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Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#141

Post by TeMPOraL »

reificator wrote: post #113
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote: I’d have cancelled Netflix a while ago if my family wasn’t using it. Their UX has been on a steady decline for me: - Audio previews make it so I never want to browse for what to watch next. I hate having to fumble with my tv/home theatre remote because of this. - If you leave it hanging, the previews count towards a watch! Wow. God help you if you wanna make some popcorn. - Their sorts are always sh…

> I’ve talked to some of their UX designers, and data seems to rule all there, so they wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing if it didn’t help them. They wouldn't be doing what they're doing if it didn't help them in the short term . Data is great but you never have a perfect picture. What boosts your numbers in the short term could be the thing that makes your customers resent you and move on in the long term.

Also, some things are not easy to track. How would they track "there’s no way to turn off captions for some of their shows"? They see an user watching a show. The data does not show that this user is slightly pissed because they can't turn off captions, but they still care about the show so much that they watch anyway.

"You make what you measure" cuts both ways.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#142

Post by TeMPOraL »

da_chicken wrote: post #60
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote: I’d have cancelled Netflix a while ago if my family wasn’t using it. Their UX has been on a steady decline for me: - Audio previews make it so I never want to browse for what to watch next. I hate having to fumble with my tv/home theatre remote because of this. - If you leave it hanging, the previews count towards a watch! Wow. God help you if you wanna make some popcorn. - Their sorts are always sh…

I've started to get fatigue with the style of a lot of NetFlix shows. They're not just designed to be binged on, the plot only exists if you binge on it! Instead of having one plot every episode, most series seems to have one plot every season and then they draaaaaaaw that shit out like it's you're last Christmas cookie before the New Years' diet.

Yup. After being burned on this, I avoid Netflix-made shows altogether. I love binging interesting shows. I hate being dragged into binging by some screnwriting dark patterns.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#143

Post by icebraining »

da_chicken wrote: post #60
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote: I’d have cancelled Netflix a while ago if my family wasn’t using it. Their UX has been on a steady decline for me: - Audio previews make it so I never want to browse for what to watch next. I hate having to fumble with my tv/home theatre remote because of this. - If you leave it hanging, the previews count towards a watch! Wow. God help you if you wanna make some popcorn. - Their sorts are always sh…

I've started to get fatigue with the style of a lot of NetFlix shows. They're not just designed to be binged on, the plot only exists if you binge on it! Instead of having one plot every episode, most series seems to have one plot every season and then they draaaaaaaw that shit out like it's you're last Christmas cookie before the New Years' diet.

I don't get your complaint, season-long plots have always been common (outside of comedy shows). That's why the cliffhanger trope worked!

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#144

Post by TeMPOraL »

whymauri wrote: post #47
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another anecdote: I’d have cancelled Netflix a while ago if my family wasn’t using it. Their UX has been on a steady decline for me: - Audio previews make it so I never want to browse for what to watch next. I hate having to fumble with my tv/home theatre remote because of this. - If you leave it hanging, the previews count towards a watch! Wow. God help you if you wanna make some popcorn. - Their sorts are always sh…

100% on the bilingual thing. For my family and I, it's kinda awkward - weird localization failure for such a large corp. Not to mention completely botched translations like the title of Money Heist (actually called The Paper House), which is the dumbest name I've ever seen.

Translations of movie titles are a pet peeve of mine. They are bad everywhere, and have been since way before the times of Internet streaming.

My favourite example is Die Hard, which was translated to Polish as "Szklana Pułapka" (a glass trap). Presumably because the action took place in a skyscraper. I just wish I could have seen the faces of TV execs when they learned that Die Hard 2 came out, and was about airplane hijacking.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#145

Post by TeMPOraL »

thisisit wrote: post #135
axaxs wrote: post #11

Netflix is in a weird position. Early on I loved it, but over time it seems down to a few good originals and a lot of bad ones, and third rate third party content. I haven't cancelled yet but probably will, as I rarely use it. I don't blame Netflix for this necessarily, but it has made it's consumer value much weaker. Internationally, there are much cheaper options typically. As an aside, their taking of a political…

Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service. That means Netflix has to scramble for content. And when starting out they were careful in selecting projects. But once they got a taste for success they have been green-lighting projects left and right. But, they are not going to select winners every time. Stuff like Bright, the Will Smith movie, relied solely on the star power. It will be interesting t…

> Nowadays every media company wants their own streaming service.

