A perfect example of this is "Bright," a netflix movie that was critically panned. But people watched it. And now they're making "Bright 2". Are you really suggesting that Netflix should stop making movies that people want to see because critics (professional or otherwise) dislike them?
Two things people need to keep mind:
a). There's no objective way to judge this stuff.
b). The existence of movies like "Bright" does not prevent "high quality films" from being made.
Werner Herzog, Kelly Reichardt, Wong Kar Wai, Michael Haneke, Mia Hanson-Love, etc can keep making movies whether or not "Bright" keeps getting made over and over again. Both kinds of movies have their audience, and that's fine.
You conjured the objection to professional critics out of whole cloth to bolster the weak argument that the opinion of the masses who've watched the movie in question is not _precisely_ what they should be optimizing for.
Views that a user is dissatisfied with is obviously not good for the user. While just as directly profitable for Netflix, it's also something they should seek to minimize in favor of satisfied views (ie views that would lead to good reviews), as it can be a leading indicator for "I don't like much of what I watch on Netflix" --> "I'm going to watch less Netflix". The latter is obviously not something Netflix wants, both in terms of ability to acquire content and potential loss of subscriptions on the margins.
People watching Bright doesn't mean people, on the whole, liked Bright. Making a Bright 2 might just mean that making another was the easiest and cheapest way they had to honour Will Smith's contract, which may have primarily been inked to keep Will Smith out of putting together exclusive content for other streaming services he was in talks with.
The idea that the quality of the content itself is the end-all of the business decision to fund a series or movie is misguided.
Regardless, this misses the point. Consumers are right to push back against lowered content standards, and opaque business choices don't trump that. If Bright was actually good, it would have been fans that were clamouring for Bright 2. They weren't. The fact that good money is following bad doesn't mean the series is suddenly a success.
They have some good shows but their streaming movie selection and recommendation system doesn't hold a candle to what they used to have.
When they have you dialed in you've already watched everything worth watching so there is no good content left to recommend.
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
"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.
Trying to have people watch just enough to keep subscribing is too hard a needle to thread, it’s easier to encourage as much streaming as possible so people feel like they’re getting something for their money. I’m sure bandwidth is a minor cost compared to licensing and producing content.
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, way to much hassle, or “be amazed” crap, they have plenty of that already, but there are a lot high quality channels targeting some niche on the long tail.
We have a public service VOD-service here that hosts some content of that nature.
Yes. You are right. If they are just looking for more engagement removing the reviews will go against that policy.
It seems clear netflix is optimizing for something which is not just "the movie this user would like to watch next".
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.
To that end, training the model in their users, it would not surprise me to have that be an emergent recommendation.
My experience is that watch history affects the recommendation engine more than thumbs up or down.
For a Netflix-produced show, the first season is almost like an extended pilot who's only judge is the viewership instead of some network executives.
I suspect Netflix realizes this. I don't mind them not being suggested, but I'd be really upset if "junk" shows became unavailable. There's a bunch of popular content which I don't enjoy and I wouldn't be surprised if a sizable portion of content I do consume is "junk" according to popular opinion.
A matter of learning to appreciate a genre. For example I like certain types of reality tv which others think is 'stupid'. But first I didn't say all reality tv and also there are things I could point out to show why it is I appreciate it to anyone watching (one is learning from facial expressions at least in people that are not botoxed). By the same token I have no appreciation of sports. I wouldn't call it 'junk' simply because I realize others have learned to really like it. But it's no different than anything else. And the reason most people wouldn't criticize sports is because they see it's widely accepted mainstream. So they are not going to be the one to go out on a limb and call it out. Although they would something else (like shooting guns as a hobby).
>I suspect Netflix realizes this
Yes, because they collect all kinds of user data and have statistics to back up viewership and retention. E.g. the Adam Sandler films they produced come to mind. I don't think anyone would claim they're worthwhile films, but nonetheless Netflix has stated they got lots of views, which is important for their platform, especially to quantify investment returns. My theory is that since Netflix is global, foreign audiences further skew the quality:views statistics, as many such countries' media is dominated by Western media, and "Western" may very well be enough to make it appealing simply because it contrasts with domestic media and arts. But I suppose the West does this as well by awarding an Oscar to the "Best Foreign Film" that might very well not be as acclaimed or otherwise not viewed as such in its own country.
Absolutely. Just like the television programming that Netflix is in the process of replacing!
The problem of junk shows diluting the good shoes would be a UI problem.
It seems like they're deliberately moving toward a shallower understanding of why people watch.
What’s not “worth the time” to one person doesn’t matter. Netflix has enough aggregate data to know what type of content keeps people on versus how much it costs to acquire the content.
The only content that would be “junk” to Netflix is content that doesn’t engage enough viewers to keep down churn.
Their DVD service ( https://dvd.netflix.com ) is far, far superior. All the user reviews are still up on there too, for now.
They probably decrease long time customer satisfaction and drive them to other platforms, but hey, who cares, you can't measure that.
Netflix's bigger problem is that much of its content looks good on the surface, but on closer inspection is not worth the time. A lot of this stuff is produced by Netflix itself. Bill Nye's most recent show comes to mind, but there's a lot more.
Netflix shouldn't have deleted those reviews. It should be using them to clean the junk out of its lineup.