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Comment by teilo | Hacker News Reader

Netflix is becoming more and more of a frustrating experience. First they removed all user reviews. Then they removed ratings. (or vice versa. Whatever.) They constantly shift things around in their UI. Even things like "My List" and "Continue Watching" will spontaneously move. They hide categories, and sub-categories, making browsing and discovery a pain. They constantly throw crap at me that I don't care about and will never care about. They auto-play previews, with audio, and there is no damn way to turn it off. Thumbs up/down seems to have no effect on this either. I thumbs down what I don't want to see, and it keeps coming back anyway.

It's almost as if there is a concerted effort at Netflix to force specific content down your throat. They don't want you going beyond what's visible on their idiotic horizontal scrollers, and they don't want you to know what people actually think about the content they are forcing on you.

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Having listened to podcasts with several important Netflix people as guests, I have picked up that they are unintentionally user hostile. They're so focused on data that it seems they completely forget about the intangible side of enjoying the user experience.

Seems like they can't see the forest for the trees.

The problem is that optimizing for long-term satisfaction metrics is extremely tricky and hard. Such metrics lead to the better user retention, potentially even with less watch time. Paradoxically higher watch time may lead to lower user satisfaction (and decreased retention).

In ML world these metrics require combining DNNs with methods like Q-learning. YouTube learned these lessons and now probably has the most advanced ML among competition in its’ recommendation system.

Watch time is bullshit. Focus on making a quality product that people enjoy. My goal in life is not to spend any more time in front of the tv than 1-2 hours per day. Usually it’s just before bed when I relax.

Stated and revealed preferences are very different. In some ways this is the fundamental problem of media. It killed newspapers, too: once they could analyze readership at a per-article level, it became clear that people who say they value true, in-depth reporting are liars. No one reads that stuff. Content increasingly became shaped by what the data say people actually want, despite it being fashionable to talk about one's disgust for it.

I imagine Netflix is thinking along these lines. Ratings are performative; engagement metrics tell the truth.

> they auto play previous with audio

This. I cannot explain in words how much ire that "feature" gives me.

I literally will end up just pressing arrow keys on my remote to move to the next suggestion to avoid the auto play feature.

I often resort to blog articles of "Top 10 new Netflix show" to find new content rather than use Netflix itself.

It was so bad I had to make a greasemonkey script to block the autoplay elements on my PC. When I'm going to watch on my TV I'll find the show on my phone and then look it up on my TV or just cast it. I actually chatted with them several years ago to complain and they said they'd pass my feedback along so that they could "have this option available soon". They never implemented an option to do this, of course.

Heh, you pretty much nailed all of my Netflix complaints perfectly. All of those factors combined have left a such a sour taste in my mouth, I rarely ever even try to find new shows to watch on Netflix these days, after being a huge fan of the service some years go. The auto-play trailers that can't be disabled and the now-awful recommendations have especially turned me off.

I hate the autoplay feature. I have to carefully move the mouse cursor along the grid between the thumbnails to avoid triggering it.

Check out https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/netflix-classic/mo...

It made it tolerable again for me!

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