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My imaginary children aren't using your streaming service
- nottorp 2y agoAnd by the way, my very real children have grown up and don't need a child account either.
- john_the_writer 2y agoWould be an easy thing to add. We always have to reach for the remote and look at what the parental control password is for amazon. My kids are old enough that most things are fine. The sentence "I am that guy" means something. They can handle it. We've watched BillyElliot, so swearing isn't a concern. Totally agree, let us turn it off, full stop.
- silisili 2y agoI don't quite understand the problem here. On every device I use Netflix, it defaults to highlighting the last used profile. So essentially, it takes two 'OK's to login - once to launch the app, once to select the profile. I don't see how the existence of a children's profile bothers anyone so much. It's not extra work. You don't have to scroll past it or anything. It's just a nonoffensive thing that sits there if you ever need it on the initial profile page.
- john_the_writer 2y agoIf you've lost a kid, or can't have kids, it's a daily reminder. But also it's just annoying. In some apps it's remembering what the heck you set the password to.
- bowsamic 2y ago[flagged]
- maest 2y agoVery poor take. Nobody said people should never be reminded of the existence of children, so not sure who you're arguing with.
- bowsamic 2y agoWell that's literally what he said, that the existence of children in a list of accounts is a reminder, and thus it is bad to be reminded that children exist at all
- robin_reala 2y agoI’d suggest that a degree of empathy is a useful life skill.
- bowsamic 2y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 2y ago[flagged]
- bowsamic 2y agoWow
- DonHopkins 2y agoWell, have you lost a child? Or have your parents? Is this what you said to your spouse or parents when your child or sibling died? >"you are asserting your own neuroses too much on the world and you should get it fixed and take responsibility for it I don't have patience for such childish reactions from supposed adults" -bowsamic
- bowsamic 2y ago
- xmprt 2y agoI'm not sure what kind of take this is. If you've lost a child, you don't need a button on your Netflix screen to remind you of the tragedy you've been through. No bereaved parent is going through life ignoring their child's passing only for a Netflix button to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
- paulv 2y agoSometimes you can be having a great day and bam, some small reminder of something you lost can send you in to tears. Grief isn't linear.
- CrossVR 2y agoThe problem isn't that the Netflix button will make them break down into tears. The problem is that the daily confrontation just brings the mood down. They're just sitting down for a relaxing movie or series and the first thing that comes up is the question: "You don't have kids right?"
- bowsamic 2y agoFrankly, Netflix cannot be expected to account for such a trigger
- edent 2y agoWhy not? They have an algorithm which can account for every micro-taste on the planet. What's the point of having computers if they can't properly account for the real world?
- bowsamic 2y ago> Why not? Because phenomenal experience of children exists unavoidably outside of Netflix > They have an algorithm which can account for every micro-taste on the planet Citation needed
- tetromino_ 2y ago
- nottorp 2y agoIf you want a use case, when i want to start a movie while pedaling on my elliptical trainer i do manage once in a while to hit the children profile instead of mine ...
- troupo 2y ago> e. On every device I use Netflix, it defaults to highlighting the last used profile Stockholm syndrome in full force. Why doesn't it log in to the last used profile automatically?
- morsch 2y agoI think that would be pretty bad UI for people who actually use more than one profile, as a) it'd be very easy to use accidentally use the wrong profile and b) it's not super easy to switch the profile when your within one (and making it easy probably lands you at the current design). At the same time, the existing one is fine for people (like me) who only use one -- as GP says, on a TV it's just a double confirm, if designed well. That said, for accounts that only have a single profile, I'm not sure why you'd show the select in the first place. Hide it by default, show it when the user creates a sub profile. DOS didn't have a login prompt.
- troupo 2y ago> That said, for accounts that only have a single profile, I'm not sure why you'd show the select in the first place. Hide it by default, show it when the user creates a sub profile. Indeed :)
- yard2010 2y agoIt's frustrating and saddening to pay more and more money for a product that gets worse and worse.
- bazmattaz 2y agoIPlayer is especially poorly designed in that if there is only 1 adult account you still have to get through the profile screen which is your 1 adult account and a “do you want to setup a child account” button
- silisili 2y agoYeah, his Channel 4 complaint was completely valid, but I feel like it would have been a better article about examples of poor implementation like that than just a blanket anti-kid statement, where most apps handle it perfectly reasonably.
