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Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen a lot of negativity about Netflix’s library lately in quite a few comments. And I just don’t quite get it. Netflix is still the one service I don’t even consider canceling, because of the breadth of the library: they have American sci-fi, Korean dramas, Danish comedy, and Japanese anime. Hollywood movies now are all the same — especially the superhero movies — but international stuff is different. Am I just on the long tail?

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Netflix has a great international catalogue, and unlike torrented content, it's all reasonably well subtitled.

However, their English language catalogue gets worse by the day.

> it's all reasonably well subtitled

It's not bad if you want full subtitles, if they're available in the language you want. The lack of forced subs however is quite annoying.

I think its a recency bias. Netflix has produced some very good content in the past like House of Cards, Dark, and Black Mirror, but recently it has not produced anything noteworthy at all.

Personally, the fact they havent even made a new season of Black Mirror in years is offensive enough to me. Like its such a cultural hit. Double down and make more of that instead of giving us dumb stuff like the Floor is Lava.

Calling it a recency bias implies that people are incorrectly concluding Netflix doesn't produce good content because they are biased to think of recent productions. But Netflix subscribers pay monthly, they are entitled to continual good content. If you've already seen the good stuff Netflix has made, why would you keep paying for the trash?

I think it’s more likely that the Netflix algorithm has failed you than you having seen all the good content. Have you seen Borgen and Hotel del Luna and Shaun the Sheep and Midnight Diner and Kath & Kim? Have you even heard of any of them?

Those are all different genres, made in different countries. Algorithms tend to want to match us to more of the same. But just because I like South Park does not mean I want to see a bunch of manatee jokes on Family Guy, right?

No, I don't subscribe to Netflix or watch their content. I just think it's not correct to say that it's a "recency bias" if someone complains that Netflix has bad content.

Bias may be the wrong word but i didnt intend to make it sound like an excuse for Netflix - just a reason why consumers think Netflix sucks. Trust me, i have cancelled Netflix precisely because it has stopped producing as much good content.

Technically, wasn't Black Mirror a BBC production, but then Netflix paid to have an additional season made. Plus, a holiday special IIRC. If you can't get the original production peeps to do more Black Mirror, then it's not really going to be the same. Something along the lines of maybe, but at that point, it's not the same so why bother?

> Personally, the fact they havent even made a new season of Black Mirror in years is offensive enough to me. Like its such a cultural hit. Double down and make more of that instead of giving us dumb stuff like the Floor is Lava.

This is due to a row over rights as well as Charlie Brooker's working on other things and hesitancy to create a new series in the first place. But a new series did get announced last month, so...

I much prefer the "British model" of slow releases over longer spans of time to the "American model" of just endlessly cranking out stuff like a factory.

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