
Netflix Pulls the Plug on Feature Designed to Get Kids Addicted to Netflix - Ibethewalrus
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/netflix-patch-testing-kids-binge-watching
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parhamn
Lots of folks/companies are going to lose long-term as a result of bad A/B
testing driven decision making. I suspect the decline of the Facebook feed
might be attributed to this as well (maybe even the recent polls of Trump's
twitter practices[1]). Generally these sorts of things don't really consider
long term fatigue and other important factors, and take short term micro-
benchmark wins as success. On the flip side, some attribute not A/B testing to
the failure of the SnapChat redesign[2].

Is there anyway to do this properly? I can imagine the problem will get worse
and worse as we reduce human evaluation of A/B test results and automatically
make real-time decisions through software and ML.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-shows-trump-appears-
to-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-shows-trump-appears-to-be-losing-
somewhat-supporters-with-antics-2018-12)

[2] [https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/05/snap-evan-spiegel-app-
re...](https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/05/snap-evan-spiegel-app-redesign-
rushed/)

~~~
annadane
I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many
corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real,
actual feedback, they really don't. How hard is it to look at the masses of
complaints about autoplay or notification spam or... any numbers of dark
patterns you could name and decide that you shouldn't do that?

~~~
avip
I'd assume #num_customer_complaints is not part of the A/B metrics. If people
complain but don't follow through with actions A/B probably _should_ ignore
it.

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rhizome
I'm not an MBA, but I imagine there's something where if you wait until you
know for a fact that customers are leaving for specific and known reasons,
you're waiting too long to fix it.

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nolroz
Nothing drove my adoption of prime video faster then the auto play on Netflix.
To their credit I contacted them asking if there was a way to turn it off and
at least spoke with a friendly person about how awful it made the experience.

