear those would cannibalise the public Likes, and those drove a lot of engagement opportunities, but that was speculation on my part. * Most effort to understand recommendations (“Why am I seeing this?”) had an abysmal engagement rate. So much that maintaining it wasn't worth the effort.
watwut 5y ago
This is literally author complaint: > The company seems more brazen in its strategies, more willing to promise something and then absolutely fail to deliver, often using headline tricks familiar from the social web. That’s what clickbait is: luring someone into clicking, and then delivering something other than what the headline made them want. [...] my homepage illustrates The Big Lebowski with a photo of an angry John Goodman pointing a gun, as if the Coen brothers’ comedy is actually some kind of revenge thriller. Netflix did not figured out how author viewing habits. It is trying to figure out author clicking habits and then disappoints. It misleads author into clicking wrong stuff. > Following the success of the comically generically titled Money Heist, Netflix recently debuted the new, even more generically titled hit Heist Because the recommendations are based on superficial but illogical similarity.
isoskeles 5y ago
It might be a reflection of my interaction. But I distinctly remember telling Instagram’s Discovery feed to stop showing me sexy women. This would work for a few weeks until the women would eventually come back. I’m not sure if this is an issue of the request (stop showing me X) expiring, or if I lingered too long on some other photo one time, but either way it wasn’t content that I sought out. Instagram kept finding a way to recommend it. Notably, I kind of liked the Discovery feature when it was showing me relevant and unsexy stuff. But I’ve since deleted Instagram.
slowmotiony 5y ago
A friend of mine was hired to do design work for Netflix - he ended up having to create tens of different thumbnails for every show, which netflix would then run through their algorithms and decide which one to show to which user. I've looked at my netflix page and it seems that some silicon valley psychologist decided that they should be showing me thumbnails of guys with sad faces looking at something far away. Almost every single thumbnail looks like that. Sometimes I wonder if the engineers behind the scenes even realize how creepy it is what they are doing.
- bertil 5y ago
  Does your friend work with User experience researcher? I know it sounds ridiculous to delegate “this looks creepy” to an expert, but that’s where those people are valuable: they can enrich an impression with detailed feedback. Also, if your friend has any sway, can you beg him to suggest a “Stop recommending this to me” button, if they haven’t. The platform is better at removing movies I’ve stoped watching from the “Continue watching” selection after a week but… that’s still a bit long. I just want the agency of telling the machine No on occasion. And if that works, thankfully, we can get a “stop showing me the same image” button too.
maverwa 5y ago
While thats certainly part of the problem, I distinctly remember that, when I created my instagram account and followed the first few accounts (all miniature painting stuff, I use insta for exactly nothing else) the suggestions in the search where sprinkled with stuff not fitting in that genre. Like car content and barely dressed women posing. I had to do the "long tap" => "not interessted" dance for a few days to get rid of most of it. Sure, maybe its something the algorithm connects. "This fellow likes painting small figures, other peoples who do that also like cars and women, so he will like them as well" but its harsh to say "you only get what you asked for" in this context imho.
matsemann 5y ago
> It isn't sexualization of Instagram... it is a reflection of your interaction with the platform! No, that "gotcha" is blatantly wrong. If you follow running people, Instagram will float you popular running content. What's popular running content? Girls posing in yogapants. Same for other niches. The most popular and thus shown content will always be a sexual version of the theme.

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.
aaronax 5y ago
I unsubscribed many years ago but occasionally I am tasked by my significant other to find something on Netflix (shared account with her family). I actually have pretty good luck with searching for random things. Like I searched for "cool" the other day and found something good that would have never shown up otherwise. Seems like a way to substantially bypass the recommendation engine "smarts".
- Terretta 5y ago
  Yep. You can also search by genres including their ridiculously detailed sub genres or cross-over genres. From what I’ve observed, though, normals consider TV such a “lean back” they won’t even go to the trouble to pick Movies or TV before browsing thumbnails for 1.8 seconds each…
  - watwut 5y ago
    I tried to browse be genre documentary. If there is subgenre, it was well hidden and did not shown up on my tablet. Oh, and apparently documentary genre means also action movies. I don't know why there were also action movies. Oh, and the more you browse the more it shows the same movie again and again. Oh, and when I click on thumbnail, then the list jumps back to start, forcing me to browse the same movies again. I ended up watching YouTube.

