<story><title>Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged</title><url>https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-too-much-content-could-be-hurting-netflixs-subscriber-numbers-2019-07-19</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>isbjorn16</author><text>My problem with Netflix isn&amp;#x27;t the slate of shows and movies it has in its catalog. It&amp;#x27;s definitely not as nice as it used to be, but there are a jillion and a half shows and movies out there.&lt;p&gt;My problem is that Netflix has taken note that we watch anime a few times a week, which doubtless means we want every single band&amp;#x2F;carousel&amp;#x2F;whatever to be about anime.  New Anime, Critically Acclaimed Anime, Popular Anime, Watch it Again Anime, Anime Where Characters Wear Hats, Anime Where Characters Float in Hats, and Anime About Hat Making.&lt;p&gt;For the love of all let me get some other options in the fucking list before I lose my mind.  I like comedies, action movies, sci-fi, documentaries, and historical dramatizations or historical fictions too, you know.  Not everything has to have a talking cat in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adrianmonk</author><text>Once upon a time, Netflix gave away $1 million to contest winners in an attempt to get the best recommendation algorithm they could ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Netflix_Prize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Netflix_Prize&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;p&gt;Now the recommendations are just not that great. It&amp;#x27;s like they&amp;#x27;re not trying too hard because they are comfy in their market position.&lt;p&gt;I have never watched &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; anime at all (really not my thing), but Netflix keeps recommending it to me despite the fact that I haven&amp;#x27;t taken the bait once.&lt;p&gt;Also it recommends shows to me that it should know through history I&amp;#x27;ve already watched every episode of. Maybe that&amp;#x27;s on purpose since people watch things again, but I still don&amp;#x27;t find it useful.&lt;p&gt;Also it leaves stuff in &amp;quot;Continue Watching&amp;quot; for like a month after I give it a thumbs down rating and remove it from &amp;quot;My List&amp;quot;. That should be a strong enough signal to act on.&lt;p&gt;And it seems to recommend stuff based on stuff that I only &amp;quot;watched&amp;quot; because it auto-played. That should &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; be a strong enough signal to act on.&lt;p&gt;The overall point is they seem to have several obvious opportunities to be smarter with content discovery, but they&amp;#x27;re not taking them.</text></comment>
<story><title>Netflix CEO may have missed the real reason why US subscriber numbers plunged</title><url>https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-too-much-content-could-be-hurting-netflixs-subscriber-numbers-2019-07-19</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>isbjorn16</author><text>My problem with Netflix isn&amp;#x27;t the slate of shows and movies it has in its catalog. It&amp;#x27;s definitely not as nice as it used to be, but there are a jillion and a half shows and movies out there.&lt;p&gt;My problem is that Netflix has taken note that we watch anime a few times a week, which doubtless means we want every single band&amp;#x2F;carousel&amp;#x2F;whatever to be about anime.  New Anime, Critically Acclaimed Anime, Popular Anime, Watch it Again Anime, Anime Where Characters Wear Hats, Anime Where Characters Float in Hats, and Anime About Hat Making.&lt;p&gt;For the love of all let me get some other options in the fucking list before I lose my mind.  I like comedies, action movies, sci-fi, documentaries, and historical dramatizations or historical fictions too, you know.  Not everything has to have a talking cat in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>randrews</author><text>I have this problem with ML and recommendation systems in general. I hope this fad goes away soon and people go back to making simple, understandable, show-me-the-newest-stuff feeds.</text></comment>