Because it's profitable to recommend shit.
Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
41–50 of 101 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#42All streaming platforms i tried have this problem. Maybe the ranking of shows is commercially funded? Also annoying: netflix shows multiple cover images. Most annoying automatic playback of preview (including sound) in the menu.
This is the real answer.
Why do Apple and Amazon have search “ads”? They’re specifically trying to push content your way based on the how much the content creator/producer pays extra.
Even grocery stores do this - aisle placement is often something the food distributor pays for.
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#43Is it thinkable that after "hundreds of hours binging series and movies" you have simply exhausted the options? Me, I haven't found a second The Wire yet, no matter how often a recommender claimed I have.
Try True Detective
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#44I think Netflix needs an "I really don't like this or programmes like it" option.
...come to think of it so does YouTube.
I'd love to be able to search for a particular genre and exclude everything that comes up.
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#45Something 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?
> Does someone get paid when I have to sacrifice a brain cell for each of these minor decisions?
In many cases, probably, either directly or indirectly. Payola is huge in the music industry and it’s why, despite never having heard of Harry Styles before, Apple Music started pushing him into every corner of their app for a few weeks after his last album release. I can understand surfacing artists who are likely to be popular with the general population. But this was clearly more than that. I’m sure it’s the same with video services. They’re paid to promote specific shows. It probably also costs them less to show you their own shows, so those are probably surfaced more frequently than shows from other companies, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#46If 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.
I have considered this, and there’s some truth truth to this, that I have watched all from my favorite categories … but then I do discover whole seasons of things I haven’t watched but liked previous seasons of, and whole series when digging around long enough … it just feels increasingly difficult to efficiently dig.
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#47Something 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?
Netflix allows you to down vote the content with "Not for me" (thumb down) option. Then it stops suggesting it. The sneaky part is that the option itself is hidden a bit, under "thumb up" button (which expands to three different options if you hover your mouse over it), so I guess we've found another dark pattern :)
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#48As someone that has worked within one of these orgs, it's because the recommendation system has been captured by contract negotiations and forced merchandising. You are not seeing things they think you would like. You are seeing the things they want you to watch.
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#49These services get paid to promote content. Did you think they are going to promote legit content?
"Help me find things I like" is basically a mandatory requirement for anything whose catalog is too large to search exhaustively — otherwise there's no point to them.
Doing this well seems to be surprisingly difficult for everyone. Facebook has shown me local news in Florida even though I'm British, live in Berlin, and have not even visited that state. Twitter thought I was interested in baseball, when I don't care for any spectator sports. YouTube is mostly OK for the long form content, but the shorts are 98% useless, and the adverts are… well, the current ad for me in the app is "Click this video = $1000" ad by "Beast Promo" with a cartoon that looks like MrBeast, which absolutely screams "scam", and last week it was something that looked like an anti-LGBT conspiracy theorist but my German isn't good enough to be totally sure.
Netflix, Disney, and all the rest? IMO Netflix is the best of them, but still not really all that amazing — the bar it passes that the rest fail is excessive focus on their own content.
Re: Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?
#50As others have mentioned, part of the goal is to induce you towards the service's self-made programming. They're rolling the dice that you will get hooked on something if they show you enough options, and your time spent searching for content (as long as it doesn't lead to an unsubscribe) is cheaper for them than time spent consuming content.
FWIW, Spotify has similar issues in that they can't seem to figure out that new music from artists I'm "following" should be a slam dunk for the "new music for you" list.