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Honestly for me I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad. I wish instead of pushing shows to me best on algorithms, it woul

Honestly for me I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad. I wish instead of pushing shows to me best on algorithms, it would just let me browse categories and recent additions etc in a simpler way. Maybe categorised by year.

nradov 5y ago
Back when Netflix had DVDs the recommendation algorithm worked pretty well, at least for me. It's gotten gradually worse over the years. Or perhaps they no longer have much good content, so no recommendation algorithm would work well? Either way I guess it's time to cancel my subscription.
- eatbitseveryday 5y ago
  They still do rent discs. I am a subscriber thereof. dvd.com
  - zupzupper 5y ago
    Same here, much better selection on DVD / BluRay than their streaming.
- carride 5y ago
  Dvd Netflix[0] is still sending movies to your house (in USA). Many movies which are not available in any streaming service. They got worse with new releases since 2020, but for many famous movies of the past this is a decent service. [0] https://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/
  - bombcar 5y ago
    It works pretty well but for anything big name I can get it used on Amazon for cheap, and anything new is in Redbox.
aiiane 5y ago
I've always preferred to use https://unogs.com/ https://unogs.com/ which lets you search with a lot of advanced search parameters and the resulting pages are much easier to browse, and then just pull up specific titles on Netflix itself.
yosito 5y ago
Absolutely, Netflix would be 1000 times better if they just let me sort, filter and find content based on concrete metadata. Instead, I'm forced to rely on their recommendation algorithms that purport to know what I want to watch, but for some reason keep recommending low quality content in languages I'm just not interested in. I'd be happy if I could just filter Netflix to only show me content with original audio in languages I speak. The few shows I'm interested in watching with subtitles or dubbed audio are things I can search for on a case by base basis. And don't get me started on Netflix's non-intuitive categories which seem more intent on forcing me to view ideologically motivated content than on helping me to find content in a category I'm interested in. I don't want to search for "Christian Films with Family Values" nor do I want to watch "Films With Black Female Leads". Nothing wrong with those types of films, but I'm searching by "Action", "Romance", "Comedy", "Sci-Fi" etc.
- pojzon 5y ago
  I can assume Netflix does not have this kind of browsing simply due to amount of content they have. Offering of Netflix is extremely poor if you crop out all the duplicate shows popping on your feed. Ive decided to drop Netflix simply because: - new interesting shows are popping up so rarely, there is no point to pay the monthly sub - there is too much political agenda sold even in children shows (Kids really dont need this kind of crap)
  - roody15 5y ago
    "there is too much political agenda sold even in children shows" Yes sadly this has become much more prominent in the last couple of years. It has blatant political propaganda inserted into all of their original content that is clearly forced and hurts the quality of the programming.
    - otterley 5y ago
      Can you provide some examples of this, and how it's impacting children in some sort of harmful way?
cynusx 5y ago
Or just allow you to hide movies that you've already watched or decided you don't want to watch
xhkkffbf 5y ago
I have to agree. If I remember a show, I can search by name but I can only browse through the stuff that their algorithm shows to me. And that's just a few dozen titles.
dmitriid 5y ago
After all major content providers dripped out of Netflix (Disney, Warner Brothers, just to name two biggest ones), Netflix can't afford to show you "all the content" because they don't really have any content. So they are in a desperate situation to try and make you watch anything at all.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  But pay triple the price like they have all the content still and then tell you the crappy shows you want to watch.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    They have to recoup 14 billion dollars they spend on producing content somehow :)
- elihu 5y ago
  That seems plausible. Netflix has an obtuse interface in order to obscure the fact that their catalog of content isn't very big, and has shrunk considerably in recent years (due largely to other content owners realizing that it's more lucrative to start their own streaming services rather than license the content to Netflix).
magicalhippo 5y ago
I cancelled my Netflix premium subscription some years ago due to the UI. I just want to read what the movie/show is about without it starting to play some distraction, or worse, revealing trailer/intro. When I'm done I want to easily find relevant movies and shows on my own, not get some random suggestion on auto-play shoved in my face which I have 3 seconds to get rid of. Since then they've lost a lot of content and produced a lot of terrible stuff, so slim chance I'll sign up again anytime soon.
tailspin2019 5y ago
Agreed. I have never used such a non-deterministic UI. Every time I load the app I have to hunt around to find the show I last watched and continue it. It feels like it’s in a different place every single time. And actually trying to browse the catalog is painful. I like some of their content but I really hate the Netflix apps. (Not to mention weird subtitle issues and play position sync issues). The one thing I will say though is I cannot remember the last time I saw a single bit of buffering. Everything starts playing immediately, every time. The actual reliability of the streaming itself is superb.
the_biot 5y ago
Algorithms? Netflix hasn't done actual recommendation algorithms since the DVD days. These days it just relentlessly pushes its own third-rate content to viewers, presumably because it's cheaper than licensed content.