I wonder how this will evolve. Short-term, it looks like self-destructing greed to me. People are not going to subscribe to shit ton of services because each of them has a small slice of movies they might want to watch.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#146

Post by zachwood »

axaxs wrote: post #11

Netflix is in a weird position. Early on I loved it, but over time it seems down to a few good originals and a lot of bad ones, and third rate third party content. I haven't cancelled yet but probably will, as I rarely use it. I don't blame Netflix for this necessarily, but it has made it's consumer value much weaker. Internationally, there are much cheaper options typically. As an aside, their taking of a political…

What political stance have they taken?

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#147

Post by Swizec »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #139
FridgeSeal wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And herein lies the issue with filtering/tailoring based on what you've watched/liked before: it can never 'escape' and give you something different that you might actually really like. I don't know how many good titles I discovered browsing random titles in video stores back in the day.

And it would be so simple to solve. Prepare a tailored list. Instead of using it on all available space, fill only 90% of the space with items from the list. Fill remaining 10% with random items that do not belong to that list.

Yep this is how you’re supposed to escape from a local maximum. But maybe Netflix’s usual customer doesn’t stick around long enough to have this problem so it’s not worth fixing. I can’t imagine none of their machine learning engineers know how to fix this.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#148

Post by TeMPOraL »

icebraining wrote: post #143
da_chicken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've started to get fatigue with the style of a lot of NetFlix shows. They're not just designed to be binged on, the plot only exists if you binge on it! Instead of having one plot every episode, most series seems to have one plot every season and then they draaaaaaaw that shit out like it's you're last Christmas cookie before the New Years' diet.

I don't get your complaint, season-long plots have always been common (outside of comedy shows). That's why the cliffhanger trope worked!

Season-long plots are awesome, I personally much prefer shows with a long story arc than ones in which episodes can be watched in any order.

The complaint here is different though. Netflix-made shows seem to be deliberately designed so that all plot subpoints get dragged through the entire season. Each episode will introduce something, later episodes will occasionally remind you of it, but you have to wait 'till the very end for everything to be simultaneously resolved. Basically, what would be a classical story arc gets stretched in a way that 90% of its mass falls into the last episode.

(And then the resolution turns out to be meh, and you end up wondering why did you just waste 10 hours of your life on this show. It's quite like modern journalism - a bit of clickbait at the beginning, then a long article giving exactly zero useful information, and then a meaningless conclusion at the end.)

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#149

Post by TeMPOraL »

Swizec wrote: post #147
TeMPOraL wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it would be so simple to solve. Prepare a tailored list. Instead of using it on all available space, fill only 90% of the space with items from the list. Fill remaining 10% with random items that do not belong to that list.

Yep this is how you’re supposed to escape from a local maximum. But maybe Netflix’s usual customer doesn’t stick around long enough to have this problem so it’s not worth fixing. I can’t imagine none of their machine learning engineers know how to fix this.

Yeah, I bet they know. Question is, do their managers want them to fix this?

There is this hypothesis that I've seen floating on HN at times, that Netflix does this to hide the fact that their selection is very small. I'm not totally convinced, but a lot of their UI choices feel like good evidence in favour of this hypothesis.

Re: Netflix shares decline after reporting disappointing subscriber growth

#150

Post by TeMPOraL »

warent wrote: post #49

My girlfriend and I use Netflix to watch Star Trek, Chinese movies, and Indian/Bollywood films. That's it. Honestly the UX has been steadily getting better from my perspective and the film selection now is way beyond where it was ~3 years ago. Maybe I'm an outlier? It didn't occur to me that it might be an unpopular opinion to say that Netflix is actually good

But did you notice Star Trek movies suddenly disappearing? Check back the movies and series you've watched and meant to watch again at some point. Chances are, you won't find them anymore.

That's the thing with Netflix - objectively, it's the best streaming service available. The complaints are mostly relative to what they could be, and about the direction in which they evolve.

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