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Comment by underbluewaters | Hacker News Reader

It's amazing it took this long. I can understand how some people might be okay with this feature but it causes me actual anxiety to use the Netflix app on my AppleTV. Before autoplay I could mindlessly browse looking for content. Now I hurry through to check if there is anything new and get out as fast as possible. They must know that people use the app less since this change... right?

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I often used to leave the Netflix app open when I left my TV idle, because it was interesting, not too distracting, and I could start something from it quickly later. But with autoplay, I quickly stopped doing that because it was too distracting. I rush through the app now only after I have something in mind to watch already.

While I'm ranting about Netflix, I absolutely hate the feature where if you leave a show paused for more than five seconds, it starts showing spoilers (the episode description). I often open Netflix before I eat a meal, get it to the start of the next episode of a show I'm watching, and pause it until I'm ready to watch. And then I carefully avoid looking at the screen to avoid the episode description/spoilers. The descriptions are only useful after I've watched the show and want to find a specific episode. I don't want to see them before I've watched the episode!

The Netflix app just seems so actively hostile. I'm used to apps being unpleasant because of bugs, but being unpleasant because of features is unusual.

I believe I read somewhere that it did result in an overall increase in viewership. There's no way they don't have those metrics.

My guess is that for some majority of users who weren't super bothered by it it genuinely caused them to watch more things. Even though a vocal minority was extremely upset about it, the numbers still worked out overall. Of course adding a preference is easy, and people who aren't upset won't bother to change the default, so this is probably a win/win for them.

How did they define viewership? Because viewership of previews definitely increased.

Presumably they can tell the difference between viewership of previews and resulting viewership of the actual shows :P

You're assuming that anyone would be incentivized to tell that difference. Goodhart's Law is a thing.

I can't imagine but think "viewership of folks who left the app open"

In other words, could you separate out:

- folks who naturally came to a stopping point between shows.

- others who ragequit because of annoying previews?

Here's a secret: many people shout about rage quitting. No one actually does.

statistics bear it out: they just come to a natural stopping point between shows. :)

If this is true (and it sounds sensible to me), then why not just give the vocal minority a way to opt out? This way everybody's happy.

Yes, agree on the anxiety. My girlfriend makes fun of me because I'll be browsing and while talking to her I habitually move the focus left-right-left-right just to prevent the annoying video from playing. She hates it too. Does anyone like this feature?

I'll give my dissenting opinion:

I do like the feature. If I'm actively looking for something to watch, I like the fact that I can quickly see a preview. They normally don't start playing until I've finished reading the excerpt anyway, so it's not some massive annoyance. By the time the preview starts to play, there is a high probability that I want to see it. And if not, I just continue scrolling. It is the tiniest of inconvenience for an overall improvement to the experience of finding something to watch.

I suspect there is a high correlation between people that hate autoplay and people that hate the open office. Some people find tiny little distractions absolutely unbearable, but I don't.

If I am actively looking for something to watch on TV, why would I be so bothered that a video starts playing on my TV? I don't really understand the use case of someone that wants to leave the Netflix home page up just hovering over a title.

It's because some people don't look titles one at a time. If I have in front of me a list of 30 movies, the fact that I have the cursor over one doesn't mean I'm considering that one. I might be thinking about the name of the movie that my coworker mentioned yesterday, deciding whether I want a comedy or an action flick, or discussing with my girlfriend what to see; or simply reading diagonally the list of 30 movies, which for most of them I'll probably know something about without reading a description. Making me force my attention where my cursor is forces me to consider them one by one instead, and not pause to ponder.

Liking to see a preview is fine - and there could be a button for that, so that I could tell the app to show it. But the way it is (was) I don't have the control, it's the UI who decides where my attention should be, and that's wrong.

The best comparison I can make it's an overeager shop attendant asking "can I help you?" When you're looking at a product - except in this case it doesn't matter how many times you tell them you're just looking, they come back 8 seconds later to ask again.

It sounds like you are watching on a computer?

I watch on my Roku tv, where there is only a few titles on screen and it makes sense to scroll threw them one by one. Maybe that's the difference?

I can see a lot of titles on my TV on netflix

Nope, smart tv (using the playstation app).

Same with their Roku app - I quickly jump from one thumbnail to the next to avoid triggering the autoplay.

I have noticed that the loading of the preview has actually made the jumping to the next thumbnail slower on my AppleTV app

If I browse for more than a couple minutes on my appletv, the UI becomes super unresponsive. I have to force quit the app to return to normal. I wonder if disabling autoplay trailers will help prevent this behavior.

I definitely sometimes just bail on looking because I hate the feature. So happy to see I can turn it off.

Maybe now that they have competition, we'll see more stuff like this.

Yeah I'm super surprised it took this long. I mean even an "audio off on dashboard previews" setting would have sufficed. It's the single most irritating "feature" of any of my TV apps.

Yeah, it's a nightmare when my kids are browing using my account -- tons of 18+ horror gets shown in amongst cartoons. It's such a dumb system.

Yes, we have more than one account. Mistakes happen.

> They must know that people use the app less since this change... right?

Whether they make `autoplay=true` default will answer this.

Same here, caused anxiety. We must be a minority bc I started avoiding Netflix completely unless I saw a show in the news that I wanted to check out.

I just unsubscribed. Once in a while someone convinces me there is a show of their's worth watching. I subscribe and cancel immediately. I get one month of service for the price of ~2 coffees. That's usually enough time to watch the one show that was recommended. If I try to look for something else I run into the auto previews and just turn off the app happy that I my subscription will end in a few days.

Agreed... an attempt to make users consume more, so annoying.

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