Why don’t I even have the option to have friends on Netflix and make lists of movies I watch that I think they would like?
I’m not asking for a Facebook clone I just want to be able to have friends and make lists for them and they make lists for me.
Most such interaction now occurs within extant social groups. Much as you'd watch a TV show or go to a theatre with friends, most people now discuss films on their self-centric social media. FB / Instagram / Reddit / Twitter, etc., usually with at least some people they know directly.
Conversing with absolute strangers has far less appeal.
A decade and a half ago, its reach was greater than Netflix's.
My point wasn't the scale of the hosting network but the failure of broadcaster- (or program-originator-) centric "interactive" television concepts. I think the trope existed even when Neil Postman was writing his books ... not sure if this shows up in Amusing Ourselves to Death or Technopoly, or both, though I think it does. They're 1980s / 1990s. Postman died in 2003 though, so if it was him, it was early in Internet time.
Wikipedia lists attempts dating to the 1950s, though these were not networked interactions. Those existed, however, by 1977.