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Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

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Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#191

Post by joncp »

wvenable wrote: post #135
joncp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when you didn't have to wade through that awful carousel view to find what you wanted to watch? Or when they didn't try to hide your "continue watching" list in a steaming heap of inaccurate recommendations? Except for a couple of shows, I've almost completely switched to Prime.

The Prime interface is way worse than Netflix. Admittedly it didn't have this awful autoplay but even continuing a show I'm currently watching is a game of Where's Waldo.

It's bad, I'll give you that. On the other hand, Prime shows you user star ratings and IMDb scores which, when taken together, give a much better idea of watchability than Netflix's match scores.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#192

Post by sebasmurphy »

philipkglass wrote: post #136
pjc50 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there was a narrow window when you could stream seemingly every film, ancient and modern, legitimately. Then the studios twigged and had to kill it.

I don't even mind paying on demand to stream a film. It's annoying and economically baffling when you can't stream a film even if you have your credit card in hand, ready to pay. Last weekend I tried to find To Live and Die in L.A. -- from the 1980s but hardly obscure. I couldn't find it legitimately available to stream anywhere , for any amount of money. I even tried Kanopy, which has been my go-to source for films…

This best is when it is temporarily no longer available to rent digitally because it has rotated back to HBO or SHOW.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#194

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

ljm wrote: post #161
slg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are certainly right about Netflix's catalog decreasing, but that doesn't explain why Netflix's recommendations have been downgraded over time. I am reminded of the show Tuca & Bertie. It was a new Netflix original from the same people who created BoJack Horseman. You would think it would be obvious to surface the new show to anyone who watched the old show. Except that never happened. The show's creator even comm…

Netflix’s recommended content has become so terrible outside things I want like Better Call Saul or Mindhunter, that I’ve cancelled the sub. Most of what they push to the top is straight garbage. Really badly written stuff. Meanwhile I can pay the same for amazon and get more Picard, Mr Robot, The Expanse... and if the TV sucks there are plenty of movies on rotation.

I reached the same conclusion today. When I logged back in to disable the autoplay-previews, it occurred to me that the only reason I have a subscription still is to catch the remaining Sherlock (with Cumberbatch) episodes that I haven't yet seen.

But I realized they might also be found elsewhere, and it turns out they're carried by Amazon Prime Video. That was the last straw for my Netflix subscription.

I'm amazed by how thoroughly Netflix has changed me from a lover to a hater of their service and company in recent years. It's not just a matter of cancelling because they don't have a catalog I care about. It's that I feel lied to and manipulated as well.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#195

Post by gwern »

derefr wrote: post #153
Carpetsmoker wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really like star systems because I spend way too much time deciding if something is 3 or 4 stars, or 4 or 5 stars. I much prefer textual descriptions; for example "Terrible", "Don't like", "Okay", "Like", "Favourite", which has the same options as a 5-star rating system, but choosing between 3/4 and 4/5 is much easier IMHO. I don't really know of any system that uses this, except this one music player I wrote…

I've always thought the best design for a star system would be a pair of positive/negative buttons, where the rating you give is the truncated logarithm of the number of times you press the button. So you can like or dislike things a little very easily, but you have to expend 10x as much effort to really like/dislike things, and 100x as much effort to express absolute adoration/hatred. Effectively, this would be a "p…

"Costly signaling theory from ecology posits that signals will be more honest and thus information will be accurately communicated when signaling carries a nontrivial cost. Our study combines this concept from behavioral ecology with methods of computational social science to show how costly signaling can improve crowd wisdom in human, online rating systems. Specifically, we endowed a rating widget with virtual friction to increase the time cost for reporting extreme scores. Even without any conflicts of interests or incentives to cheat, costly signaling helped obtain reliable crowd estimates of quality. Our results have implications for the ubiquitous solicitation of evaluations in e-commerce, and the approach can be generalized and tested in a variety of large-scale online communication systems."

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/15/7256

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#196

Post by greggman3 »

underbluewaters wrote: post #20

It's amazing it took this long. I can understand how some people might be okay with this feature but it causes me actual anxiety to use the Netflix app on my AppleTV. Before autoplay I could mindlessly browse looking for content. Now I hurry through to check if there is anything new and get out as fast as possible. They must know that people use the app less since this change... right?

I just unsubscribed. Once in a while someone convinces me there is a show of their's worth watching. I subscribe and cancel immediately. I get one month of service for the price of ~2 coffees. That's usually enough time to watch the one show that was recommended. If I try to look for something else I run into the auto previews and just turn off the app happy that I my subscription will end in a few days.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#197

Post by getpost »

creeble wrote: post #152
philipkglass wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even mind paying on demand to stream a film. It's annoying and economically baffling when you can't stream a film even if you have your credit card in hand, ready to pay. Last weekend I tried to find To Live and Die in L.A. -- from the 1980s but hardly obscure. I couldn't find it legitimately available to stream anywhere , for any amount of money. I even tried Kanopy, which has been my go-to source for films…

And you sometimes can't even rent movies that you saw on Netflix as recently as a couple of years ago. "Page Eight" was a great little spy movie with Bill Nighy and Rachel Weisz on Netflix. Now you can't rent from anywhere, for any price afaict. How does this optimize revenues for the studios?

It’s on Amazon, in the US at least, free with Prime.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#199

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

Lammy wrote: post #146
wvenable wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Isn't watching Friends a viable reason to own that subscription?

You're more likely to cancel when you're done watching that one show. They want to continuously give you a new reason to keep paying.

Their awful UI was one of the reasons I dropped the service. I wonder what fraction of former customers are like me.

Re: Turning Off Autoplaying Previews

#200

Post by gvjddbnvdrbv »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #185
kelnos wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the Uber/Lyft rating system is effectively useless. Five stars is basically "was not unsafe", and four and below indicate significant safety, cleanliness, rudeness, or other problems. If each star rating had a textual description of what it meant, and drivers didn't have to maintain something like a 4.3 (or whatever it is) in order to stay on the platform, the ratings would actually mean something.

Then you have my girlfriend who rates everything a 3/5 because it's average or to be expected. 4/5 for particularly good service. And nobody gets a 5/5. I think star systems are a waste of time.

I usually do the same but for Uber I rated decent drivers 5/5 because I'd been told everyone does this hopefully she does the same.
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