How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV

Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by r_smart on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @01:59PM (#17861132)

Just simply occasionally injecting something randomly chosen from the catalogue would probably do wonders. I do find that these systems as they currently exist tend to sate your appetite for a particular thing until you are fatigued by it and no longer wish to engage. Maybe it's a sign of how rudimentary their recommendation systems really are, as you say. My use of Netflix and Youtube have both dropped off precipitously because of this over-feeding of my appetite for certains types of content.

However, I've also gone back to Netflix DVD. They have such a massive catalogue of movies and it seems easier to just skim through genres and find weird gems.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by pishpash on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @02:25PM (#17861405)

You can inject your own novelty. Youtube does the same thing and after a while I just clear out its recommendations and start over.

The non-customized (viewed in incognito) main page of Youtube that is the recommendation for the average viewer is even worse, nobody should ever touch that horror show.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by samstave on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @07:37PM (#17863914)

Ublock origin with all filters enabled is the only thing that makes Youtube usable in my opinion.

Youtube is a horrific service. The recommendations are terrible, the UX sucks, too many ads, they dont know how to use the sreen real-estate.

I freaking hate youtube.

WRT to real-estate, I see that the video I am wanting is taking up ~20% of the screen, then there is a list of completely unrelated content, and I have to click to see the date of the submitted video.

The UX is different on every single device. Phone, machine, ipad, browsers differ... its just a mess.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by r_smart on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @02:33PM (#17861515)

Yeah, the front page of Youtube is an abomination. Reddit isn't much better.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by zaarn on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @03:36AM (#17866418)

I think it would rather help if there was two buttons; "watched" and "hide". Both remove the item permanently from the visible catalog for you, "watched" adds it to a profile-private list of things you have watched.

This would help me to quickly sort out if I would consider watching something and I could reduce my watching list to the things I'm actually currently watching instead of abusing it for "might watch at some point".

If I have watched something I don't want it to be recommended to be and if I don't like something I don't want to see it again.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by tomnipotent on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @10:05PM (#17864793)

> Just simply occasionally injecting something randomly chosen from the catalogue would probably do wonders

This is a standard ML practice, otherwise ad networks would be stuck showing you the same ads (even though it feels that way sometimes). I'm willing to wager large sums of money that Netflix has tested EVERY idea mentioned anywhere in this thread and many others you couldn't guess.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by r_smart on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @10:32AM (#17868462)

You're probably right, but then the recommendations seems to just boil down to what other people are watching, what Netflix has recently produced and things in the same genre as what I'm watching a lot of at the moment. Seems like a pretty rudimentary output for such a sophisticated system.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by lancesells on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @07:55PM (#17873080)

I think there would probably be value in curated "playlists" done by actual people.

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Re:How Netflix outsmarted everyone else in TV by r_smart on Thursday August 30, 2018 @01:04PM (#17878384)

Steam does this. I honestly didn't get a ton of use out of it, but I only really followed Jim Sterling, Total Biscuit and TB's 30 FPS Locked curation list. The latter was the only one I found particularly useful because it turns out I have pretty different tastes from both of them and just enjoyed their critique.

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