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Steko
On the other hand my Amazon Video app (Roku in my tv) is slow as hell and I'm
lucky if it doesn't crash (1) on launch, (2) between the homescreen and the
video I selected, (3) between the episode selection and the video actually
playing, (4) sometime in the first 10 minutes, (5) randomly thereafter.

~~~
r3bl
My Android TV box randomly turns itself on and plays a video about once a day,
but man, you have it worse.

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brownbat
Several Netflix UI changes have been pretty anti user. I'm more upset at the
way they mask an incomplete catalog by pretending most Hitchcock films or
French new wave don't even exist. I'm more upset about auto play. I'm more
upset at the retooling of the recommendation engine away from finding gems you
didn't know you would like to just finding ways to convince you to watch
Netflix owned content.

Adding a badge system? Not wonderful, but basically just brings them up to par
with almost anything else on the internet. If we want to oppose badge systems,
and maybe we should, we should start with the entire gaming industry and
social media.

Netflix has so many other sins that they have raised the bar on my outrage.
That in itself is sad...

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dcgudeman
> I'm more upset about auto play.

What's upsetting about autoplay?? If you are truly "upset" about things
netflix does did you ever think maybe you should just not subscribe to it?

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brownbat
> What's upsetting about autoplay??

I should have been clear, I meant the trailers. I'm browsing for specific
content but getting blasted by ads for Netflix originals.

> did you ever think maybe you should just not subscribe to it?

I often don't. They've pushed me from a habitual subscriber to an occasional
subscriber. Perversely that means I'm opting out of providing them ux data.

But in general people can have complaints about something even if it's not a
dealbreaker. For another example, the ux on aging isn't great, but it beats
the alternative.

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polyomino
It’s really painful to browse Netflix, I want to read the descriptions, but I
get a loud trailer with every selection. There’s no way to turn it off afaik,
so I mute my tv whenever the Netflix app is open.

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byron_fast
Netflix's interface was best when they still shipped DVDs in boxes. Ever since
they stopped that it has been a steady descent into the dark patterns of
social / mobile / eyeball counting user interface fail.

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dylan604
When were they in boxes? I thought they always came in the envelopes. Am I not
remembering far enough back?

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byron_fast
Envelopes, whatever. They cared more about interface and recommendations when
they were an e-commerce company and not focused on pushing original content.

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jpollock
This was a silly product feature, it would have killed the quality of their
viewership data.

As soon as you reward someone for watching, they'll figure out how to script
it. They'll load it up, set it going turn off the speaker and the monitor and
go to bed.

It wouldn't have increased my engagement, but it would remove me as a data
point!

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rightbyte
They can probably flag autoplays in the statistics? And, to be fair, Netflix
is not making more money for more streaming, or have I missed something.
Autoplay should actually cost them money for bandwidth wasted in the case the
customer don't want the next episode.

I would not consider autoplay the next episode a dark pattern.

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dylan604
Are we talking about 2 different types of autoplay? Yes, the autoplay of the
next episode feature can be a waste of bandwidth, but that's why they put up
the "are you still watching" after X number of episodes/TRT/whatever. Besides,
it's a nice feature when you are trying to marathon through stuff, especially
when they allow you skip openings/recaps of something you just saw. I pushed
for my company to allow the Play All on DVDs to do this very thing.

It's the autoplay of trailers/previews while browsing their library that is
the most annoying. This is definitely a waste of bandwidth for me. And while
maybe not a dark pattern, it's annoying as much as popup UI stuff or in social
feeds, ads in news, etc.

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40acres
Hindsight is 20/20 but this idea is definitely one of the worst ideas I've
heard when it comes to applied gameification. Perhaps unlocking some sort of
extra content would've been better, but handing out badges is such a
deliberate way to signal to parents that "we are trying to hook your kids".

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bouke
Yuk. Speaking of dark design patterns; the link hijacks my back button in
Safari. So when I go back, I'll get a popover with some ad.

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Tycho
I find it very obnoxious how the Netflix app for Apple TV autoplays previews
of titles when you’re browsing and doesn’t let you disable that behaviour. As
a result I rarely open Netflix except when I already know what I want to
watch.

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B-Con
Autoplay is a cancer that spread across the popular media platforms. Facebook,
YouTube, and Netflix seem to have all abandoned the idea that the app
shouldn't play distracting video and sound _without prompting_. (I haven't
checked Hulu in years, I don't know what they're up to.)

Remember when it was annoying pop-ups that auto-played video and sound? Now
it's a feature to extract as many watch-time minutes from users as possible. I
guarantee it's all A/B testing looking for a few points of uptick in watch
time.

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zamalek
There is none of this nonsense on Hulu (from my phone to Chromecast). I
recently dropped Netflix for Hulu simply because of the more interesting
portfolio.

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bitrrrate
Same here. I literally found myself scrolling Netflix for many, many minutes
on end. It essentially became Facebook. I don’t know if the issue is their
catalog has expanded with so many originals that it’s hard to find something
to watch and or that not having ratings (to tell if something sucks) me to not
watch.

Sure they have some stellar content but they also have a lot of crap.

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zamalek
The Hulu Originals, as sparse as they are, are outstanding across the board.
It's like the early days of Netflix Originals.

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bitrrrate
Plus if I want to watch current TV or more recent shows alongside originals
it’s available on Hulu. Netflix has lost a lot of the more bingeable shows and
it really doesn’t have any current content.

I get that Netflix is a different beast than Hulu in many ways. But for cord
cutters Hulu feels more like the total package.

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2muchcoffeeman
What’s the reasoning behind this?

The subscription is so cheap I don’t care about it. There is enough stuff I
want to watch that I regularly use it.

But if I never used it, why care? Wouldn’t I be the perfect customer? Pays the
subscription but doesn’t consume resources?

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wahnfrieden
People who don’t use it are probably more likely to churn relative to
customers who watch content, and would be less likely to share Netflix with
friends. And that expected loss due to churn is probably more expensive than
the resource costs of a customer who watches. I don’t have the actual answer
but they undoubtedly perform this kind of calculation.

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Shorel
I recently added some plugins to Kodi so I can watch Netflix from within Kodi.

It has improved the experience so much I am actually using it more.

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eeeeeeeeeeeee
What kind of plugins? I’d like to poke around here.

