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Comment by happytoexplain | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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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.

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.

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"

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

> 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...

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.

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