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Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

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Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#21

If you spent 20 mins looking, it's not their recommendation system that's failing. It's that you don't like their content (or how their content is portrayed). The recommendation system is the thing that shows you stuff without you needing to browse for 20 mins.

Plus if they‘re constantly on there they may have watched all of the content they like on these platforms.

Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is min corn and min strawberry?

Looks like corn is the audience score and strawberry is the critic score, sourced from rotten tomatoes.

And yellow numbers seem to be Certified Fresh.

Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#23

If you spent 20 mins looking, it's not their recommendation system that's failing. It's that you don't like their content (or how their content is portrayed). The recommendation system is the thing that shows you stuff without you needing to browse for 20 mins.

Also paradox of choice / overchoice phenomena, where the more options you have, the less you feel satisfied with any of them.

Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#24
post #16

Something else conspicuously missing from these services is a checkbox to make it never show me something again. Why do I have to scroll through an endless line of "nope", "nope", "nope", "definitely not", "no" every night, then look at all the same stuff tomorrow? Does someone get paid when I have to sacrifice a brain cell for each of these minor decisions?

The real problem is that each platform just doesn't have that much content. Everyone wants their own platform, and now the content is so fragmented that if you noped out of titles for very long you'd realize they have very little else.

Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#26
IMO Netflix and Amazon Prime's problem is they don't surface their good content enough. They mix it with their shitty content. They should make it stand out. HBO are good at this. When they make something good, that they know is good, they will rub your face in it with large high quality images.

I don't have time to shift out the good from the bad with Netflix.

Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#28

A big problem on Netflix is that they don't use the original poster or description for movies, instead coming up with their own. I find that these generally don't do movies justice.

I remember reading that they have an algorithm that picks the "best" (colorful, cinematic, attention grabbing...) picture to show in the UI from the content itself. That is why sometimes the poster used represents a very minor character instead of the main lead.

Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

#29
For Amazon the issue for me has always been that aside from the things I shop for myself I get asked to buy things for other people or presents for family members

Amazon doesn't know who I bought something for so making sense of why I have bought 4 padlocks (my father in law), a set of sauce pans (wife), a light novel (myself) and rechargeable batteries (myself)

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