1123581321 5y ago

That response to complaining about Instagram is becoming a frustrating meme because it isn’t true that Instagram doesn’t offer sex appeal to the uninitiated, and rather than discussing that issue, this simple response just shuts down criticism of the social network by embarrassing the person who brings the issue up. Lest you turn the meme on me, I’ll say don’t have an account.

bertil 5y ago
I don’t think this response is dismissive: it’s a technical explanation of what is happening. Understanding it helps us find a solution. Netflix (of Facebook) rates content along embeddings, and highlights content along embeddings that users engage with. If a given user engages with clips featuring people in bikini, that system won’t pass the judgement (one that the author is passing, a judgement you dearly regret, ‘Lest…’) — but one that the commenter didn’t pass. No one in that process (at Facebook, Instagram or Netflix Tech team) is choosing to make things sluttier, or asks someone to bend over a little more (Netflix being a film and series producer too, I’ll reserve there). Given that context, if, like the author, you believe that the content should not engage along certain dimensions then there’s several possible takes: * a paternalistic approach to downgrade dimensions that are deemed unhelpful; that would have been popular in my Catholic school, less so on Hacker News, I’d expect; * a empowering approach that either: * name the dimensions and let users downgrade them; that’s harder than one would expect for many reasons, but roughly: naming is power and embeddings are not human-legible; * let users downvote some recommendation, even if they’ve engaged with it. Both Facebook and Netflix but also YouTube, Google Search engine, all have strangely avoided building those negative feedback for click-baits. It many ways, it’s a mystery to me, especially as someone who built so many recommendation systems. I’ve always used implicit or explicit negative feedback, to just engagement and the recommendations were meaningfully better. I’d love to hear from people who have explored that approach if there have encountered issues implementing them. I can share two details that are not sufficient but I hope are relevant: * The biggest problem at Facebook has always been that Likes were performative: your friends saw them, by design; people refused to use them as a way to improve their recommendation because of that. When we discussed a drop in posting, or when the five other reactions where debated, there were several suggestion to make a parallel form of Like invisible. I’ve seen those ideas being shot down repeatedly; I was never told why. I assumed there was a fear those would cannibalise the public Likes, and those drove a lot of engagement opportunities, but that was speculation on my part. * Most effort to understand recommendations (“Why am I seeing this?”) had an abysmal engagement rate. So much that maintaining it wasn't worth the effort.

watwut 5y ago

This is literally author complaint: > The company seems more brazen in its strategies, more willing to promise something and then absolutely fail to deliver, often using headline tricks familiar from the social web. That’s what clickbait is: luring someone into clicking, and then delivering something other than what the headline made them want. [...] my homepage illustrates The Big Lebowski with a photo of an angry John Goodman pointing a gun, as if the Coen brothers’ comedy is actually some kind of revenge thriller. Netflix did not figured out how author viewing habits. It is trying to figure out author clicking habits and then disappoints. It misleads author into clicking wrong stuff. > Following the success of the comically generically titled Money Heist, Netflix recently debuted the new, even more generically titled hit Heist Because the recommendations are based on superficial but illogical similarity.

isoskeles 5y ago

It might be a reflection of my interaction. But I distinctly remember telling Instagram’s Discovery feed to stop showing me sexy women. This would work for a few weeks until the women would eventually come back. I’m not sure if this is an issue of the request (stop showing me X) expiring, or if I lingered too long on some other photo one time, but either way it wasn’t content that I sought out. Instagram kept finding a way to recommend it. Notably, I kind of liked the Discovery feature when it was showing me relevant and unsexy stuff. But I’ve since deleted Instagram.

slowmotiony 5y ago

A friend of mine was hired to do design work for Netflix - he ended up having to create tens of different thumbnails for every show, which netflix would then run through their algorithms and decide which one to show to which user. I've looked at my netflix page and it seems that some silicon valley psychologist decided that they should be showing me thumbnails of guys with sad faces looking at something far away. Almost every single thumbnail looks like that. Sometimes I wonder if the engineers behind the scenes even realize how creepy it is what they are doing.

bertil 5y ago
Does your friend work with User experience researcher? I know it sounds ridiculous to delegate “this looks creepy” to an expert, but that’s where those people are valuable: they can enrich an impression with detailed feedback. Also, if your friend has any sway, can you beg him to suggest a “Stop recommending this to me” button, if they haven’t. The platform is better at removing movies I’ve stoped watching from the “Continue watching” selection after a week but… that’s still a bit long. I just want the agency of telling the machine No on occasion. And if that works, thankfully, we can get a “stop showing me the same image” button too.

maverwa 5y ago

While thats certainly part of the problem, I distinctly remember that, when I created my instagram account and followed the first few accounts (all miniature painting stuff, I use insta for exactly nothing else) the suggestions in the search where sprinkled with stuff not fitting in that genre. Like car content and barely dressed women posing. I had to do the "long tap" => "not interessted" dance for a few days to get rid of most of it. Sure, maybe its something the algorithm connects. "This fellow likes painting small figures, other peoples who do that also like cars and women, so he will like them as well" but its harsh to say "you only get what you asked for" in this context imho.

matsemann 5y ago

> It isn't sexualization of Instagram... it is a reflection of your interaction with the platform! No, that "gotcha" is blatantly wrong. If you follow running people, Instagram will float you popular running content. What's popular running content? Girls posing in yogapants. Same for other niches. The most popular and thus shown content will always be a sexual version of the theme.