- maccard 2y agoI have a very nice television (C series LG), with apps built in to the TV. It has a feature where it shows your “currently watched” for various apps - iPlayer, prime, 4OD, etc. but each app implements their own account select choice prompt that block those features from working. Prime very regularly shows me 5 seconds of content, then the account switch, then an ad. It’s a horrible, horrible UX and is a perfect example of PM’s going wild and not being pushed back on by other disciplines. It’s such a shame.
- qmr 2y agoNothing good can come from giving your TV Internet access. Get a $50 raspberry pi, NUC, or Android box.
- 867-5309 2y agounfortunately the tv's firmware and remote control won't work on that
- arcanemachiner 2y agoDepending on how the HDMI-CEC is implemented, it actually might work.
- maccard 2y agoHDMI-CEC is almost 20 years old and we're still saying "it might work". My previous TV only had one CEC port, which was also the ARC port. I had a receiver that conencted via HDMI meaning that CEC was only usable on that device, and not on any other things that were connected to it.
- maccard 2y ago> Nothing good can come from giving your TV Internet access. > Get a <...> Android box. Why are you ok for Google to spy on you but not LG? There's absolutely 0 guarantee that a no name android box isn't doing the same, if not worse than what LG and Samsung are doing. Another device adds another failure point, possibly another remote (lets be honest, HDMI-CEC is not reliable. It's been almost 20 years and device support is still spotty and bug ridden on both sides), extra complexity, extra space. You might want that choice and freedom, and that's absolutely fine, but I'd rather not thanks.
- nyclounge 2y agoNever used these parental control thing, but recently visited a friend with kids, and saw how she uses it to 'mange' her children, and these parental control system feels totally like corporate ACL management software. I mean at some point why don't you just put a GUI in front of AWS ACL system and just call it a day.
- makeitdouble 2y agoThat's technically what most parental control apps are. Some people also do the reverse and set up parental control profile on their own devices to get easier management and more granularity than the bog standard ones like screentime etc. If anything, I wished it was more embraced.
- nyclounge 2y agoYeah I just think if we are getting to the point where we need that type of control of our kids, then we might as well NOT give them a smart phone. Maybe first let them use fully open sourced computer so they know what is going on. Being on smart phone is like being a 2nd class citizen of computer. Let them use self-hosted app before using apps on smart phone alternatives. So they know what they are getting them selves into on the smart phone. Beside the with EFM harzard of these smart devices, it would be good to have kids focus more on real things when they are out about.
- makeitdouble 2y agoThis argument is often made, but then - adults also use these type of control on themselves (this very site has a setting for people who just don't want to stop by themselves) - adults use these on other adults as well, and not just for security purposes - falling back to a binary all or nothing seldom helps when it comes to education. I like your point on open source computers, but getting to learn a proper distance with a smartphone is also important and should be part of any kid's education IMHO, the same way they learn to cross the street or use electrical appliances. We don't tell them it's too complicated and put them in a cage until they're 18.
- refactor_master 2y agoIs this mandated by law in certain countries? I’ve never seen this.
- Vilian 2y agoMy impression it's the us-american weird mix of "think about the kids" and "purism" culture, its fine to give your 12y a gun, but got forbidden it hear a swear word
- fopapupu 2y ago[flagged]
- dharmab 2y agoI unsubscribed from every streaming service and switched to Jellyfin+Tailscale. Since then I've had a better experience in nearly every way. For example, Jellyfin has optional parental controls, and also allows the administrator to fine-tune the content ratings.
- michaelmior 2y agoWhere does your content come from in that case?
- dharmab 2y agoRipping DVDs is pretty easy these days, and you can buy used for good deals. This is of course more expensive, since you have to buy a large storage drive, a disc reader and discs. But you have more control and rights with physical media than streaming; in practice no one can take your bits away. If you are less scrupulous there are of course, other sources.
- 867-5309 2y agothere's a big difference between streaming 4K and hoarding 576p
- dharmab 2y agoI usually store 1080p high bitrate, I can't see the difference beyond that with my eyesight.
- subscribed 2y agoYou literally suggested ripping DVDs, that's why they brought up low bitrate. I don't think 2nd hand BRs are that cheap yet.
- dharmab 2y ago
- croes 2y agoWhat if you have friends visiting with children? No need to set up a special account, it’s already there.
- freetonik 2y agoIt could be in some settings menu two clicks away from the main screen. By the same logic you may have Greek friends visiting some time, so for that reason the welcome screen should always provide an option to switch to Greek content. No need to set up a special account, it’s already there.
- theandrewbailey 2y ago> What if you have friends visiting with children? As a general rule, don't let other people's kids near your TV's controls. Your friends will appreciate it, and if they don't, a kids account on Netflix won't help.
