Offtopic: there's nothing more hilarious than to read the reviews after having watched a bad movie. However, I use IMDB for that.
Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
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Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#12For personalized movie recommendations http://www.gnovies.com is a nice alternative.
I wonder if movie reviews could be done via ActivityPub somehow.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews and they're basically useless? Sounds like they're just deleting an unmaintained and unused feature.
I used the reviews. Sometimes a movie would be polarizing and I’d read the good ones and the bad ones to see if I’d like it myself. It’s not a hugely valuable feature (I can do the same on eg Rotten Tomatoes), but it wasn’t unused.
Maybe you used it, but overall few people were using it. That's why they got rid of it.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#14Wow, what a massive total waste, shame on netflix. In the early days people relied heavily on those reviews, and spent hours writing those reviews. I understand them wanting to keep that data for data analysis purposes, and I understand them wanting to not share it, but to delete it? At least make it rate limited tied to a paid Netflix account or something, not wipe it away for ever. What a shame.
How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews and they're basically useless? Sounds like they're just deleting an unmaintained and unused feature.
"Declining use" is a result of Netflix's own decisions to downplay reviews because they were helping people decide not to watch movies they wouldn't like.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#15I've noticed for a while that Netflix seems to be making it a lot harder to rate content and find high quality content. It's like they want you to watch junk. Maybe junk has lower licensing fees so it increases their margins.
I've found some amazing gems digging through Netflix and relying on user ratings. They were films I probably never would have found otherwise. A few somewhat recent examples that come to mind are Enter the Void, The Discovery, Upstream Color, and A Dark Song.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#16> Netflix said in a statement that “the reviews and our redesigned ratings system (thumbs up/down) never contributed to how we approach personalizing recommendations for members and writing a ‘bad’ review never had any bearing to whether a title was recommended to another viewer or not.” THAT explains why Netflix keeps recommending me garbage quality content! I had a suspicion this was true, but couldn’t imagine anyo…
How in the world does this make sense? The entire competitive advantage of having the scale and user information that Netflix has is to be able to do personal recommendations by recommending shows based on what others with similar taste like. Heck, I know very little about big data and even I have walked through a simple sentiment analysis proof of concept demo to rate comments as positive or negative.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#17> Netflix said in a statement that “the reviews and our redesigned ratings system (thumbs up/down) never contributed to how we approach personalizing recommendations for members and writing a ‘bad’ review never had any bearing to whether a title was recommended to another viewer or not.” THAT explains why Netflix keeps recommending me garbage quality content! I had a suspicion this was true, but couldn’t imagine anyo…
How in the world does this make sense? The entire competitive advantage of having the scale and user information that Netflix has is to be able to do personal recommendations by recommending shows based on what others with similar taste like. Heck, I know very little about big data and even I have walked through a simple sentiment analysis proof of concept demo to rate comments as positive or negative.
They are probably determining this directly on when someone is watching a show, which shows, etc.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#18Wow, what a massive total waste, shame on netflix. In the early days people relied heavily on those reviews, and spent hours writing those reviews. I understand them wanting to keep that data for data analysis purposes, and I understand them wanting to not share it, but to delete it? At least make it rate limited tied to a paid Netflix account or something, not wipe it away for ever. What a shame.
I am not surprised at all. When they switched to this percent system, it was clear from then that they want to ensure that there's no chance you'll be turned away from watching something on account of some random human who doesn't have netflix's interests in their heart. Their new system is clearly based on the data they have on you, and really feels like netflix picking for us rather than helping the user pick on th…
Reminds me of facebook and how they stopped showing me all of my friends' posts because they thought they knew what I wanted to see.
I eventually left facebook.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#19I can see why they would do it. When I cancelled them 2 years ago their selection was kind of limited. Lots B movies and average or below titles. A lot of reviews were the same. Reading made me not watch a lot of them. Deleting the reviews hides the below average movie selection under the carpet in a way.
I believe this as well. Since years now I have the very strong suspicion that they aren't all optimizing for me finding something great but rather to waste my time on their platform and hide that I in fact might have already watched everything I'll like. But then I'll sometimes find something in there only after some digging that obviously should have been heavily suggested to me.
Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website
#20The biggest problem with the Netflix content discovery algorithm is that it's in total conflict with Netflix's brand management, and brand management will always win.
By far their most prominent platform for brand impressions is what the user sees when they first log in and view their home page. So what displays on that screen is of vital importance to their brand management team, and what kind of content they associate with that brand is everything.
Which is the reason why when I log into Netflix as a middle-aged software developer who watches war documentaries, true crime series, and old episodes of Frasier, I see a wall of hot focus-grouped twenty-somethings pulling their hair out and trying to fuck each other.
Because Netflix is young and cool and I just need to get with it, and if I can't get with it then that's my problem. Because Netflix is fierce. Netflix is the pulse of a new generation.