OTOH, that you even chose to watch a movie is a sign that you are interested in the genre. Just because I abruptly stopped watching “Star Trek IX”, doesn’t mean that I have abandoned the sci-fi genre or even Star Trek

I have a friend who shares my account since I stay with him when I am in the UK. It isn't worth the effort to have two profiles.

So, he likes horror movies and will watch any horror regardless of any signal that it's going to be poor. You can look at the viewing history and see he rarely goes beyond 5 minutes of watching any of them.

I watch Netflix regularly throughout the year, he watches in phases that last a week or two and then nothing at all for months at a time (for reasons that should seem obvious by now).

As a non-horror movie aficionado, I can say with certainty that only 2% of horror movies are ever worth watching and only 50% of these are any good. As a consequence, my personal viewing history includes almost no movies in this genre.

My favoured genre is drama and I normally watch all the way through.

You should be able to guess by now that I should rarely be recommended horror movies but, alas, Netflix thinks otherwise.

Btw. I also rate movies I watch - my friend doesn't.

I’m confused — you honestly expect Netflix’s model to have figured out that your profile is actually 2 people based on what you believe to be regular and obvious cyclical patterns? I would have to imagine that this is a relative edge case for Netflix, and there is no obvious answer for what to do with someone who mostly likes drama but for some reason, goes on a periodic horror binge.

I assume that Netflix’s model has the premise that profiles aren’t in fact, very easy to create. I have separate profiles for my parents, as well as a test profile to see what happens when a user only seems to like the “Human Centipede” trilogy.

2 people but only one consistent regular user. My recommendations are heavily biased towards the occasional user - who is also giving very strong negative feedback?

It doesn't bother me since I know what I like. There are not that many good films that I'm not going to find them anyway.

Someone, or a group of people, are being paid for nothing though. I don't know anyone who subscribes to Netflix because of their recommendation algorithm.

> as a test profile to see what happens when a user only seems to like the “Human Centipede” trilogy.

And? You can't just leave us hanging on that.

After creating the account and immediately giving a thumbs up to the trilogy, I've only occasionally logged in and feigned "interest" by clicking on the movies as if I'm about to watch them, or that I enjoy re-reading the synopses. The recommendations are all normal and not noticeably feces-related. But maybe I haven't yet met the threshold for the model to consider me a particularly engaged (or real) user.

I feel like watching 20 minutes of a movie and then downvoting should be a strong indicator. This does not appear to be the case. In fact, it seems to be more likely to appear as the first suggestion when I do this.