Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#171

Post by sosborn » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

Rapzid wrote: post #161

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I search for a genre, minor actor, or just a random word. I almost always find something I'd like to watch.

Really? Because today, August 19th 2018, I search for Sci-Fi films and get like 20 totals results. Moon is not even in the Sci-Fi Genres for f *s sake. None of the greaty Sci-Fi indie films I used to get recommended to me 4 years ago even show up in a Sci-Fi search. Netflix has truly succumbed to their hiring/firing practices IMHO.

Did you browse the sci-fi directory or did you do a word search on "Sci-Fi." I went to the directory and Moon was the first title in the list.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#172

Post by CuriousSkeptic » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 6:26 PM UTC

extra88 wrote: post #168

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me that licensing and production cost should also go down withe less watching. It shouldn’t be that hard though. Just keep a reasonably diverse catalog and give people tools to browse it. Speaking of diverse, now a days I turn to YouTube when I want to watch something interesting. I wonder how much of that type of content they could add to their catalog. Not specifically the random user generated content, wa…

What specifically do you watch on YouTube that’s comparable to the movies and scripted series on Netflix? I know YouTube Red has shows like ‘Cobra Kai’ but you seem to be referring to regular YouTube.

The point was to expand and diversify, so not exactly comparable. But I was thinking of things like PBS spacetime, world science festival, royal institute lectures, and such.

We have a public service VOD-service here that hosts some content of that nature.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#173

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

kartan wrote: post #121

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part I don’t understand. Why do they go through so much effort to have me binge watch Netflix. It costs them bandwidth, and it makes me go through the quality stuff quicker. If they instead tried to get me watching just enough to keep the subscription it would be cheaper for them and I would have be more happy with the mean quality of available options

> Why do they go through so much effort to have me binge watch Netflix. "Focus Area #1: Engagement Engagement is, hands down, the #1 area that you should be concerned with on social media. It is the catalyst for improvement in all of the other social media KPIs we'll discuss." https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/social-media-kpis This is just an example. Everybody wants to become Facebook for some reason.

Maybe what they mean is to have more links to Netflix on social media. TBH a lot of content I consume comes from links on social media, blogs, etc. - maybe Netflix could up their game there. If they can't make the bot to recommend movies for me maybe they could make people I share interests with do it.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#174

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #72

smsm42 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One has to wonder how comes that recommendations were pretty good, but then they spent millions of dollars on improving them, including highly-publicized competitions and a lot of work inhouse I assume, and not they are not.

I have movies I have already rated (i.e. watched) in the "watch next" list. Sure, it can happen that I want to watch them again, but it seems unlikely. It seems clear netflix is optimizing for something which is not just "the movie this user would like to watch next".

Yeah I wish Netflix separated "movies that I already watched but maybe will watch again sometime" from "movies I didn't watch yet but want to". And also from "series that I'd want to watch the new season for but don't want in my list until that happens since I am not going to re-watch old seasons".

They are almost there but looks like either my watch-flow is somehow weird or they didn't pay attention to how people actually watch things.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#175

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#176

Post by joshuaheard » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

AquaMorph wrote: post #91

joshuaheard wrote: post #86

I used to read reviews on a movie I was on the fence about watching. I used the 5 star rating for the same reason. Now I have no information to guide me and in the last month, I have started several movies and stopped watching after 10 minutes because they sucked. Then there's the week delay to send in the DVD and have another one arrive by mail. This makes the service worse in my opinion.

Why not just look the movie up on an actual review site?

I could, but I use Netflix on Tivo, so it's right there on the TV. I would have to go to another device.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#177

Post by j88439h84 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 12:25 AM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #27

j88439h84 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Why should Netflix care if you watch or don’t watch a given movie? What they should care about is whether you stay a subscriber or not. If they try to push too much garbage, and not provide good tools to filter out the crappy content, they’re just wasting people’s time. Users will get frustrated and leave. I did!

If the ratings show you that there aren't any shows you'll like, then you won't watch them. If you don't watch any shows, might as well unsubscribe.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#178

Post by Svoka » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 11:59 AM UTC

So much negativity. Netflix is doing OK. In watch with pleasure their shows and movies and don't even miss any of the mainstream TV. But this is not what my thoughts are: in days of modern data collection votes/reviews are useless. Self-reported data is notoriously unreliable and replacing it with behavioural pattern tracking is smart a smart move.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#179

Post by zouhair » Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #147

zouhair wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine Amazon doing the same.

If I am going to pay for something on Amazon sight unseen, I care about reviews. But I’ve already paid for Netflix. There is no additional monetary commitment.

There is, it's the next month and the next month and so on and so forth.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#180

Post by andrei_says_ » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:22 AM UTC

blubb-fish wrote: post #93

andrei_says_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kanopy is incredible if you want quality curated worldwide content. Free with your library card, at least in LA. Filmstruck for criterion collection and worldwide classical cinema. $80/y. If you have amazon prime you get some blockbusters for free. Some att plans include hbo go. Netflix still has some good documentaries but their new releases have been low quality, except possibly for black mirror.

Kanopy looks quite interesting and seems to be available from Germany. EDIT: I don't get it ... seems like a special service for people registered a library or university !? :/

In the US it works if you have a free library card.

I can’t recommend it enough. The collection is well curated. It has a lot of great educational content as well.