- croes 2y agoI mean you can let them watch a show without setting up a profile first. It’s unlikely the kids would choose the correct profile in the first place.
- cruzcampo 2y agoSet up Stremio with Torrentio. You'll have a UX that's nicer than most commercial services, you'll have all the content you've ever wanted and you won't be feeding predatory capitalist services with your hard-earned cash.
- oytis 2y agoDon't you dare to remind me that children exist! Children are their parents' business, normal people are entitled to a world for normal people only. That's how I read it at least
- ratherbefuddled 2y agoI read it as "stop asking me the same thing over and over again, I've already told you". It's a shame that the no doubt hundreds of UX people at Netflix are so sloppy.
- graemep 2y agoI think a bit of both. The last two paragraphs talk about "harried parents", and "world doesn't revolve around children." sounds like having kids is a burden and resentful of the impact of people having kids on his life. Its quite a lengthy rant about a minor UI inconvenience. There is also a problem with the "never ask again" option. How long is never? Someone who does not have children now might well in a few years time.
- subscribed 2y agoLOL, next you're going to infer the author is a childless cat lady, who started regretting not having children. It's quite a lengthy rant about prioritizing everytime inconvenience over a setting switch that could be enabled once, after a few years time. World doesn't revolve about your children (or mine. And yes, I have them and yes, this is one of these mildly infuriating UX decisions).
- conradludgate 2y agoThen I don't think you read it very clearly. This is about a prompt that keeps coming back, even though it's always going to be ignored. Every prompt is a branch which quickly gets frustrating. Putting it into a programming context. Imagine you're a C++ developer. Wouldn't it be annoying if your text editor asked you every time you opened a project if you actually wanted to use Python instead.
- hmottestad 2y agoWe all know how easy it would be to add an option to hide a profile, set one as default or add a «Yes, I do actually agree to watch R-rated stuff and stop asking me about it!». Feature creep and scope creep are real, but if you want to add a feature for a kids profile then put «disable kids profile» as part of the scope for that task. As someone with kids I find it really useful to have kids profiles. Netflix one is particularly good, I can configure a general age group and block individual shows. Our national TV app comes in two flavours, a general app and a specific one for kids. Makes it easier to deploy features for kids without adding any nagging popups for adults.
- notarobot123 2y agoEither we accept universal user interfaces like these or we accept a lot more complexity in the many possible configurations of the systems. The economic incentives seem to lean in one direction here.
- albert_e 2y ago> make sure it has a "never ask me again" option Ha tell that to product managers who shove very useful reminders to enable notifications, sync contacts, auto upgrade, etc. They offer all sorts of choices like remind me later, not now, i will do this later, don't remind me for one week, not now, tell me more etc ... But never the option to "no, and never ask me again". They play dumb in so many creative ways it is jarring.
- kotaKat 2y agoThose product managers must have a great resistance to pepper spray in their dating lives.
- subscribed 2y agoGoogle Photos and tying to coerce users into paying for Google One storage. Yeah.
- miki123211 2y ago"never ask me again" is hard because it is essentially a setting, and if you introduce a setting, you need a way to turn it back off, including the design, UX work, localization work, testing work etc. that is involved in adding a new switch. If you get to 1000 of these, you probably need categorization and search. Oh, and you need to track which ones are even relevant for that user; it doesn't make sense to ask a German to link their Comcast account. You need to make it all work consistently across platforms, except for the settings that should only work on one platform. You get my point. "remind me later" is simple; you check if there are any children accounts, if no, ask to create one with probability p. There is no state. There is no setting. There is no "what if I accidentally clicked no but want to reverse that decision, where do I go" problem.
- rcxdude 2y ago>There is no "what if I accidentally clicked no but want to reverse that decision, where do I go" problem. Yes there is, you now can't find the setting, because it doesn't exist, and you need to wait for it to reappear based on some unknown trigger.
- jstanley 2y agoYeah, totally. Has anyone else noticed how every streaming service has an "Audio Description" mode? My imaginary deaf people aren't using your streaming service! I don't want to be reminded of deafness!
- ungreased0675 2y agoI find this a strange thing to be annoyed by, strange to the point of novelty. Perhaps the kids mode needs to be easily accessible and prominent, because it might need to be used by kids? Maybe it’s good design to have it available on the very first screen. It’s also distasteful to borrow trauma from others to justify personal preferences. Don’t speak for people who have experienced extreme tragedy as a way of reinforcing an argument. It’s weird.
