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Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

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Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#61

Post by ryanianian »

lallysingh wrote: post #52
ryanianian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is blatantly user-hostile. The UX is designed to get you to spend more time with Netflix, not to make you like it more. Many of the shows it suggests to me are not in english , yet the UX rarely discloses this in the description or (infuriatingly auto-playing) preview. Some people don't mind reading subtitles but I detest it - they could at least tell me the show is in German before wasting my time.

Yes! They've optimized for the wrong metric. Users should feel like it's time well spent. After their $1MM prize years ago, they didn't even bother implementing the winning algorithm. Then again, nobody really recommends media well. You can't mine the media directly, and people have very different preferences. It's just too many factors that you can't infer from the usage.

I've recently started using ReelGood more often. (Not affiliated just a happy user.) You tell it which streaming services you have, what shows you've liked, etc and it gives you decent-ish recommendations from across all your services. More importantly it also shows the IMDB score, the Rotten Tomatoes score, and usually provides a trailer, and then they deep-link to the actual content so you can avoid all the Netflix dark-patterns.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#62

Post by inopinatus »

hyencomper wrote: post #7

I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my subscription recently as I realized that while Netflix has a lot of shows, there is a dearth of quality content and the search function is not useful. With shows like Friends and Office leaving, there is not much to draw people who like leaving it on in the backg…

I’ve tried providing specific and constructive feedback to Netflix but it turns out their senior executive team only understand thumbs up or down as a primary form of communication.

Instead I asked their customer frontline to pass on an appropriately oriented finger.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#63

Post by tptacek »

hyencomper wrote: post #7

I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my subscription recently as I realized that while Netflix has a lot of shows, there is a dearth of quality content and the search function is not useful. With shows like Friends and Office leaving, there is not much to draw people who like leaving it on in the backg…

I hate the auto-playing trailers too, but in the spirit of the kind of analysis HN is actually good at: auto-playing trailers seems like an extraordinarily straightforward feature to collect and analyze metrics on, and Netflix does not strike me as the kind of company that is utterly ambivalent about metrics, so "hating the auto-playing trailers" might not be the strong indication of loss-of-touch that it seems; like, it seems more likely that for the majority of Netflix's user-base, the trailers increase engagement.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#64

Post by cameronbrown »

jhallenworld wrote: post #30
happytoexplain wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the auto-playing of trailers at full volume is super-annoying. This was baffling to me. I've rarely had such a stressful user experience as a trailer playing every single time I stop pressing the arrow buttons for a few seconds. Just because I stopped pressing buttons doesn't mean I want to see a trailer for whatever I happened to stop on - it means I'm thinking about something, or reading something, or looking at s…

My theory is that it increases the likelihood that you'll stop browsing and just watch something. This would reduce the variety of shows that people watch and ease the requirements on their servers.

If this is true it's a perfect example of Goodheart's law. Maybe they assumed they were making it faster to choose content.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#65

Post by colemickens »

sundayedition wrote: post #35

There is a lot of what I'd consider "noise" popping up on Netflix that they won't let me filter out. I don't care for most dubbed shows, and I haven't had any luck with any of the foreign imports. No way to filter them out that I'm aware of, so half of the "New shows" don't appeal to me I wouldn't give up Netflix for cable, it's more likely to be Prime only, or something with quality content that I wouldn't watch as…

There was a time where every login was followed by auto-playing trailers for a show about suicide, during a time that I really just didn't need to be seeing that. With no way to prevent it... other than canceling and ceasing usage.

I don't understand the dark patterns and general user hostility. I don't need to watch Netflix 20 hours a day to feel like I'm getting my money's worth. Do they somehow benefit from me utilizing more of their bandwidth, if I'm already paying?

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#67

Post by pixelbath »

I just don't feel like Netflix is made to make my video viewing experience better anymore. They don't take customer feedback seriously, they're removing features that people obviously love, and becoming victims of the ever-growing race to "increase engagement."

