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The Clickbaitification of Netflix

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Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#281

Post by relativ575 »

Vrondi wrote: post #176
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…

Yes, Facebook is now almost useless. The only reason to be there is to keep track of friends and family, but it has gotten to the point where if a family member has a big life event, I'm hearing about it through traditional in-person or on-voice-call word of mouth _faster_ than through Facebook, because Facebook keeps deciding for me what it wants me to see. Netflix has kept trying to make it harder for me to find wh…

> Yes, Facebook is now almost useless. T

Not my experience. A contractor recently told me almost all of his business were driven by his company's FB page. I'm also aware of a few small businesses who do most of their business via FB connections. FB is well and alive in the mainstream, even if it skews toward more older group of people.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#282

Post by paulryanrogers »

janfoeh wrote: post #117
yarcob wrote: post #102

This is why I quit my Netflix subscription. The algorithm seems to have picked up the fact that I like watching SciFi and Zombie movies, so my Netflix homepage was this dark place filled with Sci Fi and Zombie movies. One problem with this is that Netflix only has a handful of good SciFi and Zombie movies, and I've seen them all. So the homepage was filled with movies I've seen already, or the dime-a-dozen copycat mo…

> So I cancelled my Netflix subscription, and went back to occasionally renting a film on iTunes or Amazon. I did that too, and then went one step further, because some fifteen years down the line, online video rental still hilariously, bafflingly sucks. Twelve, thirteen years ago I was still renting physical DVDs. Back then, renting a physical item that was produced halfway around the world, shipped to Germany and d…

For un-skippable DVD previews try VLC. Or if you must rip them MakeMKV can help.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#283

Post by stirfish »

wepple wrote: post #152
m12k wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are instinctively drawn to a lot of things that are really bad for us in significant amounts, because we are designed to fit into an environment where those things are scarce. Sugar, fat, inactivity, "interesting news", outrage. These all steal our attention because that response helped our ancestors survive and pick out these rare but important treats. But in typical human fashion we've now crafted a world th…

> 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

>we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine

But that's a normal breakfast?

Maybe it's more like eating only rabbits: rabbits for breakfast, rabbits for lunch, rabbits for dinner until you starve

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#284

Post by janfoeh »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #282
janfoeh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I cancelled my Netflix subscription, and went back to occasionally renting a film on iTunes or Amazon. I did that too, and then went one step further, because some fifteen years down the line, online video rental still hilariously, bafflingly sucks. Twelve, thirteen years ago I was still renting physical DVDs. Back then, renting a physical item that was produced halfway around the world, shipped to Germany and d…

For un-skippable DVD previews try VLC. Or if you must rip them MakeMKV can help.

Thanks for the MakeMKV suggestion, I'll look into it.

VLC isn't an option at the moment, because we've hooked up a 60€ player to her television.

Something with a remote with physical buttons that boots up in two seconds flat, never updates, always works the same and needs zero network connections.

A pretty high bar to beat.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#285

Post by crocodiletears »

Spellman wrote: post #188
dannyr wrote: post #30

YouTube is pretty much like this but it's the creators selecting the thumbnails. The most common thumbnail I see is a picture of someone looks like they are blown away with their hands on their head and their mouth wide open.

Luckily they can't send different thumbnails to different viewers. Yet. Veritasium actually did an interesting episode recently about how the major YouTubers optimize their titles and thumbnails using real time data now to figure out what works to go more viral. And apparently there's a convergence on "shocked" face. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

I was having a conversation about this with a friend last night. I saw a video on plastic CPUs on his smart TV's recommendations, and searched the topic instead of clicking on it because I didn't want to encourage what I called 'Reddit face'.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#287

Post by tomnipotent »

RobRivera wrote: post #263
tomnipotent wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> businesses are built to generate profit at the customers' expense.

Absolutely agree, which is why I'm bearish on the roles of companies. Companies are made up of people, and significant change comes slowly to people over very long periods of time. Look how long things woman's suffrage, unemployment benefits, and civil rights took. The U.S. is still fighting over single-payer healthcare while 66% of all bankruptcies are tied to medical bills, and we can't even agree on whether the Covid vaccine is a good thing.

I don't think I want random groups of people joined in coordinated capitalism to increase their profits at my expense, while constantly moving between those groups, also being responsible for my wellbeing. I want them to sell me their shit so I can get back to figuring out the rest of this mess.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#288

Post by fomine3 »

pizza234 wrote: post #45
keiferski wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ti…

Showing "play next this different series" at last episode ending is annoying. Keep me chill.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#289

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

stirfish wrote: post #283
wepple wrote: post #152

Earlier 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

>we’d have three Big Macs for breakfast washed down with a shot of whiskey and a couple lines of cocaine But that's a normal breakfast? Maybe it's more like eating only rabbits: rabbits for breakfast, rabbits for lunch, rabbits for dinner until you starve

I dont't understand the analogy with rabbits, what with the staving and all.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#290

Post by atok1 »

brundolf wrote: post #277
Apocryphon wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might also be a factor of where you're living at.

I don't think that's the whole story. Even national brands like McDonalds have subtly changed their packaging to feel less artificial and more "earthy", for lack of a better term, even if the product itself hasn't changed. There's an awareness of a cultural shift. I would guess that processed/high-sugar foods today are where cigarettes were in the 90s. Everybody knows and accepts how bad they are, many people have ch…

I have definitely noticed this (healthy) trend pop up in the last few years as well. Very much welcomed in changing from the old, unhealthy food.
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