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Comment by soligern | Hacker News Reader

I’m probably going to get downvoted for this but Netflix is geared towards women. Everything is a female protagonist, the males in their shows are effeminate and there is next to no nudity that isn’t accompanied by some sort of feminist screed. It’s unwatchable.

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Everyone's Netflix recommendations are different, based on your viewing history. There are plenty of male protagonists in their stable of content, lol.

Maybe there's another explanation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66472938

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katieheaney/facebook-kn...

https://mashable.com/article/bisexuality-queer-tiktok

Often the problem is bait and switch. For example, I went into the Witcher series expecting a show focused on Geralt, like in the games and books. Over the seasons it progressively devoted more screen time to Yennefer and Ciri, effectively making Geralt a side character in his own story. Now season 3 is sitting at a 19% audience score according to Rotten Tomatoes, viewership has cratered, the actor for Geralt (Henry Cavill) has left, and people are betting that it will be cancelled.

What does the recommendation system have to do with the available content (and especially what Netflix produces)?

I also remember reading on HN that the system was simplified even if the Netflix Prize [1] competition was supposed to make it better.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize

> What does the recommendation system have to do with the available content...

It impacts substantially your perception of what Netflix has on offer.

My kiddo's subaccount has all sorts of stuff I had no idea they carried. If the parent poster is seeing exclusively female leads with effeminate male supporting roles, that's what Netflix thinks they want to see.

Name one new Netflix show with a male lead you can actually look up to.

The Night Agent.

> the Netflix Prize [1] competition was supposed to make it better

Was supposed to, but the winning algorithm was unusable in production.

It was unusable in production. It's also the case the Netflix' goal isn't actually to give you the best recommendations; it's to keep you as a subscriber which is a correlated objective but not the same thing.

> which is a correlated objective but not the same thing.

True, but even if they didn't share it with their subscribers, "How much would this user like this movie" is a valuable tool in keeping subscribers.

Just take a look at the new content, this isn’t a recommendation problem. This is a problem with the show greenlighters all being women for the most part over the last couple of years. Even international films are only allowed on the platform if they toe a certain line.

I dont have the data to evaluate if it's true or not, but netflix content surely doesn't appeal to me. They lose licenses for older shows that I found somewhat interesting, and their original content is terrible.

So yeah, I dont know if it's because I'm not the target demographic but I haven't missed it since I canceled 1 year ago or so.

This isn't unique to Netflix. Women make up the majority of non-sports TV viewing in general.

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