1. Autoplaying trailers: Netflix straight-up says that's not going away (https://twitter.com/Netflixhelps/status/947587245086859265), and I haven't met a single person who actually likes it. When stopping to talk about a show, my wife just mutes the television on the main screen, and I navigate to the Search screen, which is the only one that doesn't autoplay something. It's almost hostile amount of "HERE LOOK AT THIS SHOW" going on, and I despise it.

2. Removing reviews: If you've been on Netflix long enough, chances are you remember the pages-long reviews left by extremely passionate users on all kinds of films. Netflix just decided one day to throw all that away, probably because negative reviews decreased engagement or some other silly reason. The users added value to your service, and you actively threw it out. This also had the side-effect of tossing aside the count of films I've watched or rated, which I found to be an interesting bit of data.

3. Shuffling algorithms: Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I have a difficult time navigating to anything that's not a specific title. Genres, their weird made-up categories ("Comic Book Superhero Movies" or "Classic Sci-Fi and Fantasy"), or even foreign films. There's no way to browse this stuff unless the category happens to pop-up on screen. In addition, the "Continue Watching" category moves around randomly. Sometimes it's right at the top, sometimes 3 pages down. Similarly, why is "My List" not always at the top? It used to be a top-level navigation element.

4. Already seen: There's no way to hide anything in the UI. Not things I watched, not things I'm uninterested in, and certainly not things I dislike. I used to be able to signal disinterest in shows; now I can't.

I could go on at length despite having already done so, but I think there's more at play here than Netflix's catalog. They're showing that all they're chasing is more money and bigger deals, and damn what the users think. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe it really is their "content slate drove less growth in paid net adds" this quarter, but I'm willing to bet that (at least in part) it's because even Hulu, owned by a bunch of traditional television media corporations, gives more consideration to its users.

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#68

Post by colemickens »

throwaway_009 wrote: post #36
happytoexplain wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>political pandering instead of offering good quality entertainment This, unfortunately, is the ultimate double-edged sword. It would be a very safe and content-less world indeed if fictional media did not in some what appear to address or include something political in nature. Usually when we feel like what we're watching is not political, it's actually because it's simply political in ways that we identify with or…

It just bothers me that they try to include a few tropes in every movie or show without it fitting in the story properly. As I said, if they maintain the logical consistency and in the context of a good story I don't mind some political push. But if it is in every show/movie, it just becomes repulsive.

I'm curious to understand what you're describing. Can you give an example of a Netflix show, the season and political trope, and how it detracted from the show's quality? And I'm definitely curious what you're imagining as you write out "repulsive".

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#69

Post by yeahforsureman »

ryanianian wrote: post #51
sundayedition wrote: post #35

There is a lot of what I'd consider "noise" popping up on Netflix that they won't let me filter out. I don't care for most dubbed shows, and I haven't had any luck with any of the foreign imports. No way to filter them out that I'm aware of, so half of the "New shows" don't appeal to me I wouldn't give up Netflix for cable, it's more likely to be Prime only, or something with quality content that I wouldn't watch as…

Netflix is blatantly user-hostile. The UX is designed to get you to spend more time with Netflix, not to make you like it more. Many of the shows it suggests to me are not in english , yet the UX rarely discloses this in the description or (infuriatingly auto-playing) preview. Some people don't mind reading subtitles but I detest it - they could at least tell me the show is in German before wasting my time.

Just out of general interest, do you watch foreign TV and movies at all then? If not, why?

Or just dubbed? If so, how do you bear it?

Re: Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged

#70

Post by epiphanitus »

hyencomper wrote: post #7

I think Netflix has lost touch with their consumer base, with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized. I cancelled my subscription recently as I realized that while Netflix has a lot of shows, there is a dearth of quality content and the search function is not useful. With shows like Friends and Office leaving, there is not much to draw people who like leaving it on in the backg…

>> with most changes such as removal of the rating system being universally criticized

Being a dinosaur, I remember when Netflix would let users write reviews for shows/movies they'd seen.

Does anybody know why they discontinued their review system? Did they not want to deal with all the sticky content moderation issues?

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