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Comment by davidivadavid | Hacker News Reader

Here's a fun test: try to think of what you watched that was not suggested to you one way or another. Think of what it would even mean.

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The vast majority of the shows I watch I have found by searching for keywords I'm interested in, or actors who I enjoy watching, so I can come up with a pretty long list of shows I watched that were never suggested to me in one way or another.

You type a keyword... somewhere? On Google maybe? And then what? Pick the first movie listed? What about actors? Do you watch all of their movies? In random order? Do you do it chronologically? Why?

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.

On the other hand, I can honestly not think of a single show or movie that hasn't been suggested to me in one way or another. I may search for a specific show or movie, but that is either something I have already watched, or I saw an ad for somewhere along the line.

we need to define what "suggseted to you" means. if you are browsing a list called "Films we think you might like", that's obviously a suggestion. however, if you're browsing a list of "Action & Adventure", you need to know how the titles in that list were added. is it recent titles in that genre, is it titles that are currently trending, or is it titles that have the same actor/director/plots as other titles you have been watching?

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.

Right. As soon as some form of curation occurs you're being suggested something. What the parent might be trying to say if I steel man it is that he's still making a choice between the options that he's being suggested. Which, yes he is, but you're still making a choice between suggested options. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Suggested by a friend or by a reviewer who suggestions I have enjoyed in the past seems far removed from the ML suggestions from Amazon, Netflix, or YouTube.

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