Ask HN: How can Netflix and Amazon Prime be this bad at recommending content?

I’ve literally spent 20 minutes for the xth time in a row looking for anything that remotely captures me on both platforms and in the end did not watch anything. I’ve spent hundreds of hours binging series and movies on both platforms, but neither seems able to use this to suggest anything I like. I’ll probably cancel at least Netflix.

It would be so easy: - Store series I‘ve watched, show me new seasons when they release. - neither does it reliably. - Don’t keep suggesting things I have watched, except in a „watch again“ category. Especially using new pictures, getting me to click on the same stuff only to realize that I have seen this already.

Given the billions invested in these UIs, how can they fail so miserably? What am I missing? This makes no economic sense … or am I just a weird edge case, and this kind of UI works for the majority?

Totally agree, that's why I gave up on it myself and created an aggregator.

https://tomatotree.tv

These services get paid to promote content. Did you think they are going to promote legit content?

Maybe recommendations are harder than we think because our tastes are too arbitrary and unpredictable. Maybe overlapping with someone else's tastes actually predicts nothing about whether there are any more places we will overlap, so it's not the simple data processing problem that we wish it to be.

I've tried all sorts of "people who liked X also enjoyed Y" book and movie lists and it never seems any better than a generic list of decent books and movies.

One of my favorite movies is The Arrival. To me, it's one of the best love stories ever told. Yet when I meet other people who really liked the movie, that wasn't the main draw for them. Perhaps it was the intrigue of the time travel or watching interesting characters navigate a complex conflict or perhaps they liked the provocative questions that it explores.

Perhaps two people liking The Arrival says little about what they have in common at all, thus there's actually no data to go off beyond recommending both parties more critically acclaimed movies. I suspect that this might be the cold reality of recommendations.

Maybe but it’s in their best interest to keep me watching… surfing and leaving without watching should be a very strong sign that something is amiss