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New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

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Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#131

Post by rsweeney21 »

djaychela wrote: post #93
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!)

Yeah, but they make HUGE bags of Doritos now! :D

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#132

Post by rsweeney21 »

orev wrote: post #92
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.

I left Netflix mostly because of this. I've always believed that too much TV was bad for you and I didn't like thinking about how to get people to spend more time on the couch. It doesn't feel great.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#133

Post by dredmorbius »

torgoguys wrote: post #76
hedora wrote: post #26

This is textbook regulatory capture. Want to host your own website? Be sure to hire a specialized lawyer to audit and sign off on the user interface choices you made (and be sure to retain them indefinitely as your dependencies and the law evolve).

> This is textbook regulatory capture. I do not think it means what you think it means. (Or maybe I don't! :-)

The suggestion is that only large established firms can navigate the regulatory requirements.

I don't buy that.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#135

Post by telotortium »

magduf wrote: post #78
GhostVII wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For YouTube I don't use a playlist, I just let it pick the next recommendation, so that would still be banned. They added an exception for advertisements, which is too bad since that is the only kind of autoplay video I would really be excited about getting rid of. The definition of autoplay in the bill is "The use of a process that automatically plays music or videos (other than advertisements) without an express, s…

Autoplaying advertisements are one of the main reason autoplay is so annoying. WhyTF would they make an exception for this? This seems like obvious corruption.

Yeah, but they kind of have to autoplay ads. Would you find it less annoying to (1) manually click to start playing an ad, and then (2) manually click after the ad is done to play the video? I hope it would be violation of the regulation to play ads ad infinitum after playing a video.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#136

Post by gist »

saurik wrote: post #95
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 op…

There are probably so many angles to this but I will give one. Netflix is more likely to be used and loved if it gives someone something similar to the thing they just finished watching (like the next episode) then if they lose them to something they might not like by giving them the opportunity to find other content.

Also even if the content is not the next episode I feel I would be more likely to go with a suggested (new) video or content rather than something that takes me time to find (and therefore in theory happier with the service). For example there are so many choices on Netflix that I find I often might decide to not even take a look because of what I think the content is. [1]

[1] An example of this is the most excellent (now in S3) 'Money Heist'. The Dali masks were an instant turnoff for me that for whatever reason (rightly or wrongly) made me think it was some kind of fantasy rather than a crime drama (not saying my thoughts were right but that is what I thought).

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#137

Post by refurb »

saurik wrote: post #95
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 op…

I would assume that Netflix has data that shows hours watched is directly correlated with retention.

Think of hours watched as a leading indicator for retention. You don't want to only track retention because by the time it drops, it's too late.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#138

Post by jressey »

saurik wrote: post #95
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 op…

Why hours watched? Because Netflix wants as much of your time as you're willing to give. The more ingrained they are in your life, the less elastic your demand. We've seen them raise prices and remove just about all of the worthwhile content, and they have more subscribers than ever. Stay tuned for more of this.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#139

Post by danShumway »

umvi wrote: post #48
Jazgot wrote: post #6

This sounds like complete joke. Next another bill will ban pagination?

Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long (to protect internet addicts from being sedentary for too long). Pretty soon only big corps will be able to make a website because there is a phonebook sized stack of regulations you have to comply with.

> Another bill will mandate that websites display a banner if the user has been there for too long

Why wait? From Ars's writeup of the same bill[0]:

> As described in the text, social media companies would have to limit users to 30 minutes of use per day by default. Users would be allowed to choose their own time limits for daily and weekly use, but companies would have to reset that time limit to half an hour every single month, as well as providing "conspicuous pop-up" displays at least once every 30 minutes showing how much time you have spent using a service in the past day, across all devices.

This is just political grandstanding. (I hope) nobody would ever actually vote for this.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/proposed-us-law-...

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#140

Post by root_axis »

I apologize for making a comment with regard to politics, but I can't help feeling frustrated by the narrative around curbing "addictive behavior" coming from the political party that consistently extols the virtues of "personal responsibility" and regularly characterizes the desire to regulate harmful behavior as the machinations of a "nanny state". I find it especially frustrating in this case because the specifics of this proposal seem to be pretty poorly reasoned from a technical perspective.
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