- globalnode 2y agoHes just asking for an opt out since its not important to him and hes giving an example of what he thinks might be more supporting evidence for why its important to have options :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- snmx999 2y agoImagine that instead of a forced "Children" account your Netflix would show an account "Thomas" (or any other name which is not yours or your family members') you cannot get rid of. Would that not annoy you one bit? And if not, you cannot emphasize with people who are annoyed by that?
- klodolph 2y ago“Children” -> Easy to understand the benefit. ~40% of households have children. Some households which do not have children will have children visiting at times. People taking care of children have an obvious and clear interest in wanting to provide entertainment at an appropriate age level. “Thomas” -> ??? Who came up with this idea? This is an awful idea. It doesn’t make any sense. We can empathize with people, but ultimately, we don’t have to agree with their complaints. If you have 300 million customers, there’s no one set of UI choices that annoys nobody. The current UI seems to annoy a very small number of people and, in turn, benefits a very large number of people. Needs of the many, and whatnot. I could equally be annoyed by wheelchair ramps. They’re an annoyance to me, but I recognize that they’re very useful to others.
- audunw 2y agoI can sympathise with the author, would be nice to get a more streamlined experience for those without kids, but: > The world doesn't revolve around children. Well, that’s the thing. It kind of does. And these days there’s an argument to be made that the world doesn’t value children enough. As long as fertility is below 2.1 that’s objectively true. It means we’re dying out. If the author wants to be able to retire, there needs to be kids, and the industrialised world has made that too undesirable. Honestly this feels like a trifle compared to the many UX atrocities out there. Sometimes you have to make the UI more inconvenient for some to make it more convenient for others
- globalnode 2y agoHow does fertility dropping below 2.1 have anything to do with not valuing kids? I'd say its because we do value kids and don't value the adults that are choosing not to bring more kids into the world.
- deadbabe 2y agoNo, if we truly valued children, we would seek to make more children, and devote substantial portions of our lives and resources to raising children. But increasingly, society doesn’t give a shit about children. People value more their own individual autonomy, their vacations, their luxury goods, their comfort, over the responsibility and work involved in raising children. Children have lower value than ever in this world, reduced to units of potential future economic output, or accessories for your next instagram reel or photo.
- card_zero 2y agoValuing them as in being enthusiastic about making more is different from valuing them as in caring for them. Few of them these days get sick and die in infancy, and it's no longer legal to send them to work. These factors have reduced enthusiasm. But the notion of being responsible about them is modern, and is a sign of increased care, or anyway social pressure to care.
- manmal 2y ago
- kkfx 2y agoThe solution is avoiding crappy UIs designed to "help those who do not know how to use a computer" keeping them in their ignorance to exploit them and damn teaching IT. The MIT Missing Semester of Your CS Education https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ should be mandatory for high schools in 2025. People than will choose not to buy services but contents, and instead of watching Netflix with multiple accounts in a family they'll simply milk a public catalog passing through their own recommendation engine/scoring system, downloading what they want and keeping it locally on their own storage having bought the bits, not the service. With the side effect of much reducing the enormous consumption of bandwidth and energy we have today to keep internet up for the old new mainframe model named "the cloud". The push toward {fog,edge}-computing, new distributed LLM proposals like BrianknowsAI's DCI Network clearly show this trend. We need moldable systems not cages.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- joegibbs 2y agoThis is an odd thing to be annoyed about. Maybe it brings back bad memories for parents who’ve lost a child, but you know else does? Going outside and seeing a primary school, childcare, playgrounds, children on the street. It’s unavoidable, it’s not worth building your design around. Presumably it’s a common enough option that people choose that, otherwise they’d get rid of it.
- bazmattaz 2y agoWell some people don’t like kids period
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI’m not convinced that a call to emotional trauma is really a factor here (I know a lot of folks that have lost kids, and the streaming profiles don’t even move the trauma needle). Rather, it’s a basic usability issue, with extra clicks/taps/whatever required, or an overly-complex presentation, requiring extra attention. Also, as noted in another comment, every UI element increases the opportunity for misfires. In The Days of Yore, we used to “score” our UI, by how many taps/clicks it took, to accomplish tasks, or how long it took, to understand a screen. The lower, the better. I’m a bit of an anachronism, as I still do that. My experience, is that implementing intuitive, low-interaction UI is really hard. I’m in the middle of designing a screen with drag-and-drop support for a matrix of icons. I’ve been working on it for a couple of days, already, and probably have at least a couple more to go. Lot of work, for just one screen. It’s all about removing unnecessary interactions, and implementing subtle, intuitive affordances. Also, symbolic debugging of UICollectionView is a real bitch. The debugger borks the drag and drop, so I have to use a bunch of print() statements. I think most software is done by folks that aren’t willing to “go the extra mile,” to design and implement truly intuitive UI.
