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The Clickbaitification of Netflix

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Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#41

Post by puszczyk »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #6

I believe Netflix has talked about thumbnail experimentation at length in some of their engineering blogs [1]. To me, it seems perhaps Netflix has figured out a running theme in the author's viewing habits... perhaps the scandalous, soapy stuff is what they keep clicking. Same kind of reaction I get when a guy friend tells me they keep getting ads for women's bikinis or women's underwear in their Instagram ads. It is…

Yeah, sure. I like desserts. I’ll eat a tasty looking one if presented with the opportunity. But it doesn’t mean I want my kitchen or living room filled with desert ads.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#42

Post by mgraczyk »

personjerry wrote: post #7

I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement. This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our…

As another former Facebook employee, I mostly agree with this.

One nitpick is that although you may have not looked at the holdouts often, somebody definitely did. Different teams use their holdouts differently, but leadership probably looked at your holdouts at least a few times per quarter. And now with recent infra and changes, it's very likely that data scientists or product managers somewhere in your org are responsible for explaining results to higher ups at least quarterly.

All that is to say, the cause isn't that Facebook (and Netflix) aren't thinking about or monitoring things in the long term. It's that they are measuring the wrong things, because it's very hard to measure things like "this is clickbait".

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#43

Post by cosmie »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #26
personjerry wrote: post #7

I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement. This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our…

i do not understand snapchat and their business model. they started out as a sexting app that deletes the photos and that is where it remained for a long time. i remember news of how "deleted snapchat photos can be undeleted" tutorials and i tried to investigate for fun but i could not understand the UI back then and the tutorials didnt work so i dropped it. Apparently its pretty big these days in the kids and they h…

> i do not understand snapchat and their business model.

Ads[1]. Initially it was just promotional lenses/filters and required a high touch process and substantial media spend commitment. But looking at that site, they now have a full on self-service ad platform with minimal spend commitment, helper software to make lenses/filters, and have added several other ad formats beyond that one.

So they've essentially monetized the same way as every other "free" platform has – capitalize on all the eyeballs they have to siphon off a cut of marketing dollars for themselves.

[1] https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#44

Post by mgraczyk »

dreamer7 wrote: post #17
personjerry wrote: post #7

I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement. This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our…

What was the duration for which you collected results? Was it 2 weeks or a month etc?

Depends on the change and effect size, also on product. Typically somewhere between 1 week and 1 quarter. Almost always there is a backtest after shipping in which a small percent of users do not receive the change for 1-6 months (a "holdout")

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#45

Post by pizza234 »

keiferski wrote: post #24
personjerry wrote: post #7

I worked at Facebook for some time, and did a bunch of data work. We had this culture of building something, looking at the results between the experiment groups, and then choosing the statistically more successful one -- i.e. a newsfeed algorithm that had better engagement. This sounds great at first, and certainly is straightforward if you want a promotion. But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our…

This is the consequence of lack of vision. What is Netflix's long term goal? Ideally, it would be to fund and broadcast fantastic cinema. Yet, I really don't get the impression that contributing to the art form of film is very high up on the metrics chart.

I'm of the opposite opinion. They're executing their vision perfectly.

Netflix is very aggressively pursuing the bottom line, and they're not doing it differently from a drug dealer. It's not random that the term "Netflix binge" exists.

Netflix interface is designed to shove content at the users' face at all costs, and in a very disrespectful way. Here there are some disgusting dark patterns:

- it took them a long time to give the user the option to remove movies from the watching now list

- there's no way to remove already watched movies from the panel; their trailer is even sometimes displayed in the top frame

- they randomize the global order of the horizontal lists, so that one needs every time to hunt the user list (watching now/my list) through all the panel

For a short time, I even experienced a bug where movies with (my) negative rating were not greyed out. I can imagine the engineering thinking "LOW PRIORITY!".

On my (fictional) "drug-dealing practices" rating, Netflix is high on top with Amazon.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#46

Post by watwut »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #6

I believe Netflix has talked about thumbnail experimentation at length in some of their engineering blogs [1]. To me, it seems perhaps Netflix has figured out a running theme in the author's viewing habits... perhaps the scandalous, soapy stuff is what they keep clicking. Same kind of reaction I get when a guy friend tells me they keep getting ads for women's bikinis or women's underwear in their Instagram ads. It is…

Netflix has literally zero discoverability if you want to go outside what it suggests. If I click stuff that initially seem appealing and then based on seeing decide I dont like it, tough luck. You clicked on it, because you liked name and pic, turned out different thing that you like, but now netflix is forever convinced you want this.

I tried to go through documentaries category, because I was in mood for documentary. Pure hell and every time I viewed movie detail, it jumped back to start.

I dont have an option to click on something else and Netflix does everything possible in order to prevent me to find stuff I would like. The result is that I dont idle watch netflix, because it is too much work and we watch only shows someone else told us about and we searched by name.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#47

Post by crateless »

xmprt wrote: post #14
matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

Would Netflix have to do this if it actually had content people wanted to watch? It's just sad watching it double down on this pulp because every other copyright holder took their ball and went home.

A big issue for me is that Netflix now has so much content that everyone watching different things and there's no longer "the show" that you have to watch to talk about with your friends. Instead, there are a handful of good shows every year spread across all platforms and it's come to the point where if I'm just going to watch things on my own, I might as well just watch YouTube.

That's been pretty much my conclusion as well. I can mostly find some kind of long-form content to consume and although the feed algorithm sucks, the recommendations on the video page itself usually make up for it.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#48

Post by perryizgr8 »

monkeybutton wrote: post #5

After reading the article on my phone and hitting the back button to get back here, I'm instead presented with a screen showing more content and pleading me to stay on the site (Keep on reading!). Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.

Doesn't seem to be happening for me. Egde/Galaxy S10

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#49

Post by 1123581321 »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #6

I believe Netflix has talked about thumbnail experimentation at length in some of their engineering blogs [1]. To me, it seems perhaps Netflix has figured out a running theme in the author's viewing habits... perhaps the scandalous, soapy stuff is what they keep clicking. Same kind of reaction I get when a guy friend tells me they keep getting ads for women's bikinis or women's underwear in their Instagram ads. It is…

That response to complaining about Instagram is becoming a frustrating meme because it isn’t true that Instagram doesn’t offer sex appeal to the uninitiated, and rather than discussing that issue, this simple response just shuts down criticism of the social network by embarrassing the person who brings the issue up. Lest you turn the meme on me, I’ll say don’t have an account.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#50

Post by dazc »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

Would Netflix have to do this if it actually had content people wanted to watch? It's just sad watching it double down on this pulp because every other copyright holder took their ball and went home.

And this is the obvious answer that they somehow manage to keep overlooking.

Just cancelled my sub and won't be activating it again until Christmas. I should then get a decent month of viewing before I cancel it again.

In the meantime I'll be paying amazon much more money for stuff outside of the Prime offering that I want to watch and am willing to pay for (albeit grudgingly).

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