Comment by brianstorms | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brianstorms | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand is how Netflix seemingly ignores a user's incredibly valuable feedback regarding a given title. For example, you're browsing all the titles and you see some stupid animated movie you have no intention of ever seeing. You select it, to get the detail view, then click "Not interested" or if that doesn't appear (why I don't know), you click one star. You're telling Netflix basically, "I don't wanna see this, ever, so please don't recommend it to me."

But... Netflix keeps recommending it. Come back a day later, it's still there in the list while you're browsing titles. Spend an hour indicating "Not Interested" on all the crap and filler (there is a ton) of streaming content Netflix shows you, and it makes no difference. It's all there the next hour, the next day, the next week.

I reckon Netflix is afraid the truth would be revealed, that they have VERY little streaming content, if they honored a user's "Not interested" and hid those from the genre lists. Why, you might wind up with a handful of titles listed.

But would that be so bad? I would be perfectly fine if Netflix's lists were EMPTY today. I would still come back tomorrow to check to see what was new (gosh, imagine if Netflix sent me a notification of some sort listing out what's been added since last time I looked).

Today's "Major Upgrade" does not, so far as I know, include these kinds of improvements. I sure wish it did.

I'd be interested in seeing what kind of (negative) correlation there is between giving a movie 1 star and watching it. It seems obvious to me that your assumption is true, that if you give a movie 1 star you'll likely never watch it. But human psychology/behavior is pretty stupid and often irrational.

Can't agree more. I can't figure out why this is possibly the case. Similarly I have lots of that I have seen (and rated in Netflix) presented on my home page. Why? I don't even have an hypothesis. Netflix also don't have trailers, which means I have to go to IMDB or Youtube to see a trailer.

Wish I could whitelist the shows to watch in the kids section, most of it has little educational value.

A whitelist feature would be amazing.

I had to cancel my satellite TV subscription because of the Disney channels. All the main protagonists are self obsessed trouble makers that never get their comeuppance.

I would rather run the risk of my kids hearing a youtuber swearing about the latest minecraft addon than watch my kids grow up with Disney shows. At least the Youtubers are causing my children to want to create things and then showing them how.

Because they have the viewer data, they know that what people watch and what people admit they want to watch (even to themselves) are not the same thing.

Netflix does not have "very little" streaming content, where do people get off saying this? Is it because you watch it outside of the US, where the selection is admittedly much smaller?

Netflix in the US may have a lot of streaming content (movies, especially) relative to their streaming competitors but they have very little streaming relative to all the movies and TV shows that have ever been made. Compare their streaming offerings to their disc offerings and you will find very little of what's on disc is also available streaming.

Discs needs to be snail mailed, so the amount of content potentially available to each subscriber at any given moment is tiny, compared to the content available online at any given moment.

So there are very different dynamics going on there when comparing those services.

This is a pet peeve of mine about all of this predictive big data stuff.

There's what people want, and there's what people want. The big assumption in the industry right now is that "what people REALLY want isn't necessarily the same as what they SAY they want".

But isn't that dreadfully cynical to put the emphasis on the "really want" side? Like - I want to eat healthy, but if a bowl of crappy chips were put in front of me, I'd probably eat some. That doesn't mean I don't want to eat healthy, though. It doesn't mean I REALLY want chips.

It's really just that they're invested in serving our urges rather than what we think of as important.

Think of it as our "better selves" versus our "worse selves". Couldn't they also make conclusions about what are better selves are, and suggest that sort of content?

Well, it does say a lot about what is easy to sell to you.

Maybe you want to eat healthy, but that desire doesn't mean squat if you always end up buying fries on the side. Then the health store is better off pushing fries every time, even though you told them you don't like fries.

I used to work at outbound phone marketing (I regret it too), and whenever we were asked to take people off the list, they were kept on, because the marketing company was a dick and because the pool of people who asked not to be bothered again would still contain buyers for the next marketing push.

So knowing better than your customer is hardly a new big data thing (If you'd asked people, you'd end up with faster horses)

Personally I have only watched 1-2 movies from my netflix "My list", so it is hardly a wonder why it is not featured prominently on my netflix page or why those movies aren't used to indicate my suggested content. I know what I want to have seen, but that is not the same as what I want to see.

Honestly I think removing those movies that the user is not interested in from the list that netflix is recommending to you could be related to a scaling/optimisation/coding issue on their side regarding the results from the recommending algorithm they are using then a lack of content issue.

I think there's simply not enough in the catalog that's more plausible than what they're suggesting.

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