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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

#171

Post by beatgammit »

stallmanite wrote: post #118
thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we'll have to ban Radio. We'll also need to ban most major highways, as they keep going and going and going. And don't forget to ban unlimited refills at McDonalds, I'm sure those get people into trouble too. How does the fast food industry get such a big free pass on all the trouble it's caused?

Your cup at McDonalds doesn't automatically refill though. It's more like actively clicking next.

It does at many restaurants. The waiter comes by and refills my drink, often without asking if it has unlimited refills. It's kind of like Netflix, which says "next episode starting in 10 seconds", where inaction gets you more content.

And I don't see a problem with that. If you know you'll drink too much with unlimited refills, don't order drinks with unlimited refills.

I really don't think government has any business in this at all, but I guess I could see something where certain classes of product need to support setting limits on use from the customer side (as in, X hours of Netflix per day on this profile). That still sounds like overreach to me, but if it's a real problem for people with addictive personalities, I think it could be a workable solution while avoiding a lot of the unintended consequences.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#172

Post by littlestymaar »

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.

This is a good comparison because we know it's a public health disaster. Unfortunately he junk food industry was powerful enough to repeal this kind of rules in their domain, and I'd actually be surprised if this one was enacted.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#173

Post by ckarmann »

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…

While you watch Netflix, you don't watch a competitor. In a way, this autoplay feature removes a friction for the customer that doesn't have to decide what to watch next. This removes the "danger" that the customer think about that cool show that is not provided by Netflix.

At the end of the month, the customer may think about how much they use a TV provider and not the other, and decide to keep Netflix and ditch any other subscription they may have.

It's true that it burns through Netflix content but they made 1,500 hours of original content in 2018, content that they have to create anyway for other reasons, so a lot of your free time is already covered.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#174

Post by tjoff »

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 can't think of a single situation where autoplay is remotely acceptable for anything but opt in.

I guess endless scrolling doesn't have to be bad. But I've yet to experience an implementation that isn't awful.

I don't think legislation is a good way to make developers behave. But I also don't know how to break the mess we are in.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#175

Post by easymodex »

lloeki wrote: post #55
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.

I find autoplay on Netflix highly inconvenient. Disable it and you can continue to watch the next episode with just one button press. There is no need for navigating around. Also super useful when you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV so that it doesn't keep pumping all the way through the night. Autoplay on Netflix is IMHO a dark pattern to feed on attention and FOMO.

I strongly disagree. Autoplay does exactly what I want when binging through series. I would watch it either way, but why would I need to click buttons for each episode when it can be automatic.

I support automation, not manual labor.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#177

Post by clinta »

ckarmann wrote: post #173
saurik wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

While you watch Netflix, you don't watch a competitor. In a way, this autoplay feature removes a friction for the customer that doesn't have to decide what to watch next. This removes the "danger" that the customer think about that cool show that is not provided by Netflix. At the end of the month, the customer may think about how much they use a TV provider and not the other, and decide to keep Netflix and ditch any…

But isn't that just a proxy for retention then? Why optimize for hours watched which correlates with retention when you can just measure and optimize for retention directly?

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#179

Post by giggles_giggles »

jressey wrote: post #138
saurik wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I wonder how many of those extra hours watched are because the stream just didn't stop after the person fell asleep. I can't tell you the number of times I've fallen asleep while Netflix played (or walked away) and it went right into some other show I didn't care to watch (and never actually did).

If hours streamed is your metric for engagement.. of course having the stream continue on its own would make that number rise. It doesn't actually say anything at all about real engagement.

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