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Comment by hyencomper | Hacker News Reader

I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my subscription recently as I realized that while Netflix has a lot of shows, there is a dearth of quality content and the search function is not useful. With shows like Friends and Office leaving, there is not much to draw people who like leaving it on in the background. Also, the auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying.

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>the auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying.

This was baffling to me. I've rarely had such a stressful user experience as a trailer playing every single time I stop pressing the arrow buttons for a few seconds. Just because I stopped pressing buttons doesn't mean I want to see a trailer for whatever I happened to stop on - it means I'm thinking about something, or reading something, or looking at some other part of the screen, or am not even looking at my TV any more. It's hard to imagine a more malicious UX than one that plays video and audio at you every time you are not giving input. And because it's difficult to even find a state in that UI where you don't have something selected, I found it impossible to "escape" the trailers. It made me feel like I was in an advertising dystopia.

My theory is that it increases the likelihood that you'll stop browsing and just watch something. This would reduce the variety of shows that people watch and ease the requirements on their servers.

If this is true it's a perfect example of Goodheart's law. Maybe they assumed they were making it faster to choose content.

I think more than server strain it could be meant to avoid the "mah, I looked for 20 minutes and found nothing, maybe I should just delete the subscription"

> the auto-playing of trailers

There's a case to be made that this is advertising (for shows on netflix)

It is definitely advertising. Back when streaming services were new, the lack of advertising was a major selling point of streaming services vs cable but now they're stuffed full of ads and for some reason the ads are for content you've already paid for.

This is exactly what happened with cable. People were told to pay a subscription fee to avoid all the commercials of broadcast television. They got enough subscribers, and began the commercials. Years later and losing 1/3 of a show is the norm.

This is why all 30 min shows only have a 20-22 min runtime. We have all simply come full circle.

Hulu is going the same way with their commercials on my commercial free sub, and the commercials are always on content I'm paying extra for (HBO, Showtime, Starz).

I'm already setting up my Plex server. I'd rather not this be the case, but it's back to setting up scripts to grab from usenets and torrents.

What caused me to cancel satellite was when the scifi channel (syfy) started with pop-up show advertisements (with sound!) during a show.

Which, ironically, is precisely what Cable TV first promised in the 1970s -- an "ad-free" experience! They could offer this unique experience because you were paying the cable company for the costs of carrying the content. Then they realized they could double-dip by charging you for the content, and sell ads too.

It shouldn't be surprising to see the same behavior patterns repeated with this new crop of wireless cable companies. I'm sure the irony is lost on them though. We become the thing we try to escape. Stare long enough into the abyss...

The constant jumping and zooming of preview tiles is similarly stressful, especially with the auto-preview... with all the chaos of things moving around and making noise at you, it's really difficult to think clearly about what you might want to watch.

I consider this a serious accessibility problem. Rather than complain to customer service, maybe we should be going straight to their corporate counsel. Frame it as a potential ADA violation. It's actively hostile to anyone who suffers from heightened anxiety, ADHD, etc.

If there's anyone who can push back against the marketing department, it's the legal department.

Fandango put that on their movie theater web site. It's so annoying that I never buy tickets online any more. I just find out the time and buy at the theater.

It’s ridiculous I find myself scrolling just to prevent the auto play they need to fix this regression ASAP

I think Netflix is the perfect example of where being data driven completely fails. If you listen to podcasts with important Netflix people everything you hear is about how they experiment and use data to decide what to do. Every decision is based on some data point.

At the end of the day, they just continue to add features that create short term payoffs and long term failures. Pennywise and pound foolish.

My wife and I recently cancelled Netflix. Partly because we felt content was disappearing and partly because it felt hostile to actually use Netflix. We got absolutely fed up with all of the autoplay crap, UI restrictions, and other BS that clearly drives "some" stat for them.

I couldn't agree more. Additionally it feels that for each content that disappears Netflix is replacing it with yet another generic series whose formula has been repeated time and time again.

This is THE reason I stopped using Netflix. Besides being bombarded with sound, I was actually halfway reading the description when it is replaced with a running video.

When my CC was stolen (and blocked), Netflix was the only company who put my service on hold instead of a small grace period which fits the non-customer centric direction they take nowadays, but also my opportunity to see if I could live without Netflix.

After 2 months, I do not miss Netflix at all. I deleted the apps and I am now on Hulu and Amazon Video.

I've also started a small collection of DVD/Blu-rays with my favorite shows which I lost. You can pick up complete series on eBay for affordable prices.

The auto playing of trailers has been enough to curtail my casual browsing of their app.

Yeah, I go to Netflix if I know what I want to watch not to browse. It is very much like a DVD that won't let you skip the trailers.

I just made a quick greasemonkey script that disables the autoplay at the top but leaves up the jpg splash. If anyone's interested I can share it.

I'm interested...

I posted it here:

https://paste.ee/p/8xg54

Their dark patterns have definitely pushed me to use Hulu more often, but I don't think anything could convince me that traditional networks will have better offerings

I hate the auto-playing trailers too, but in the spirit of the kind of analysis HN is actually good at: auto-playing trailers seems like an extraordinarily straightforward feature to collect and analyze metrics on, and Netflix does not strike me as the kind of company that is utterly ambivalent about metrics, so "hating the auto-playing trailers" might not be the strong indication of loss-of-touch that it seems; like, it seems more likely that for the majority of Netflix's user-base, the trailers increase engagement.

Perhaps they are measuring engagement in some perverse way.

It extraordinarily difficult to use metrics to improve a UI aimed at entertainment.

It's not my claim that they've made Netflix more entertaining, just that it's likely made it more sticky.

This kind of thinking is the problem though. Like YouTube they don't care about the quality of the experience you're having. Where Netflix might see a very satisfied customer others might see a depressed individual binging a show for the 10th time as a way to escape reality.

auto-playing trailers seem like a move to encourage people to try something new instead of rewatching the same show over and over

That's exactly the problem? Auto-playing trailers are a trivially obvious way to explode your minutes played metrics into the sky. Also utterly meaningless unless you have hooked into the camera to show the users eyes focusing on that content, instead of, as is overwhelmingly likely, playing into the void.

It's a little bizarre to throw shade on HN analysis while simultaneously using metric collection as a counterargument to an accusation of having lost touch with a userbase.

If there's one collective blind spot on this site, it's treating humanity as though it's a mathematical equation.

The auto-playing trailers truly baffle me. I can't think of any more user-hostile move they could make. What are they hoping to gain from this? Are there people who wanted this? Why isn't there at the very least a setting to turn it off?

The auto-playing is straight up infuriating to me. I now mute my tv as soon as netflix loads up.

>> with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized

Being a dinosaur, I remember when Netflix would let users write reviews for shows/movies they'd seen.

Does anybody know why they discontinued their review system? Did they not want to deal with all the sticky content moderation issues?

I bet it had to do with losing content. If you review something and Netflix removes it you either lose that data or Netflix has to display shows they don't carry anymore.

>auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying.

I mute the TV when browsing.

Their customer base is millions of people across the globe now, not just the early adopters.

I’ve tried providing specific and constructive feedback to Netflix but it turns out their senior executive team only understand thumbs up or down as a primary form of communication.

Instead I asked their customer frontline to pass on an appropriately oriented finger.

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