Does this tell you that:
• HBO is wrong
• You're not representative of either their user base or the user base they want
• You don't remember the times your browsing behavior was influenced by suggestions because you like believing you're not influenced by suggestions
They're tailoring their home page to increase the metrics they track and to make more money. They're not doing it altruistically to make me happier or to solve a problem I have.
HBO's goal is to make HBO more profitable. The user base they want, one which shares that goal, is nonexistent, there are only users who have a goal of being entertained and have varying levels of tolerance for HBO's antics to achieve that goal.
The user's goal is to be entertained. The way they make money is by getting you to continue your subscription. You will only continue that subscription is if you are entertained. So their goal is to entertain you enough to keep the subscription.
Sure they will produce new content and advertise it to you ahead of time such that you might keep the subscription for another month. But it only works if that content is interesting to you, so they still need to make content that is interesting.
I guess the content they are producing is aligned at groups of users, and not any one individual user. So if you are far from the targeted groups, then the goals are not as well aligned. But their goal is still to suggest the content in their library that you will be interested in to continue to stay subscribed.
Why? To capture new profiles from people who break into subscribers’ homes to surreptitiously watch HBO Max? How often does that happen relative to me wanting to watch, like always, as myself, like always?
The only way you could watch movies without it being the result of a suggestion would be if you had a random list of movies (preferably of all movies ever made) and picked at random in it. I think it's safe to assume you're not doing that, so you're being suggested movies.
the only way to really know that it wasn't some sort of algorithmic detection is if you 100% absolutely positively never browse and only watch a movie directly from the search feature.