~~~
Shorel
Instructions here:

[https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329767](https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329767)

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baddash
The article wasn't really worth the time. It tried to make a mountain out of a
molehill: Netflix gave badges for watching children's programs as a test of a
feature to make Netflix more appealing to watch. The author of the article
Yohana Desta just loosely connected it to some narrative where "Netflix is
evil and out to zombify your children" for the purpose of, ironically, getting
people to read the article because that narrative is more appealing. Just
another piece of trash online article designed to catch your eye. No
substance, no value. Just throw it in the trash bin and move on.

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hrasyid
Note: The article is from March 2018

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Havoc
Explain to me how there is even such a feature in the first case?

Adults sure, but what decent human sets out to get kids addicted???

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fyfy18
There's a reason why McDonalds gives out toys with Happy Meals and does free
birthday parties for kids...

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zmix
Fuck adults, who even remotely come up with such ideas. They (also) are our
enemies!

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thoughtstheseus
Yeah, the biggest issue here is that no tech giant has burst because of these
unsavory practices yet. It’s tough to say, don’t do this or that, when your
competition will and the consumer won’t care.

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FrojoS
> the company blatantly tells its investors that its competitors aren’t just
> other streaming platforms, but rather literally anything viewers do in their
> leisure time that is not watching Netflix—quite literally including “going
> out to dinner with friends or enjoying a glass of wine with their partner,
> just to name a few.”

Why optimize for screen time? They get payed through monthly subscriptions not
per minute. Shouldn’t they optimize for user satisfaction, or lock in then?

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alok-g
Off the topic:

Beautiful website design! Very elegant use of space above the fold. I likewise
love Nautil.us design too.

Which themes (Wordpress or some static site generator) would be similar?

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Zelphyr
Viewing things like going to dinner “the competition” is, in my opinion,
immoral. This is Netflix serving their shareholders instead of their
customers.

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stuaxo
Reading the part about them wanting to monopolise all leisure time is tipping
me towards unsubscribing next year.

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scarejunba
Article has a brain damaged writing style and takes two pages to tell us what
the feature is. Apparently, you get a badge for watching a show’s entire
series of episodes.

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ChristianBundy
> brain damaged writing style

Can you think of a better way to express this criticism?

~~~
vasco
Having suffered multiple concussions, what's wrong with that phrasing? Is
everything offensive nowadays?

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ihuman
Calling the author brain-damaged doesn't say why the writing is bad, its just
ad hominem

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wongarsu
It's calling the writing style brain-damaged (making it a metaphor).
Similarly, saying "your writing style is beautiful" and "you are beautiful"
express very different meanings. Just as an ugly person can have a beautiful
writing style, a healthy person can write something in a brain-damaged writing
style.

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miguelmota
So is the TV the new parent now? What ever happened to good parenting?

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
Kudos to Netflix. I pay Netflix money every month so I can watch a wide
selection of movies and tv episodes. Apart from the script writing itself, I
don’t want any games played with my attention or my kids attention. This is
the big thing that sets Netflix apart for me from other internet companies: I
know that they are selling me a service and not selling my attention to
others. As long as they keep doing that and have a good selection of movies
and shows they will have my business.

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Joe-Z
>This is the big thing that sets Netflix apart for me from other internet
companies

Oh please. By some miracle every Netflix-produced thing has a >90%-match with
my preferences, yet somehow when I type in movies that I want to watch I find
Netflix had them in their catalogue but never bothered to suggest them to me.

They want you to see self-produced stuff and then a show and not a movie (so
you stay on longer) and not to find the best matches for your taste.

Also, giving them Kudos for not doing something that should have been a no-
starter in the first place sets a pretty low bar for giving someone Kudos.

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Wowfunhappy
So you don't think there's a difference between:

A) A company that makes money from you spending as much time on their website
as possible

B) A website that makes a set amount of money per user because you voluntarily
pay them every month

Company A is not inclined to optimize for user happiness, whereas company B
absolutely is. If these two companies do not take different approaches, then
one or both of them is doing something wrong.

Edit: And for the record, I do think that on the whole, Netflix is behaving
far too much like Company A despite having Company B's business model.

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Joe-Z
Yes, I think there should be a difference between companies A and B and
obviously Netflix has its upsides like no Netflix-unrelated) ads. However...
your edit sums it up pretty nicely ;)