- Nextgrid 2y agoOr most likely, there are oxygen wasters whose performance is measured based on "engagement", aka how much human time they wasted. Designing a low-interaction UI is not in their best interests in that case.
- andy99 2y agoYeah this is just a minor example of enshittification, there's no more to it than that. Netflix and other modern software like it aren't written for customer they are written to extract maximum "value" from "users". They want to push the kids account thing because they think it will make them money. Ux is only important to the extend it's so bad it creates churn, it's not something they care about optimizing.
- HuwFulcher 2y agoWhat a weird article. Feels distasteful to utilise a group’s trauma to reinforce your point despite being decidedly anti-child.
- llm_nerd 2y agoPrecisely this. What a bizarre, whiny article. That they try to crocodile-tear about people who lost children is deplorable. People who lost children never forget, and they don't need this guy plying their strange anti-child screed pretending to speak for them. I lost my mother when I was very young, and I remember being in middle school and being told by a well-meaning teacher that institutions should be more considerate of people like me and stop observing mother's day because it's triggering or something, or brings back memories. This stuck with me because while I appreciated that they were trying to be considerate, it was a ridiculous, ill-conceived suggestion. I never forgot that I lost my mother, and pretending that everyone else also didn't have mothers wasn't helpful. It was actually harmful. Netflix is often something that people share with family in social settings. Even people who don't have children, who lost children, or who hate children like this weird guy, have family situations that sometimes involve children and they want to pull up a children profile. Maybe there should be a setting this guy can set to hide this because it's so triggering to his anger, but what a lame thing to whine about.
- vasco 2y agoWe added an account for our dog that doesn't get used but it's funny to see.
- yencabulator 2y agoA previous dog of mine loved watching the BBC show Animal Hospital (1994), and would run to the television within seconds of the theme song starting. She'd just lay down in front, looking at the television for a whole episode. This was all pre-Netflix but imagine the recommendations for that dog account.
- xyzzy123 2y agoI think it's because kids are #1 stickiest reason not to cancel netflix. If there's content your kids love you're going to keep the subscription going. It's a less risky option than youtube which will start feeding your children raw sewage if they are left unsupervised for more than 5 minutes. Most adults I know could take it or leave netflix and think about cancelling it now and then. I reckon the dirty secret of netflix is that the two primary use cases are actually sleep aid and child minding service.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoAnd that’s why my household doesn’t have Netflix or Disney or YouTube.
- pil0u 2y agoI somehow sympathise with the author, in how struggling his life must be if he gets annoyed by such a detail in the grand scheme of things. If anything, I tend to witness more and more "anti-child" behaviours: hotels without children, restaurants without children, weddings without children. I don't have children and feel rather uncomfortable around them, but this trend just makes me sad.
- jmye 2y ago> in how struggling his life must be if he gets annoyed by such a detail in the grand scheme of things. Do you have zero pet peeves? Never annoyed by anything short of the lack of world peace? Never written a comment suggesting something is annoying? Or is this just typical internet snark, desperately trying to pass for clever insight? The dude wrote a short blog post about something that annoys him and it’s fucking weird when people like you try to make that something bigger than it is. Speaking of sad.
- danielktdoranie 2y agothis is a case of “well if it isn't the consequences of my own actions coming back to haunt me”. People like the article's author (and probably the article's author) have been petitioning the government and big tech companies for years asking for more censorship to protect them from big mean hurty words and now they wonder why the internet is a nanny state.
- nkrisc 2y ago> The world doesn't revolve around children. I mean, it kind of does. There is no (human) world without kids. Every adult who can’t stand children was once a child and will be cared for by the annoying children of today when they’re old and infirm. Not by their own kids, of course, because they don’t have any, but by other people’s kids. So, you’re welcome, I guess. Sorry you had to see things for kids.
- anal_reactor 2y ago> What's the solution? rutracker.org Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
- amazingamazing 2y agoFor Netflix I deleted mine by clicking the pencil and then remove.
- johnea 2y agoMaybe the solution would be, to stop watching stupid game shows and inane sitcoms? Maybe you're own mental health would improve (since this is repeatedly referenced as the reason for viewing nonsense media), along with that of your imaginary children?
- annieghazali_1 2y agoit's like everyone who can afford something needs to have kids as the next logical step.