New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling • Hacker News Board

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#91

Post by jsilence » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

Yeah, ever so often when I want to continue watching the current series I realize that autowatch made me watch the whole season while I was asleep on the couch. Really wish autoplay would stop every three or four episodes.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#92

Post by orev » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

Serious question: how do you feel about having been involved in that feature, knowing that you were creating an addictive product and trying to get people more hooked on it?

You might try to say that people have free will and can do what they want, but you know that the reason it’s done is exactly because it’s addictive.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#93

Post by djaychela » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

>But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.

True, but they can't make the end of the bag of Doritos lead you to the counter to get another one in 5 seconds. (yet!)

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#94

Post by orev » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #84

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

I've never been able to understand why netflix benefits from autoplaying - you're not selling anything, you're just delivering content - so why does autoplaying, which presumably has some measurable, additional cost for bandwidth, end up benefiting the company? Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.

When you start measuring something, that thing tends to become what you optimize for, regardless of if it actually makes sense. Hours spent watching is some kind of indicator of whether people enjoy using the service, and is also a nice clean metric to be able to report on.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#95

Post by saurik » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

> When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention.

So, I totally understand retention: that one makes sense to me, as that's revenue for Netflix; if I'm more likely to renew my account, then Netflix makes more money. But... I honestly don't understand why Netflix is optimizing for hours watched, and in fact I had assumed it would be the opposite (leading to Netflix actually making it kind of annoyingly difficult to watch the full credits on movies, for example).

> But...the product team at Doritos does the same thing.

This makes sense to me: the more Doritos I eat, the more money Doritos makes. This isn't true of Netflix: every time I watch something, it costs Netflix money. I would, naively, expect that what Netflix would want to optimize for is some weird balance of retention (at high priority) and least hours watched (at a much lower priority).

> So yes, Netflix wants you to spend more hours watching Netflix and the product team is scientifically engineering the product to make it more addictive.

I also appreciate that the more hours I watch of Netflix, the more I might be "addicted" to doing so... but the reason I'd expect Netflix to care about that is because it means higher retention, which is already being directly measured. Any other aspects of my addiction don't seem to benefit Netflix: it costs Netflix money every time I stream something from them...

...and, it would seem to me crucially, it means that Netflix is "on the hook" for more and more content. If, on a relatively short-term basis (such as during an experiment), my measured retention is the same, but my hours watched is higher, then it means I'm burning through content I like to watch at a faster rate, and so Netflix needs to spend more money to rotate their catalog and create more originals.

It just seems so weird that Netflix would be optimizing for "hours watched", and I'd love to learn from someone more on the inside who was involved in that why they would do that. I understand why YouTube and Facebook optimize for "engagement" (even though I also think it is abhorrent) as 1) their revenue is based on advertisements and 2) they spread using network effects; neither of these are true for Netflix.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#96

Post by mbreese » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #84

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

I've never been able to understand why netflix benefits from autoplaying - you're not selling anything, you're just delivering content - so why does autoplaying, which presumably has some measurable, additional cost for bandwidth, end up benefiting the company? Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.

When you have to choose between "watch the next episode" or "watch something else", Netflix benefits when the default is "watch the next episode".

When you have to consciously choose to watch the next episode, you can also make the choice to turn off Netflix and do something else. The more you watch Netflix, the more likely you are to keep paying for it. When you actively choose to do something else, the less likely you are to keep paying for Netflix.

It's not the perceived value, it's the choice.

When you have to make the choice, you could choose to spend more time with something else (like a video game, a Hulu show, etc...). If you choose to do that, you might get sucked into that game or show and decide to not come back to Netflix. Netflix would rather spend the few cents it costs to stream you a new video (which is probably already cached at your ISP) than make your choice to do something else explicit.

That said, I think it's a great feature that makes it easy to binge through a series. Its beneficial to both parties in that way -- I get to not move from my couch and they get to send me more entertainment (and keep me paying them).

Also -- the more you watch of a series, the more you'll talk about it to your friends. And the more likely they are to watch it. If you get stuck on Episode 2 of 10, you're not as likely to talk about it. But if you keep going to episode 3, 4, 5, then you are more likely to finish the series. And if you finish, you'll probably talk about it, and then the cycle continues...

