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How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

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Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#111

Post by verst »

d0lphin wrote: post #30
verst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? It was my understanding that there was significant business value in improving the accuracy of personalized movie recommendations. Recall that this was at a time where the majority of the business was DVDs sent via mail. A poor choice of movie created significant risk to customer satisfaction and hence retention.

It's a quote from the linked post

My bad. I was tired when I skimmed the article and OP's comment wasn't quoted. Still, I find that statement very surprising.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#112

Post by birdyrooster »

manigandham wrote: post #108
koonsolo wrote: post #92

I don't get why they wanted to go all out on AI for this. I use Netflix, and a simple algorithm would already be an improvement: - If I watched a movie and gave it a thumbs down, don't recommend it - If I watched a movie - If I browsed over a movie 50 times, read the info, and still didn't play it, stop recommending it. - If I watched the last episode, remove the "new episodes" banner. WTF

There’s not enough content for completely new listings every time, and people do watch things repeatedly, especially TV shows.

I get the value of rewatching stuff, but some people take it to an extreme and I suspect these were the same people whose parents let them watch the same children’s show/movie over and over and over.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

stepbeek wrote: post #100
szszrk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end they will promote what they WANT to be popular, so our suggested titles will still be a mess of shit we already watched or disliked with a button. Shows with 10 seasons you hated and disliked after 5 minutes will still be in our "continue watching" or suggested.

> In the end they will promote what they WANT to be popular This is a hugely important point. I'm completely uninterested in most netflix originals, but I understand why they're going to continue to recommend them to me.

Which only goes to show that recommendation systems need to be separated from the vendors whose wares are being recommended. There's a huge conflict of interest here - so of course recommendations will be biased towards what the platform makes most money on. This applies not just to Netflix, but also YouTube.

As it is, these systems are just in-house banner ads in disguise, and as trustworthy as any other ad.

For a recommendation system to work in the interest of its users, its profits would have to be completely uncorrelated to the recommendations it gives. In a more sane world, platforms would have to accept such third-party recommendation systems as first-class citizens, to be used in lieu of whatever the platform offers.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#115

Post by szszrk »

dooferlad wrote: post #110
stepbeek wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end they will promote what they WANT to be popular This is a hugely important point. I'm completely uninterested in most netflix originals, but I understand why they're going to continue to recommend them to me.

What Netflix wants to be popular also tramples over what I am already watching. I find that the UI gets in the way of enjoying several programs that I am part way through by pushing something new. If they want to continue to make series and only get me to watch half of the episodes then the algorithm is spot on. That said, Amazon Prime video is so much worse. It suggests that I would like to watch series 1 of a show…

To their defense - their catalog in some countries (like mine) is so small that I was able to just ... browse through the whole offer in 10 minutes.

I've managed to binge-watch everything I liked in two months (while working full time remotely) and cancel Prime.

With such a small catalog suggestions will mostly be wrong, as there isn't enough content to fill the whole suggestions tab :)

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#116

Post by dspillett »

laurent92 wrote: post #101
koonsolo wrote: post #92

I don't get why they wanted to go all out on AI for this. I use Netflix, and a simple algorithm would already be an improvement: - If I watched a movie and gave it a thumbs down, don't recommend it - If I watched a movie - If I browsed over a movie 50 times, read the info, and still didn't play it, stop recommending it. - If I watched the last episode, remove the "new episodes" banner. WTF

I suspect their algorithm is stuck in a local minimum, where it has proven to itself that, if a movie is presented to you hundreds of time, there will be a moment where you click, either inadvertently or because there is nothing else presented to you, and it counts as a validation of their engine. It is so optimized for this that it doesn’t try just presenting all movies anymore - which is a recurrent problem in A/B…

> Yes, Netflix’ engine is the reason I left Netflix

That seems rather odd to me. I can believe it was a final straw after other reasons like running out of content you particularly want (absolutely or in comparison with other services), but not it begin "the" reason.

I don't particularly pay attention to the recommendations on either Netflix or Amazon, instead picking up things I might like to try from external sources (friends & family, discussions or records in various media, having liked something or some part of it looking into what else the performers/writers/directors/other have done it are involved in now, sometimes the does own external advertising).

