6 ms·
Not surprising. I'd been using movielens for recommendations prior to the prize, and even today Netflix still does not provide high quality content recommendati
by resters 3y ago
Not surprising. I'd been using movielens for recommendations prior to the prize, and even today Netflix still does not provide high quality content recommendations.
Worse yet it seems to think I want to watch the three things that are most popular on the platform.
This indicates that the Netflix UX business is being significantly mismanaged.
- mvdtnz 3y agoI suspect the Netflix recommendations system would be excellent if they had a catalog to back it. But the Netflix catalog is of such poor quality that even a perfect recommendation system ends up recommending garbage because it's all they have.
- zoover2020 3y agoIsn't their algorithm also very intendedly only catering to Netflix originals by default? I find its algo absolutely rubbish and most of my initial excitement to go watch something with my wife on the couch instantly fades as soon as we face the doomscrolling of finding content to watch. It's like zapping but worse
- onli 3y agoFor me it's the missing quality markers. Netflix provides no way at all to see whether a show or movie is good. So when one starts scrolling and does not find immediately something one likes, there is no reason to ever find anything good - because nothing seems good, and all alike. Since I added a userscript to see IMDB ratings directly next to the netflix shows it's way easier to find something promising.
- cortesoft 3y agoI always hear people say this about the Netflix catalog, but I never understand what metric or criteria people are using. I find there is a ton of great content on Netflix, and I have way more things I want to watch on there than time to watch it. I always wonder if people who say this either have very particular interests, or are trying to find specific tv shows/movies and not finding them on Netflix. If you are not set on a particular thing, it seems to me that there is a ton of great content.
- londons_explore 3y agoI think many people want to watch what their friends are watching (so they can talk about it at work/school tomorrow). That means if their friends are watching stuff on Amazon Prime, then netflix can never meet their needs.
- wharvle 3y agoI have really broad interests in film—it blows my mind when people complain that not enough good or original films come out in a given year, I can't even make it through half the probably-good ones each year, I don't know what they're looking at or what their tastes must be like to come to that conclusion—but definitely find Netflix's catalog to be notably weak compared to Hulu or (HBO)Max, and it's been that way for years. I'd class it with second-tier services like Paramount, but from what I've seen on there lately, even that may be better. It's got Apple TV beat, I guess, but I wouldn't call that a major streaming service. [EDIT] Oh and I'd say it's overall worse than D+, for that matter, even though that's basically an umbrella for a few niche services. Like if I could only have one of those two, I'd take D+. And D+ kinda sucks.
- chuckadams 3y agoThe way Max is going, it's going to make Netflix look like the Criterion Collection in a few years.
- wharvle 3y agoOh, I know. Matter of time before I drop that one. They've inexplicably decided to destroy their own streaming service, on purpose.
- hedora 3y agoThat's especially true since I've noticed stuff max yanked has popped up on netflix. If netflix wants to lean in even further, they should pick up rights to produce additional seasons of most of the stuff Warner Brothers Discovery cancelled last year (they're the parent company of HBO and have subpar management, even by Hollywood exec standards).
- consumer451 3y agoThis raises an interesting point. Streaming has become so fragmented that I wonder if there enough space for a "$1M algorithm" which spans across all of the streaming platforms. I am not sure how that data would be gathered, maybe via an intermediary player like Plex, Roku, Android TV, etc..?
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoNot remotely viable.
- consumer451 3y agoFor my own education, may I ask why?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eddd-ddde 3y agoThe best recommendation algorithm they could provide is the one that recommends cancelling your subscription.
- itsoktocry 3y ago>Worse yet it seems to think I want to watch the three things that are most popular on the platform. Once they went heavy into content creation, this was expected and optimal for them, unfortunately.
- vkou 3y agoUnfortunately, if they didn't go heavily into content creation, they'd be dead as a business, as all the rights holders are no longer selling them streaming rights for a song.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- huytersd 3y agoThat’s by design. They used to have a perfectly reasonable system where you could search by category and sort by popularity and rating. They killed that specifically because otherwise no one would watch the buckets of random trash they have on there.
- dfxm12 3y agoThey want to present to you what they want to serve you. To save money, they want to serve everyone as much of the same content as possible. Their algorithm isn't optimizing for you, it's optimizing for them.
- gosub100 3y agoI was going to make a similar comment to this: How does their licensing structure work? Do they pay a flat fee for unlimited license to some/all shows? Or do they pay a base + a micropayment for each view? If the latter, then of course they dont want to optimize for you, they want to find the optimization point between maximizing subscriptions vs cheapest content. Similar to the recurring conversations about the economics of buffets: you want a lot of people to come in, but not the ones who just eat all the expensive things.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jvanderbot 3y agoHow have I been a movie buf and computer science pro this long and never found movielens. thank you!