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#97

Post by jerf » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #84

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

I've never been able to understand why netflix benefits from autoplaying - you're not selling anything, you're just delivering content - so why does autoplaying, which presumably has some measurable, additional cost for bandwidth, end up benefiting the company? Does the perceived value of netflix increase when autoplay is enabled? I really want to understand this, I've been strung up on this for a while.

The probability of you cancelling Netflix in a given month is inversely proportional to the amount of Netflix you or your household watched [1]. The expense of a marginal delivery of a particular episode's worth of resources is a great deal less for Netflix than the revenue of your subscription.

[1]: To a first approximation, anyhow. I bet there's a bump at zero, where people just entirely forget Netflix exists but they are still subscribed. If someone watches a single thing a month they're probably more likely to eventually realize they're not using it enough.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#98

Post by GhostVII » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

missingcolours wrote: post #66

GhostVII wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the choice is to just leave Netflix when you are done an episode. Maybe it's just me but I've never felt like the autoplay makes me much more likely to keep watching, it is just convenient so I don't have to go through all of the menus again. If we ban autoplay on Netflix, we should also ban cable I suppose (not a big loss, really), since cable will autoplay indefinitely.

This kind of sounds to me like "you can stop smoking by not buying anymore cigarettes". True, but glosses over the addictive aspects which led to cigarettes being regulated as they are. And this isn't an accidental property of these apps, they're intentionally engineered features to drive "engagement"/addiction.

That's fair, but personally I am much more comfortable with the government regulating things which actually have chemicals which cause people to be addicted to them (cigarettes, hard drugs, etc.) than services which people can get addicted to. The fact that their is actually a chemical in cigarettes is the critical difference, to me. Maybe psychologically there isn't much difference, but that's where I draw the line personally.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#99

Post by floatrock » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #9

Things like requiring accept and decline checkboxes to be the same font seem somewhat reasonable, even if I disagree with it, but banning autoplay videos and endless scrolling is insane. There are legitimate uses for autoplay videos (ex. Netflix playing next episode, YouTube playing next song when you are listening to music) which I personally use all the time and appreciate, and endless scrolling is great when you d…

I was with you until

> the government shouldn't compensate for their lack of self control.

Quite frankly, I don't believe in complete self-autonomy. I think it's a great trait to strive towards, but the rise of behavioral psychology by itself shows that we can be poked, prodded, and nudged to do things that we otherwise wouldn't do, because "what we want to do" is a muddy non-singular fuzzy idea that can be tipped in whatever way the environment happens to be arranged or designed.

It's not about regulating people's lack of self-control, it's about acknowledging there are proven techniques that influence behavior and figuring out when those techniques are being taken advantage of in a socially detrimental way.

We can discuss whether continuous scrolling really is socially detrimental, but calling it "government compensation for lack of an individual's self control" is flat-out dishonest given that half of us here are about to go evaluate our latest adwords optimization spend or look at our next A/B test results.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#100

Post by superkuh » Tue, Jul 30, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

missingcolours wrote: post #66

GhostVII wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the choice is to just leave Netflix when you are done an episode. Maybe it's just me but I've never felt like the autoplay makes me much more likely to keep watching, it is just convenient so I don't have to go through all of the menus again. If we ban autoplay on Netflix, we should also ban cable I suppose (not a big loss, really), since cable will autoplay indefinitely.

This kind of sounds to me like "you can stop smoking by not buying anymore cigarettes". True, but glosses over the addictive aspects which led to cigarettes being regulated as they are. And this isn't an accidental property of these apps, they're intentionally engineered features to drive "engagement"/addiction.

The difference is that actually addictive things, rather than just rewarding stimuli, produce increases in incentive salience regardless of actual reward outcome. In cigarettes this is mediated through nicotinic acetylcholine receptors on cells with inputs to dopaminergic systems that predict reward.

There's a vast distance between directly effecting the substrate of thinking chemically and reactions to rewarding stimuli coming in normally.