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Comment by dec0dedab0de | Hacker News Reader

If anyone from netflix is reading, the reason I don't watch as much as I used to is because of the automatic previews. I used to just leave netflix open all day and randomly pick things when I felt like watching. I can't do that anymore. Though I do really appreciate how easy it is to suspend/cancel. I'll be back for stranger things, but who knows how long I'll stay.

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On a web browser, go to https://www.netflix.com/settings/playback/

You can disable autoplay of previews, and you can disable autoplay of the next episode in a series.

A spectacularly dark pattern to have the setting only available on the device you never use the service on.

That settings page also works in mobile web browsers. But yes, it’s not discoverable from the app.

The most egregious is that there's still no setting to prevent skipping the credits. It's so distracting when you finish a movie or series and instead of having some time to reflect on it, you get served an ad for some of their other show.

This seems to be awful trend in general. I often like to see the credits usually for song credits and most of the time they seem to get interrupted by this insistence on launching the next show. You see something similar now with youtube, where before the videos ends the real estate on the screen for the last 10 seconds becomes filled with suggestions for what to watch next. Often to the detriment of some important visual that's still on the screen. It's almost like there's a genuine fear that someone stopping to concentrate on the present represents a serious threat to their engagement metrics. I can say that I end up consuming less of all this stuff as a result of the frustration.

+1 I also pretty strongly dislike that they've been defaulted on. They seem wasteful and the user experience is hectic.

I have to agree on that - it seems like forcing a show/movie to a user even if that does not align with their mood or historic picks. I am not interested at all in shows like Inventing Anna or Tinder Swindler or Selling Sunset but I have to still cope with them showing that moving banner ad like that covering so much real estate.

What I would like to see is, semantic search where I could elaborate the shows/movies I'd like to search for: "A classic movie starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg" and Netflix shows me "War of the Worlds" in search results.

I'm just interested in something like a "not interested" button distinct from the thumbs down button. Netflix insists on suggesting the same shows I've never clicked for months or even years of them showing on my front page. I'd like to say, "Hey, stop suggesting this."

I don't feel like Netflix lacks things to watch, I just feel it does a terrible job keeping its suggestions fresh.

I'd really like to be able to say "I like this _kind_ of thing, just not this specific one." You know, just because I don't like "Valerian", I still enjoy sci-fi.

Thumbs-down on a video seems to remove the whole category.

It is very similar to how Spotify tanked their platform for my use -- at some point, I'm a paying customer, and I get annoyed when you constantly shove your original content down my through regardless of how much it matches my preferences.

You just can't start a service with recommendations as part of your sell... and then bastardize those recommendations into advertisements or original content-pushers. Paying customers eventually lose patience.

I'm Curious if there's going to be a noticeable Stranger Things dropoff. Though there will probably be a big uptick for Squid Game season 2. Apparently season 1 was worth $1 billion dollars for Netflix.

Usually when they do 2nd seasons is because they want to squeeze more views/profit from the show, most times at the expense of quality.

There is a setting, at least on some devices, "Autoplay previews while browsing on all devices", would that fix your issue?

You are more profitable for them by not watching as much as you used to. The only way your apathy hurts them is if you downgrade to a lower tier of service or cancel it.

Autoplaying previews has really made me averse to browsing Netflix for new shows. I mostly head directly to the content I want to see.

You can turn them off

And then you can't play trailers. Though Netflix insists on playing on random clips instead of trailers anyway.

What does trailers have to do with auto play?

With auto play enabled Netflix would show a random clip from the movie/show. In about 5% of the cases they would play the trailer (which is really what you want).

If you turn auto play off, there's no way to play anything. You have to just start watching.

I don't think so, you can still go to "Trailers & more" and watch the trailer.

I don't think I've seen "Trailers or more" in a while now since they changed their interface to a narrow popup with episode info.

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