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The Clickbaitification of Netflix

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Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#201

Post by 1123581321 »

bertil wrote: post #134
1123581321 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That response to complaining about Instagram is becoming a frustrating meme because it isn’t true that Instagram doesn’t offer sex appeal to the uninitiated, and rather than discussing that issue, this simple response just shuts down criticism of the social network by embarrassing the person who brings the issue up. Lest you turn the meme on me, I’ll say don’t have an account.

I don’t think this response is dismissive: it’s a technical explanation of what is happening. Understanding it helps us find a solution. Netflix (of Facebook) rates content along embeddings, and highlights content along embeddings that users engage with. If a given user engages with clips featuring people in bikini, that system won’t pass the judgement (one that the author is passing, a judgement you dearly regret, ‘…

Nice response. Unfortunately, the original response is dismissive even though it’s about a technical topic, but it wouldn’t be if discussing just about any other content category and you’re right that those kinds of mechanisms are worthy of analysis.

I haven’t worked at FB but don’t metadata-adding contractors training ML models serve the function of invisible, more complete likes? My understanding is all these large social networks employ or employed human-created content analysis. And then the right amount of noise and divergent suggestions can be added to serve the goals of the network.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#202

Post by Terretta »

bertil wrote: post #134
1123581321 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That response to complaining about Instagram is becoming a frustrating meme because it isn’t true that Instagram doesn’t offer sex appeal to the uninitiated, and rather than discussing that issue, this simple response just shuts down criticism of the social network by embarrassing the person who brings the issue up. Lest you turn the meme on me, I’ll say don’t have an account.

I don’t think this response is dismissive: it’s a technical explanation of what is happening. Understanding it helps us find a solution. Netflix (of Facebook) rates content along embeddings, and highlights content along embeddings that users engage with. If a given user engages with clips featuring people in bikini, that system won’t pass the judgement (one that the author is passing, a judgement you dearly regret, ‘…

“Never show me this again” per film or series, with a web settings based “Reset my Never Show Me list” would do the trick for us.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#204

Post by ansgri »

colechristensen wrote: post #178
dr_dshiv wrote: post #74

Earlier 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…

Quality often escapes measurement. The naive overreliance on finding a number to optimize is an enemy of quality, and is all over the place, and can be boiled down to people being driven by somebody’s need to make a nice powerpoint slide.

Misread ‘overreliance’ as ‘orwelliance’, what a suitable neologism for such topics!

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#205

Post by Terretta »

aaronax wrote: post #192
watwut wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix has literally zero discoverability if you want to go outside what it suggests. If I click stuff that initially seem appealing and then based on seeing decide I dont like it, tough luck. You clicked on it, because you liked name and pic, turned out different thing that you like, but now netflix is forever convinced you want this. I tried to go through documentaries category, because I was in mood for documenta…

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…

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#206

Post by peeters »

reallydontask wrote: post #150
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…

My old boss had multiple profiles sort of curated around topics said that it was a bit of hassle to set up but worked really well for him.

I do something similar, I have my main profile where I watch everything and then a "Random" profile that I regularly clear all viewing history from (if I watch something there instead of switching back to my main profile).

The problem is, as annoying as Netflix's algorithm is on my main profile, the algorithm to shovel shit to users it knows nothing about is even worse.

I honestly don't understand why Netflix had to get rid of the ability to literally just scan the full list of titles, optionally filtered by genre. The home screen is an utter failure, I can never find "My List" or "Continue Watching" because it's a heterogeneous mess and they jump around all the time.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#207

Post by contravariant »

peanut_worm wrote: post #147
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…

Youtube has this same problem very badly. It never suggests me videos that I haven’t already seen.

In the case of Youtube I've basically given up trying to get decent recommendations. At this point I just hope it keeps showing videos of the people I've subscribed to.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#208

Post by TuringNYC »

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…

>> But behind the scenes some of us had this thought that our observations only amounted to short-term gains.

I'm convinced this must be the case at Facebook. I used to love the newsfeed but it has steadily declined so much for me that I stopped using it. It used to highlight a wide variety of friends updates. Then, only starred "close friends" and now mostly junk news items. Amazing things happen for friends (weddings, births) and I dont hear about it (no they aren't blocking me, i've confirmed).

I can to individually to each person's profile and see everything, but how realistic is that.

I'm sure there was a short boost as people checked more and more to news that didn't appear. Now, you check five times, you get the same 30 newsfeed items over and over and then "you're all caught up".

I can totally see the short term boost and long term decline with such a strategy.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#209

Post by contravariant »

monkeybutton wrote: post #196
throwawaysea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was very confused by what was happening when I encountered that screen. Is there a way to block the overriding of back buttons, particularly on smartphones?

Its called back button hijacking. How it works or why such an abusable feature exists is a mystery to me though.

It's probably there as a consequence of single page web apps needing the ability to store your location on the webpage.

Maybe this could have been done in a way less prone to abuse, but basically you can't really trust your browser history to reflect what you think it is.

Re: The Clickbaitification of Netflix

#210

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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

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 this stuff, the battle's already lost as the insanity becomes normal.

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