Comment by pizza234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pizza234 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm of the opposite opinion. They're executing their vision perfectly.

Netflix is very aggressively pursuing the bottom line, and they're not doing it differently from a drug dealer. It's not random that the term "Netflix binge" exists.

Netflix interface is designed to shove content at the users' face at all costs, and in a very disrespectful way. Here there are some disgusting dark patterns:

- it took them a long time to give the user the option to remove movies from the watching now list

- there's no way to remove already watched movies from the panel; their trailer is even sometimes displayed in the top frame

- they randomize the global order of the horizontal lists, so that one needs every time to hunt the user list (watching now/my list) through all the panel

For a short time, I even experienced a bug where movies with (my) negative rating were not greyed out. I can imagine the engineering thinking "LOW PRIORITY!".

On my (fictional) "drug-dealing practices" rating, Netflix is high on top with Amazon.

So they are taking steps which are ostensibly geared towards this drug dealer vision. But is it working? I can only look at myself and the people around me. There was a time when we would go on Netflix binges and there probably was something drug-like about it. But now? I go on Netflix, I scroll around for a bit, can't find anything I would like to watch, and I close Netflix again. The only reason I'm still paying for it is that I'm sharing my account with other people and it would be a hassle to cancel the subscription. And it's not just me, everyone I talk with is reporting the same thing.

I’m in total agreement. Opening the Netflix app just started making me frustrated trying to find something to watch, so I just don’t bother anymore. I will only open it now if somebody has recommended something to me, which happens rarely these days. We’ve only kept the subscription going as our child likes watching some of the shows on Netflix kids.

Maybe that's really Netflix's business model these days: nobody watches anything, but it's a hassle to cancel the account, so nobody does it, so lets continue frustration our users, maybe they will stop visiting us completely while never really leaving us. Let's look at the bright side though, we're going to end up with a lot of nice thumbnails.

So it's better to have 2 users who pay but don't use the service and kind of hate it than 3 users who like the service and use it a lot?

High use means you need large quantities of high quality content. Low use means you can use a small amount of high quality content as a "loss leader" then back fill with cheap garbage no one is going to watch anyway.

This is essentially the same business model that gyms have.

That's not really comparable because gyms are significantly harder to cancel than netflix

It was really easy for me to cancel my Netflix account. Maybe 60 seconds on their website, if even that.

> But now? I go on Netflix, I scroll around for a bit, can't find anything I would like to watch, and I close Netflix again.

I feel like I'm in a minority these days. My Netflix list is longer than I can ever hope to finish. I add stuff on before I finish watching current stuff.

That's the premise of the article, right?

They used to have all their content come from other studios, and they got to see how well it had done in the outside world at the time they were making their deals.

Now they're producing their own content, many of their previous background-noise or binge staples have moved elsewhere, and their productions are overwhelmingly lowest-common-denominator clickbait. There's still some quality stuff, but it's much harder to find than it used to be. If you're looking for an already-well-known quality show you can search (e.g. if you want to watch The Office a few years ago on Netflix). If you're looking for something new that's going to appeal to you, it's a lot harder to find in their sea of junk. Reviews can get you so far, but Netflix no longer then has any edge on alternative platforms which the reviewers are also talking about.

So the premise of "sooner or later pumping out junk food is going to turn off viewers" seems to click with your cohort (mine as well).

It depends on the viewer's attitude. I think there is a spectrum between the extremes "I want to watch something interesting" and "I want to watch something".

Considering that the commonly mentioned stats on TV watching show that a lot of people is watching (or maybe more accurately, keeping on) TV for hours every day, the latter extreme should be common.

In this sense, bombarding the audience with junk, or at least, pushing very hard, is a strategy that, I think, is productive, in the same sense as drug dealing strategies are.

I'm towards the former extreme, however, I'm certainly not immune from their strategy. I still feel some need to "chill" and therefore I somewhat tolerate their strategy (although, I also use it for learning languages, so there's another motivation). The irritation is building up, though.

100% agree. I was awaiting for Netflix thread to pop-up to ask (hopefully someone who works there): Why there is no way to tell Netflix that I already watched the show and I'm not planning to rewatch it again any time soon or hide the ones I tried and decided not watch (or may be watched before)? No matter how many times you show me them I'm not going to watch...

You can still have nice features around it: separate list at the end of scroll with my old movies/shows (may be with number of times I watched it?). Once new seasons released send them all the way to to the top etc.

And I will be able to discover something new. At the moment it is cluttered with things I don't want to watch so lately I was not happy with Netflix at all.

You should see such patterns in your data.

Add one more to the list - and this one drives me crazy to no end - on my Chromecast with GTV the wretched thing starts autoplaying even if I just want to read the synopsis. This, despite turning off all autoplay options in my profile. What is the friggin rush?! Why won't you let me browse/read distraction free?!

They might be doing a facebook (~ inflating their engagement metrics by autoplaying things)

Look out for this annoying autoplay thing in every other app soon. I do some work in the same space and everyone* thinks if Netflix is doing it it must be a great idea.

(*who makes decisions)

The sad part is that I am probably in some minority and hence no one will care to fix scenarios for me. The only time I now watch Netflix is when I want to watch something specifically and I search where can I watch it and it turns out it exists on Netflix (of course, never recommended to me). I wonder how much long term will Netflix be impacted by the fact that their Originals are of way lower quality than HBO originals. I never want to watch Netflix Originals because whenever I tried it was horrible and HBO always has amazing quality. I'm afraid it's just cheaper for them to focus on the group of people who you can shove the shit down the throat to keep them happy as it's a way maintainable audience.

Unfortunately, the new HBO content is the same as Netflix. After HBO was sold to ATT a couple years, the executives that made HBO HBO were all shown the door and now I believe their goal is quantity over quality.

Apple TV+ feels like it could be the new HBO in terms of curation, but we will see if they keep up the quality ratio.

My simple method of not wasting time on all this nonsense content coming out is to just wait for a bunch of people in my various networks to mention something about the show/movie. If multiple of them like something enough to mention it, then I probably will, so I just search it out after that.

Those dont seem like dark patterns to me. They dont make you more hooked up, they make you annoyed and make you leave. These are just bad UI.

If they are designed, they are designed to make you watch less.

They also cycle through 'box art' on Netflix originals so you can't scroll past them if you recognize art from a title you're not interest in.

> They also cycle through 'box art' on Netflix originals so you can't scroll past them if you recognize art from a title you're not interest in.

I've noticed that Amazon Prime Video is doing the same thing with their Amazon Originals.

Showing "play next this different series" at last episode ending is annoying. Keep me chill.

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