everdrive 5y ago
The algorithmic feed alone is reason to leave Netflix. Briefly, I had Netflix working on a 3rd-party add-on for Kodi. (it's since broken) It was beautiful: - There were no video previews. - All selection was text-based only. - There was no algorithmic feed: only lists based on category / genre / etc. If Netflix offered this, I might actually pay for it. For now, I'm just using a relative's login, and I won't be paying if they boot us off.
throwaway042122 5y ago
I particularly hate the way they keep pushing serial killer documentaries, and there seems to be little way to get them to stop. When it's late at night and I'm trying to find something relaxing to watch before going to bed, the last thing I want to see is a serial killer's face staring at me and then footage of them starting to play. It ruins my night. Honestly that's been the last straw for me. They're happy to force their customers to see disturbing things, as long as it boosts engagement.
- stubish 5y ago
  I have taken to using the dislike rating on stuff I have no intention of ever watching. I don't know if it helps yet. It might be fantastic for people who like the genre, but I'm now rating for myself rather than other people. Hopefully these metrics don't feed into any meaningful ratings systems.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  True crime is extremely popular with the female demographic. That can be influencing what they push on you.
civilized 5y ago
The recommendation system crash is coming. Name a recommendation system that shouldn't be replaced with simple rules based on obvious and transparent metrics like popularity and ratings, or by organizing things into categories. Less fancy ML nonsense, more working hard to gather high quality simple metrics.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Netflix had a great recommendation system for their DVD catalog 15 years ago without any ML hocuspocus. The problem now is that their content is mostly mediocre and user driven ratings can't be used effectively to identify similar cohorts. That's why they got rid of the stars.
- xedrac 5y ago
  That doesn't work so well if you're trying to push a social agenda to people who aren't interested in LGBTQ+ or racial "wokeness". Imagine someone searching for all content that doesn't include some form of LGBTQ+. There wouldn't be much of a catalog to watch.
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    > Imagine someone searching for all content that doesn't include some form of LGBTQ+ whats the reason for that?
    - magicalhippo 5y ago
      To me most of the new shows that has LGBTQ+ content, the LGBTQ+ stuff feels incredibly forced to the point of detracting from the story. I can't help but feel they're just trying to tick a marketing checkbox as I watch it. I have no problem with well written normal characters, either straight or LGBTQ+. Nor a bunch of LGBTQ+ characters dialed to 11 if that's a plot point.
- nhkcode 5y ago
  https://movielens.org/ https://movielens.org/ is the best one I've used so far. I find it almost creepy how good it predicts how I'll rate a movie.
at_a_remove 5y ago
The sorting is brutal. The sorts should be partitioned. For a given category, that list they show you? Movies you have seen and rated down should be the very, very last on the list. Then movies you seen and rated up would be just before that. Then movies you haven't seen, but are older. Up front should be movies you haven't seen but are new to Netflix. A movie should appear in no more than three categories, because they like to pack these with spam. I marked horror as my #1 category, why do I have to scroll through a ton of stuff like "Strong Female-Led Dramas" to get to it?
andrew_ 5y ago
They started losing me when they took away the ratings. Just got worse from there.
SkyPuncher 5y ago
Youtube is suffering a similar issue lately. I'll watch a tutorial video then suddenly that's the _only_ thing my feed recommends to me. None of my subscriptions. None of my established preference. Just dozens of videos on a topic that I likely don't actually care that much about.
- cellularmitosis 5y ago
  Just yesterday I discovered that youtube's "home" feed in the iOS app is not actually endless. I know this because I reached the bottom of it without tapping into a single video! For the past 6 months or so in particular, their recommendation engine has just been abysmally bad.
babypuncher 5y ago
Algorithms like this in general have made UX worse across the web. Facebook was also way more enjoyable to use when your home page was just a chronological list of all your friends wall posts.
timmahoney 5y ago
I can't agree with this more. I find it extremely difficult to find something I want to watch, because I simply can't find out how to look at their entire library.
deepzn 5y ago
This is true, there is a lot of (original, and other) content that you just can't find anymore because they only show the newest, and dumb stuff now.
jeffmc 5y ago
Here is a web page I put together a while ago that has categorized links to the Netflix category pages - https://ramadda.org/repository/a/browse_netflix https://ramadda.org/repository/a/browse_netflix I forgot where I got the original list of links
visarga 5y ago
> I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad Yeah, you can't rest your mouse anywhere, all the things pop up and autoplay even without clicking. Same thing happens on Twitter, everything reacts to clicks. If 95% of the screen space is listening for clicks and mouse-over's then you have to be really careful not to misclick on something. It's even worse if you like to run everything through TTS - just try to double-click select something without triggering the click event listeners.
DavideNL 5y ago
Agree; I stopped using Netflix a long time ago, when the "algorithm" started ramming content through my throat; I couldn't disable automatically playing previews on the home screen, it automatically started skipping over intro's and outro's, automatically playing the next show, etc. etc. Everything just screams "thou shall consume more".