I feel that the recommendation systems are more optimised for people who use TV/movies as background noise rather than actively watching. That would explain re-recommending long running series that they have already watched, amongst other things people have mentioned in this discussion.

Maybe my behaviour is a vestige from the life of piracy back when content was less readily available otherwise (somehow region locked, or simply not available on local channels yet, etc, so I often couldn't get things I cared about more legitimately for many months, if ever, and back in the scheduled TV days things were often in at inconvenient times). I seek out what I want rather than waiting for it to be handed to me by the service(s).

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#117

Post by fighterpilot »

koonsolo wrote: post #92

I don't get why they wanted to go all out on AI for this. I use Netflix, and a simple algorithm would already be an improvement: - If I watched a movie and gave it a thumbs down, don't recommend it - If I watched a movie - If I browsed over a movie 50 times, read the info, and still didn't play it, stop recommending it. - If I watched the last episode, remove the "new episodes" banner. WTF

The most annoying thing about these streaming platforms is no IMDB rating being displayed. I have to type in every suggestion one by one which is annoying, or use a third party search engine. It'd be such a huge UX boost to simply include the rating, and better yet allow filtering by rating, I really don't get it. Perhaps they're trying to build network effects around their own rating system but it really detracts from the UX.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#118

Post by matkoniecz »

dspillett wrote: post #116
laurent92 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect their algorithm is stuck in a local minimum, where it has proven to itself that, if a movie is presented to you hundreds of time, there will be a moment where you click, either inadvertently or because there is nothing else presented to you, and it counts as a validation of their engine. It is so optimized for this that it doesn’t try just presenting all movies anymore - which is a recurrent problem in A/B…

> Yes, Netflix’ engine is the reason I left Netflix That seems rather odd to me. I can believe it was a final straw after other reasons like running out of content you particularly want (absolutely or in comparison with other services), but not it begin "the" reason. I don't particularly pay attention to the recommendations on either Netflix or Amazon, instead picking up things I might like to try from external sourc…

I cancelled Netflix subscription because I was not finding anything worth watching.

I tried downvoting unwanted featured movies, they continued to be featured.

Once my listing was filled solely with already watched or downvoted movies I cancelled account.

I suspect that Netflix had some movies that I would gladly watch, but if they show what I explicitly marked as invented...

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#119

Post by jannes »

iseanstevens wrote: post #99
koolba wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that he had his “four horsemen”: https://www.barrons.com/articles/BL-TB-5933 (Note this article is from Jan of 2008): > In today's trading, all four stocks are down steeply: Apple: Down $26.65, or 17.1%, to $128.99. Amazon: Down $7.56, or 9.6%, to $70.92. Google: Down $48.15, or 8.2%, to $536.20. Research In Motion: Down $8.47, or 9.4%, to $81.61. Even writing off RIMM to zero would give you a healthy retu…

Is that accounting for splits? Apple (for example) has split 28:1 since that time, making the equivalent price today around 4K/share.

He was quoting the article, but he messed up the formatting so it’s not very obvious that “today” refers to 13 years ago.

Re: How useful was the Netflix Prize challenge for Netflix?

#120

Post by shard »

jerzyt wrote: post #103
koonsolo wrote: post #92

I don't get why they wanted to go all out on AI for this. I use Netflix, and a simple algorithm would already be an improvement: - If I watched a movie and gave it a thumbs down, don't recommend it - If I watched a movie - If I browsed over a movie 50 times, read the info, and still didn't play it, stop recommending it. - If I watched the last episode, remove the "new episodes" banner. WTF

What Netflix is doing is hiding the fact that they have very little new content. If they implemented all your suggestions, I'd have about 3 titles to watch, which I would like, but they're worried that I'd cancel the subscription.

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I don't care that much about new content, I care about good content. For quite a while I thought Netflix had a very small catalog, until I started deliberately going to specific categories that the recommendation engine never show me, then I realized that there is actually a fairy extensive back catalog of shows that are interesting, especially various shows in non-English languages.
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