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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

If the cost is so tiny it doesn't matter, why does Netflix have that annoying "Are You Still Watching '<showname>'?" pop-up that's shown after a few episode have auto-played? It's annoying when binging shows, and I always assumed it was a money-saving measure.

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It's in case you've fallen asleep, so you don't suddenly wake up to find you've "watched" three seasons of whatever show you were on. This is only displayed if there's been no input on the remote for some number of hours.

I still fall asleep and it will go on for 3-4 episodes. It solves nothing other than to annoy me from time to time.

It’s still much easier to figure out which episode you last watched.

I think it does this after 3 episodes of no input. It's a compromise; they don't want to do this after every episode, but they also don't want you to wake up having watched every season of the show.

It would be nice if it was configurable, though. In fact, it might well configurable; I've never really checked, because the current setting is fine by me.

They have it so their watchtime metric is accurate, obviously.

Because in most parts of the world, data is still expensive. It's to save money for the consumer, not for Netflix.

There might be data limits/throttling on the consumer's side.

I find that pops up less these days like it used to.

The actual answer is that it is to avoid getting categorised as flow TV.

Can you explain? And when you say "actual answer", what backing do you have?

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