nradov 5y ago

Back when Netflix had DVDs the recommendation algorithm worked pretty well, at least for me. It's gotten gradually worse over the years. Or perhaps they no longer have much good content, so no recommendation algorithm would work well? Either way I guess it's time to cancel my subscription.

eatbitseveryday 5y ago
They still do rent discs. I am a subscriber thereof. dvd.com
- zupzupper 5y ago
  Same here, much better selection on DVD / BluRay than their streaming.
carride 5y ago
Dvd Netflix[0] is still sending movies to your house (in USA). Many movies which are not available in any streaming service. They got worse with new releases since 2020, but for many famous movies of the past this is a decent service. [0] https://dvd.netflix.com/ https://dvd.netflix.com/
- bombcar 5y ago
  It works pretty well but for anything big name I can get it used on Amazon for cheap, and anything new is in Redbox.

aiiane 5y ago

I've always preferred to use https://unogs.com/ https://unogs.com/ which lets you search with a lot of advanced search parameters and the resulting pages are much easier to browse, and then just pull up specific titles on Netflix itself.

yosito 5y ago

Absolutely, Netflix would be 1000 times better if they just let me sort, filter and find content based on concrete metadata. Instead, I'm forced to rely on their recommendation algorithms that purport to know what I want to watch, but for some reason keep recommending low quality content in languages I'm just not interested in. I'd be happy if I could just filter Netflix to only show me content with original audio in languages I speak. The few shows I'm interested in watching with subtitles or dubbed audio are things I can search for on a case by base basis. And don't get me started on Netflix's non-intuitive categories which seem more intent on forcing me to view ideologically motivated content than on helping me to find content in a category I'm interested in. I don't want to search for "Christian Films with Family Values" nor do I want to watch "Films With Black Female Leads". Nothing wrong with those types of films, but I'm searching by "Action", "Romance", "Comedy", "Sci-Fi" etc.

