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I’d be interested on the actual impact for business. I use Netflix to watch things I plan to watch or filter by genre. Would it be that much worse using a simpl

by exdsq 5y ago

I’d be interested on the actual impact for business. I use Netflix to watch things I plan to watch or filter by genre. Would it be that much worse using a simple review system over an ML system? I don’t think so.

tomnipotent 5y ago
> I don’t think so. I do. The baseline comparison is against a human-curated experience (traditional programming) or metadata-driven rankings (most popular, recently added). Given the number of customers and number of titles, it absolutely stands that noticeable improvements can be had by optimizing the display of content using methods that statistically demonstrate those gains.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  The problem now is that Netflix doesn't have a large catalog. So all their fancy ML and algorithms can only suggest the same handful of Netflix movies and shows on repeat. With a handful of 10-year old movies they could get licenses to thrown into the mix.
  - Ntrails 5y ago
    This is definitely my experience. When your recommendations for 3 genres have 3 of the same films in the initial set... it's indicative of either a small set of options or a really shitty recommendation system
    - kif 5y ago
      It aligns with my experience as well. I keep getting recommendations for shows I have already disliked. If it's due to a low number of options, and not due to their recommendation system, then surely they don't need such a complex recommendation system after all.
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        They used to have a large catalog. But then almost everyone pulled out to start competing services. So now it's 90% Netflix films/series, 7% old movies, 3% recent-ish movies.
        exdsq 5y ago
        Yep! Hence why I imagine a review & like/dislike system wouldn't be an order of magnitude worse than their ML system but without having to pay millions in ML salaries, complicate the pipelines, and have a crazy number of microservices. I doubt the total business value for Netflix can truly be greater than the tech investment.

by exdsq 5y ago

tomnipotent 5y ago

> I don’t think so. I do. The baseline comparison is against a human-curated experience (traditional programming) or metadata-driven rankings (most popular, recently added). Given the number of customers and number of titles, it absolutely stands that noticeable improvements can be had by optimizing the display of content using methods that statistically demonstrate those gains.

dmitriid 5y ago
The problem now is that Netflix doesn't have a large catalog. So all their fancy ML and algorithms can only suggest the same handful of Netflix movies and shows on repeat. With a handful of 10-year old movies they could get licenses to thrown into the mix.
- Ntrails 5y ago
  This is definitely my experience. When your recommendations for 3 genres have 3 of the same films in the initial set... it's indicative of either a small set of options or a really shitty recommendation system
  - kif 5y ago
    It aligns with my experience as well. I keep getting recommendations for shows I have already disliked. If it's due to a low number of options, and not due to their recommendation system, then surely they don't need such a complex recommendation system after all.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      They used to have a large catalog. But then almost everyone pulled out to start competing services. So now it's 90% Netflix films/series, 7% old movies, 3% recent-ish movies.
      - exdsq 5y ago
        Yep! Hence why I imagine a review & like/dislike system wouldn't be an order of magnitude worse than their ML system but without having to pay millions in ML salaries, complicate the pipelines, and have a crazy number of microservices. I doubt the total business value for Netflix can truly be greater than the tech investment.