41–50 of 168 posts
"Curators, ranging from WarnerMedia editors to celebrities, put together a list of movies and TV shows they’re watching" ok so how do I know which human's taste is the same as mine. If only there was a recommendation engine for that.
HBO has human defined categories that makes sense.
People who are in the curation business (critics, reviewers, etc.) tend to favor things that make themselves look good to other people in the curation business. That is often opposite what the "unwashed masses" of people enjoy.
Prime example - Michael Bay movies. Michael Bay makes big, loud, entertaining movies with lots of explosions, bright lights, shiny objects, violence, and sex appeal. A "curator" is usually too snooty to recommend a movie like that.
An algorithm doesn't much care if a movie is artfully crafted, it only cares if people watch what is recommended. In the long run, an algo is more likely to give people what they want than a curator is.
If anything, curators over the long term seem to make a living telling people what they aren't supposed to like (or have access to).
Lately it feels like Netflix's algorithm is "just show Netflix produced content". Maybe I'm being nostalgic but I really miss the old shooting star recommendation system where you rated content and got similar likes from other viewers.
"human-first platform" Yeah because netflix loves those robots it serves. At least netflix doesn't have a name problem... Three different HBO products... yeah that's gonna work. /s
HBO Max is just their newly renamed HBO Go and Now unification. If you had either Go or Now before, you now have Max. It's not really that complicated.
Lately it feels like Netflix's algorithm is "just show Netflix produced content". Maybe I'm being nostalgic but I really miss the old shooting star recommendation system where you rated content and got similar likes from other viewers.
HBO Max I'm on the fence about. I really like HBO but not sure I need or want everything that comes with the Max flavor.
I wasn't old enough to remember it, but when search engines tried to do this in the 90s, it became clear that people preferred machine recommendations. See yahoo directory, look smart.
No one has found the "page rank of movies/series" yet, so I think HBO has a better chance here.
This is like when Apple said their Music platform would be more human curated rather than algorithms like competitors such as Spotify. But the reason why I love Spotify's recommendations and not Apple's is because Spotify focuses on algorithms and does them so well. Same with Netflix, in my experience they truly know what I will like to watch, they seem to know what shows I'll love and what shows I won't love but wil…
It might be because of the service balkanization, but in the past I was able to find hidden gems on netflix, the same afterwards with prime video, but nowdays not only I have to browse in the text catalogs you might find online to quickly search among all the stuff I don't like, to find something I might enjoy that would certainly be buried in netflix UI. And even worse, I find myself rewatching my favorites instead of being able to find something different than blockbusters in the platforms.
This is like when Apple said their Music platform would be more human curated rather than algorithms like competitors such as Spotify. But the reason why I love Spotify's recommendations and not Apple's is because Spotify focuses on algorithms and does them so well. Same with Netflix, in my experience they truly know what I will like to watch, they seem to know what shows I'll love and what shows I won't love but wil…
Similarly, if I liked The Witch and Hereditary then top recommendations for me must be $5m budget cash grab teen slashers and haunted webcam gimmicks.
I think random selection would be more effective for me than the current Netflix algo(s).
If they could show the IMDB rating, it would be enough for me.
They won't even show their own rating anymore. I assume it's counterproductive to the goal of capturing eyeballs for as long as possible.
Relatedly their tvOS app gets laggy after just tens of seconds of browsing and it's been like this for over a year, how can they not fix it?