pojzon 5y ago
I can assume Netflix does not have this kind of browsing simply due to amount of content they have. Offering of Netflix is extremely poor if you crop out all the duplicate shows popping on your feed. Ive decided to drop Netflix simply because: - new interesting shows are popping up so rarely, there is no point to pay the monthly sub - there is too much political agenda sold even in children shows (Kids really dont need this kind of crap)
- roody15 5y ago
  "there is too much political agenda sold even in children shows" Yes sadly this has become much more prominent in the last couple of years. It has blatant political propaganda inserted into all of their original content that is clearly forced and hurts the quality of the programming.
  - otterley 5y ago
    Can you provide some examples of this, and how it's impacting children in some sort of harmful way?

cynusx 5y ago

Or just allow you to hide movies that you've already watched or decided you don't want to watch

xhkkffbf 5y ago

I have to agree. If I remember a show, I can search by name but I can only browse through the stuff that their algorithm shows to me. And that's just a few dozen titles.

dmitriid 5y ago

After all major content providers dripped out of Netflix (Disney, Warner Brothers, just to name two biggest ones), Netflix can't afford to show you "all the content" because they don't really have any content. So they are in a desperate situation to try and make you watch anything at all.

encryptluks2 5y ago
But pay triple the price like they have all the content still and then tell you the crappy shows you want to watch.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  They have to recoup 14 billion dollars they spend on producing content somehow :)
elihu 5y ago
That seems plausible. Netflix has an obtuse interface in order to obscure the fact that their catalog of content isn't very big, and has shrunk considerably in recent years (due largely to other content owners realizing that it's more lucrative to start their own streaming services rather than license the content to Netflix).

magicalhippo 5y ago

I cancelled my Netflix premium subscription some years ago due to the UI. I just want to read what the movie/show is about without it starting to play some distraction, or worse, revealing trailer/intro. When I'm done I want to easily find relevant movies and shows on my own, not get some random suggestion on auto-play shoved in my face which I have 3 seconds to get rid of. Since then they've lost a lot of content and produced a lot of terrible stuff, so slim chance I'll sign up again anytime soon.

tailspin2019 5y ago

Agreed. I have never used such a non-deterministic UI. Every time I load the app I have to hunt around to find the show I last watched and continue it. It feels like it’s in a different place every single time. And actually trying to browse the catalog is painful. I like some of their content but I really hate the Netflix apps. (Not to mention weird subtitle issues and play position sync issues). The one thing I will say though is I cannot remember the last time I saw a single bit of buffering. Everything starts playing immediately, every time. The actual reliability of the streaming itself is superb.

the_biot 5y ago

Algorithms? Netflix hasn't done actual recommendation algorithms since the DVD days. These days it just relentlessly pushes its own third-rate content to viewers, presumably because it's cheaper than licensed content.

everdrive 5y ago

The algorithmic feed alone is reason to leave Netflix. Briefly, I had Netflix working on a 3rd-party add-on for Kodi. (it's since broken) It was beautiful: - There were no video previews. - All selection was text-based only. - There was no algorithmic feed: only lists based on category / genre / etc. If Netflix offered this, I might actually pay for it. For now, I'm just using a relative's login, and I won't be paying if they boot us off.

throwaway042122 5y ago

I particularly hate the way they keep pushing serial killer documentaries, and there seems to be little way to get them to stop. When it's late at night and I'm trying to find something relaxing to watch before going to bed, the last thing I want to see is a serial killer's face staring at me and then footage of them starting to play. It ruins my night. Honestly that's been the last straw for me. They're happy to force their customers to see disturbing things, as long as it boosts engagement.

stubish 5y ago
I have taken to using the dislike rating on stuff I have no intention of ever watching. I don't know if it helps yet. It might be fantastic for people who like the genre, but I'm now rating for myself rather than other people. Hopefully these metrics don't feed into any meaningful ratings systems.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
True crime is extremely popular with the female demographic. That can be influencing what they push on you.

