FWIW, this isn't new. Netflix has been showing custom thumbnails for almost a decade now. If the author is getting nothing but scantily clad people, it's because they mostly click on thumbnails with scantily clad people.
The Clickbaitification of Netflix
261–270 of 313 posts
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see your point, but movie posters didn't live in your home and didn't have the power of mass personalization. An analogy might be junk food. Sure, it's advertised in all sorts of tempting ways in supermarkets, but imagine if your refrigerator suddenly gained the ability to show, prepare, and serve you customized/personalized junk food whenever you opened it.
Movie posters were ubiquitous in homes, a favorite of teenagers, often the racier the better. I see your point, but I don't see a problem with Netflix content using sensationalism to drive clicks. In fact, it's probably one of the vanishingly few legitimate uses of that type of visual manipulation. They pull visually stimulating stills from the content itself, combined with text that gives you a quick indication of w…
Can confirm. I had several gratuitous movie posters in my room growing up, which told you very little about the actual content of the movie.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? From a positive design perspective, could certain streaming features give users a greater sense of purpose or goal accomplishment (e.g., mastering a genre) or help users meaningfully connect to others (e.g., seeing what friends have recommended lately)? While measuring the effects of a feature on wellbeing outcomes is substantially ha…
> designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? I have complicated feelings about the roles of business in our lives. I'm not entirely certain that's a metric I'm concerned with them optimizing on, nor do I believe we can even remotely quantifiably capture it in any meaningful with with human-computer interactions.
zero complications for me. businesses are built to generate profit at the customers' expense.
Decoupling your life from businesses will generally provide you with more agency.
Smartphones are a business boom because it integrated commerce into your psyche.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I read that, I kind of thought "hasn't that already happened"? The most enduring symbol of American capitalism is caffeinated sugar water. Our athletics competitions are sponsored by fast food conpanies. We live in an obesogenic environment. Yeah, people with reserves of health, wealth and wisdom can buck the trends by applying time and energy to fighting against the tide but if the average person is falling for…
It's not because there is a shortage of healthy alternatives. It's because people are free to choose.
Yeah people are free to choose but to go full circle many of us let ourselves be manipulated by advertising[0] and dark patterns[1] to make unhealthy choices. That's why USA is so obese.
When I look at countries like Japan I don't see a limit in food choices, but I see a lot more healthy people.
[0] https://theconversation.com/how-marketers-condition-us-to-bu... [1] https://cspinet.org/protecting-our-health/nutrition/unhealth...
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I read that, I kind of thought "hasn't that already happened"? The most enduring symbol of American capitalism is caffeinated sugar water. Our athletics competitions are sponsored by fast food conpanies. We live in an obesogenic environment. Yeah, people with reserves of health, wealth and wisdom can buck the trends by applying time and energy to fighting against the tide but if the average person is falling for…
It's not because there is a shortage of healthy alternatives. It's because people are free to choose.
I might argue someone is not "free to choose" if they haven't been taught how to spot dark patterns in rhetoric and advertising.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not because there is a shortage of healthy alternatives. It's because people are free to choose.
I might argue someone is not "free to choose" if they haven't been taught how to spot dark patterns in rhetoric and advertising.
I don't think people completely lose their agency just because they saw a Coca Cola billboard.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? From a positive design perspective, could certain streaming features give users a greater sense of purpose or goal accomplishment (e.g., mastering a genre) or help users meaningfully connect to others (e.g., seeing what friends have recommended lately)? While measuring the effects of a feature on wellbeing outcomes is substantially ha…
> How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? The rational part of my brain would like - Suggestions for difficult content (this tends to be things you either love or hate, which is why Netflix does not suggest it, preferring safe bets); - Making it impossible to binge on one, or a small set, of things, instead forcing diversification; - Encourage spending short amounts of time…
The last two suggestions are interesting to me because it's exactly the opposite of what I think I need for my long-term well-being. Over the past few years it feels like watching too many clips and reading too many short articles has caused my attention span to drastically decrease, to the point where I rarely have the patience for a normal length movie. Breaking movies into episodes or forcing me to watch more different types of content without finishing any of them would make this even worse.
I think a better way to limit mindless engagement would be the ability to pre-set and lock in which content I'm going to watch for the day. So maybe I lock in that I want to watch a movie or 3 episodes of show X, and then Netflix shuts down for the day afterwards. Maybe it could even warn that episode 3 is the first part of a two-parter and suggest I stick to two episodes for the day.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But if Facebook was running our diets, their algorithm would long since have "optimized" its way to junk food for all of us. I really, really like this comparison. If we fed our bodies in the same way we let tech company algorithms feed our minds, we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine
When I read that, I kind of thought "hasn't that already happened"? The most enduring symbol of American capitalism is caffeinated sugar water. Our athletics competitions are sponsored by fast food conpanies. We live in an obesogenic environment. Yeah, people with reserves of health, wealth and wisdom can buck the trends by applying time and energy to fighting against the tide but if the average person is falling for…
I feel like on the nutritional side there's been a (not total, but significant) reversal over the last decade. Some of that gets eaten up by marketing (food that isn't any healthier gets packaged in muted shades of green and brown to make it appear more grounded and wholesome), but some of it is real (I no longer know a single person who drinks soda on a regular basis).
Maybe in another decade or two we'll see a similar shift in the digital space.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But if Facebook was running our diets, their algorithm would long since have "optimized" its way to junk food for all of us. I really, really like this comparison. If we fed our bodies in the same way we let tech company algorithms feed our minds, we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine
Traditional american breakfast..
The traditional American breakfast is great if you need carbs to do manual labor.
Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
I unsubscribed many years ago but occasionally I am tasked by my significant other to find something on Netflix (shared account with her family). I actually have pretty good luck with searching for random things. Like I searched for "cool" the other day and found something good that would have never shown up otherwise. Seems like a way to substantially bypass the recommendation engine "smarts".
Yep. You can also search by genres including their ridiculously detailed sub genres or cross-over genres. From what I’ve observed, though, normals consider TV such a “lean back” they won’t even go to the trouble to pick Movies or TV before browsing thumbnails for 1.8 seconds each…
I tried to browse be genre documentary. If there is subgenre, it was well hidden and did not shown up on my tablet.
Oh, and apparently documentary genre means also action movies. I don't know why there were also action movies.
Oh, and the more you browse the more it shows the same movie again and again.
Oh, and when I click on thumbnail, then the list jumps back to start, forcing me to browse the same movies again.
I ended up watching YouTube.