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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

#201

Post by ryanianian »

yeahforsureman wrote: post #69
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.

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?

I do watch movies with subtitles but very rarely (my vision isn't too great). (Dubbing is intolerable.)

It's a terrible UX and just wastes everyone's time to not disclose the dubbing/subtitles in any way in the front-matter.

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

#202

Post by wnevets »

noelsusman wrote: post #147
archey1 wrote: post #75

Netflix is just getting more expensive and less interesting to me. With all of the content I like being taken off to be hosted on network exclusive streaming platforms that I refuse to pay for - I'll probably eventually just cancel Netflix as well going back to the tried and true method of just buying bluray box-sets of the content I want to watch. Or piracy. I think the critical mistake that all these megacorps are…

Of course people would rather pay $10 a month to access everything, but that's just not sustainable. Look at Netflix's own financials. They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick an…

>They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base.

because content companies started holding their content hostage for higher fees or outright refusing to allow netflix to license it. Netflix creating their own content was a matter of survival.

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

#203

Post by rhegart »

foldr wrote: post #189
rhegart wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great- gay crossdresser from sex education is one of my favorite characters ever. Didn’t find it political at all and it just fit the story. Bad- stranger things overly sexist men and the constant putting men down. Detracted from the show, annoying me. Unbearable- Sabrina

Stranger Things is set in the eighties. It's not that much of a stretch to have a local newspaper run by men who don't take a 19 year old female intern very seriously. It also has an obvious function as a plot device, since it would be kinda boring if Nancy instantly figured it all out and succeeded in getting her story published.

Agreed, but that was so unrealistic it was like a 19 year old far left activist’s dream of sexist white men, not reality or even exaggerated reality.

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

#204

Post by rhegart »

ohithereyou wrote: post #142
rhegart wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great- gay crossdresser from sex education is one of my favorite characters ever. Didn’t find it political at all and it just fit the story. Bad- stranger things overly sexist men and the constant putting men down. Detracted from the show, annoying me. Unbearable- Sabrina

> stranger things overly sexist men and the constant putting men down Is this new to the third series? I haven't noticed it in the first two series after binging them over the last two days.

Yup only 3rd season. First 2 were awesome.

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

#205

Post by acjohnson55 »

tedsanders wrote: post #122

There's something I don't understand, but I'd like to. Most of the criticisms of Netflix I see fall into two buckets: One common criticism is that Netflix is worse than regular TV, because having to actively choose a Netflix show is more stressful than regular TV, where you can just turn it on, sit back, and relax. The second common criticism I read is that Netflix is annoying, because as soon as you turn it on, it s…

When I'm searching for something to watch on TV, I like having something in not invested in as a backdrop. Like random sports or sports news. Trailers are tooaattention-grabbing for this. On Netflix, I can't browse with unrelated background content on.

Speaking of browsing, on my TV provider, I know exactly where to find all the sorts of content I'm interested in. With Netflix, it's constantly being shuffled.

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

#206

Post by vl »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #145
teilo wrote: post #115

Netflix is becoming more and more of a frustrating experience. First they removed all user reviews. Then they removed ratings. (or vice versa. Whatever.) They constantly shift things around in their UI. Even things like "My List" and "Continue Watching" will spontaneously move. They hide categories, and sub-categories, making browsing and discovery a pain. They constantly throw crap at me that I don't care about and…

Having listened to podcasts with several important Netflix people as guests, I have picked up that they are unintentionally user hostile. They're so focused on data that it seems they completely forget about the intangible side of enjoying the user experience. Seems like they can't see the forest for the trees.

The problem is that optimizing for long-term satisfaction metrics is extremely tricky and hard. Such metrics lead to the better user retention, potentially even with less watch time. Paradoxically higher watch time may lead to lower user satisfaction (and decreased retention).

In ML world these metrics require combining DNNs with methods like Q-learning. YouTube learned these lessons and now probably has the most advanced ML among competition in its’ recommendation system.

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

#207

Post by bamboozled »

res0nat0r wrote: post #197
TremendousJudge wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that 15+ year old tech developed by some hobbyists (over asymmetrical networks not optimized for it mind you) provides a better service than anything modern corporations can deliver really is amazing to me.

Free is always going to be more attractive and excuses made by folks who don't want to pay for services. Netflix/Prime/HBO/etc all work perfectly fine, just sign up once, login, and that's it. Folks are just using this yet again as an excuse to not want to pay more than $10/month for every tv show and movie ever made, but that's not sustainable. It was obvious from the start that folks who wanted to cut the cord and…

Folks are just using this yet again as an excuse to not want to pay more than $10/month for every tv show and movie ever made

This is absolutely not accurate.

These streaming services lock you into a specific catalogue of their curated material. There is absolutely no way the statement you made about having access to everything is true. It's also especially less true if you're not living in the US. For example if you're a foreigner in a or regoin country, you're access to certain content is often limited.

With p2p sharing, none of this is a blocker.

Then there are other strange developments, let's take the fact that nearly every good album on Spotify now has only the "Remastered" or "Deluxe" editions available for streaming. I don't remember that being part of the deal when signing up. Now I'm forced to listen to sub-par versions of albums.

Who knows, maybe in 40 years will be thanking people who preserved Terrabytes of original content for the world to access?

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

#208

Post by chadcmulligan »

musha68k wrote: post #95

Netflix to me is not much more than a pretty bland version of Huxley's "Feelies". Actually most modern TV show stories would fit nicely into one or two well edited movies. I find all of this very comparable to the food in our super markets - lots of nutritionally empty calories and cheap canola oil. Time badly wasted and truly dystopian - all this zombie-like "binging" is way worse than "bread and games".

Yes, this is what I'm finding with many Netflix shows, they are extended movies. The problem is that each episode isn't really an episode, it has no "arc". Like when you watch NCIS for example, there's resolution after an hour or so. There's sometimes a bigger plot line if you watch all the episodes in a series but you don't have to.

..and because its better for them once they've hooked you to keep you there, the series usually provides a cliff hanger, but many times the series isn't renewed so the risk/investment in time is high. If it is renewed then they really have no new idea so they just rehash the first series and do it again (e.g. the OA, I guess, I stopped after the beginning of the second series). So you never get the closure you get from watching an old school tv series or movie, there's no high's or low's of a good story, there's just time used up.

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

#209

Post by b_tterc_p »

Alupis wrote: post #178
noelsusman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course people would rather pay $10 a month to access everything, but that's just not sustainable. Look at Netflix's own financials. They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I also don't get why everyone is clamoring for one company to control all video entertainment distribution. Isn't that what we hated about cable? Didn't we beg for the ability to pick an…

> They got into content creation and they're now deep in debt despite their massive subscriber base. I've found that while Netflix has some decent original content - the overwhelming majority of it is garbage and totally uninteresting. Sometimes I feel some of the Netflix Originals where mothballed from normal venues, so Netflix picked it up, failing to realize why nobody else wanted to produce it in the first place.…

> the overwhelming majority of it is garbage and totally uninteresting.

This is true of pretty much all tv. Because most people want that.

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

#210

Post by nkozyra »

Is the final result individuals or studios having a distributed platform to sell access to just their show (s) for a reasonable fee?

This is what people want and have been saying so for decades. Don't make me pay for a service I use 2% of. This is the whole anti ala carte thing cable companies have done forever.

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