civilized 5y ago

The recommendation system crash is coming. Name a recommendation system that shouldn't be replaced with simple rules based on obvious and transparent metrics like popularity and ratings, or by organizing things into categories. Less fancy ML nonsense, more working hard to gather high quality simple metrics.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Netflix had a great recommendation system for their DVD catalog 15 years ago without any ML hocuspocus. The problem now is that their content is mostly mediocre and user driven ratings can't be used effectively to identify similar cohorts. That's why they got rid of the stars.
xedrac 5y ago
That doesn't work so well if you're trying to push a social agenda to people who aren't interested in LGBTQ+ or racial "wokeness". Imagine someone searching for all content that doesn't include some form of LGBTQ+. There wouldn't be much of a catalog to watch.
- andrekandre 5y ago
  > Imagine someone searching for all content that doesn't include some form of LGBTQ+ whats the reason for that?
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    To me most of the new shows that has LGBTQ+ content, the LGBTQ+ stuff feels incredibly forced to the point of detracting from the story. I can't help but feel they're just trying to tick a marketing checkbox as I watch it. I have no problem with well written normal characters, either straight or LGBTQ+. Nor a bunch of LGBTQ+ characters dialed to 11 if that's a plot point.
nhkcode 5y ago
https://movielens.org/ https://movielens.org/ is the best one I've used so far. I find it almost creepy how good it predicts how I'll rate a movie.

at_a_remove 5y ago

The sorting is brutal. The sorts should be partitioned. For a given category, that list they show you? Movies you have seen and rated down should be the very, very last on the list. Then movies you seen and rated up would be just before that. Then movies you haven't seen, but are older. Up front should be movies you haven't seen but are new to Netflix. A movie should appear in no more than three categories, because they like to pack these with spam. I marked horror as my #1 category, why do I have to scroll through a ton of stuff like "Strong Female-Led Dramas" to get to it?

andrew_ 5y ago

They started losing me when they took away the ratings. Just got worse from there.

SkyPuncher 5y ago

Youtube is suffering a similar issue lately. I'll watch a tutorial video then suddenly that's the _only_ thing my feed recommends to me. None of my subscriptions. None of my established preference. Just dozens of videos on a topic that I likely don't actually care that much about.

cellularmitosis 5y ago
Just yesterday I discovered that youtube's "home" feed in the iOS app is not actually endless. I know this because I reached the bottom of it without tapping into a single video! For the past 6 months or so in particular, their recommendation engine has just been abysmally bad.

babypuncher 5y ago

Algorithms like this in general have made UX worse across the web. Facebook was also way more enjoyable to use when your home page was just a chronological list of all your friends wall posts.

timmahoney 5y ago

I can't agree with this more. I find it extremely difficult to find something I want to watch, because I simply can't find out how to look at their entire library.

deepzn 5y ago

This is true, there is a lot of (original, and other) content that you just can't find anymore because they only show the newest, and dumb stuff now.

jeffmc 5y ago

Here is a web page I put together a while ago that has categorized links to the Netflix category pages - https://ramadda.org/repository/a/browse_netflix https://ramadda.org/repository/a/browse_netflix I forgot where I got the original list of links

visarga 5y ago

> I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad Yeah, you can't rest your mouse anywhere, all the things pop up and autoplay even without clicking. Same thing happens on Twitter, everything reacts to clicks. If 95% of the screen space is listening for clicks and mouse-over's then you have to be really careful not to misclick on something. It's even worse if you like to run everything through TTS - just try to double-click select something without triggering the click event listeners.

DavideNL 5y ago

Agree; I stopped using Netflix a long time ago, when the "algorithm" started ramming content through my throat; I couldn't disable automatically playing previews on the home screen, it automatically started skipping over intro's and outro's, automatically playing the next show, etc. etc. Everything just screams "thou shall consume more".