The one thing I liked most about Netflix back when it was a DVD service was the recommendation system. I could rate things with stars, and Netflix could figure out, with reasonable accuracy, what movies I would consider junk and what I would consider quality, rather than the opinions of the general public.

They have some good shows but their streaming movie selection and recommendation system doesn't hold a candle to what they used to have.

Netflix's DVD service is still active. They just hide it under a separate URL: https://dvd.netflix.com

At some point, Netflix decided my address was fake and cancelled my account, I never bothered to address it since that seems like a silly way to deal with that scenario.

Funnily enough, it's unavailable for me at the moment (location: EU).

I remember that in the beginning the recommendations for the streaming service were pretty good. But they became worse and worse, at least for me.

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.

Maybe it is because netflix doesn't host that much good content?

When they have you dialed in you've already watched everything worth watching so there is no good content left to recommend.

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.

That doesn’t make any sense, getting rid of user reviews makes Netflix streaming less social. Netflix is not social media.

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.

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, 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.

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.

> That doesn’t make any sense, getting rid of user reviews makes Netflix streaming less social. Netflix is not social media.

Yes. You are right. If they are just looking for more engagement removing the reviews will go against that policy.

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.

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.

It might seem unlikely to you, but I would be surprised if it wasn't the most common action. Many people will watch the same thing over and over.

To that end, training the model in their users, it would not surprise me to have that be an emergent recommendation.

Yes, I wish Netflix would hide things I’ve watched more. Obviously if it’s still in My List it should remain, having a Watch it Again section is fine but they should basically disappear from New Releases or lists based on what I liked and be at the end of the list in genre categories.

Try starting a new profile under your account and then selectively thumbs-up shows. It was surprisingly effective for me. Also made sure to clean up the watch history on the Netflix website when it got polluted with someone else's stuff or shows that I regretted watching.

My experience is that watch history affects the recommendation engine more than thumbs up or down.

I reckon internal politics weigh down good ideas.

I've always wondered if they have different incentives around different shows and movies. Clearly they ideally would want everyone to be hooked on their original content, but I wonder if deal structures for other content make watching certain content better for Netflix than others.

It might have more to do with the content suppliers wanting to get into the same market and competing with Netflix.

The disc service still exists, I’m a customer. It still lets users give star ratings and still has user written comments/reviews.

That's why i unsubbed. Could never find anything compelling to watch