
Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website - cpeterso
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/netflix-user-reviews-deleted-1201996038/
======
apo
_It may also be the case that negative reviews of movies, TV shows, and stand-
up specials did more to dissuade potential viewers than positive reviews did
them to draw in; ..._

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.

~~~
trgv
Whether a show, book, movie, song, etc is "worth the time" is entirely
subjective. There are million dollar franchises based on material that I don't
consider worth my time. But you better believe that stuff is worth Netflix's
time.

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.

~~~
wutbrodo
None of this is relevant though. You're comparing critical acclaim with the
opinion of the masses, while what's being discussed is the reaction of the
masses based on pre-viewing marketing (views) vs the reaction of the masses
_after_ having seen the movie (reviews).

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.

------
electrograv
_> Netflix said in a statement that “the reviews and our redesigned ratings
system (thumbs up/down) never contributed to how we approach personalizing
recommendations for members and writing a ‘bad’ review never had any bearing
to whether a title was recommended to another viewer or not.”_

THAT explains why Netflix keeps recommending me garbage quality content! I had
a suspicion this was true, but couldn’t imagine anyone would make such a
terrible design choice: 95% of content Netflix recommends me now is
unwatchably bad in content quality (including Netflix originals too, of
course).

IMO abolishing user ratings is quite probably the worst possible solution to
losing user engagement due to low quality content.

~~~
scarface74
How in the world does this make sense? The entire competitive advantage of
having the scale and user information that Netflix has is to be able to do
personal recommendations by recommending shows based on what others with
similar taste like. Heck, I know very little about big data and even I have
walked through a simple sentiment analysis proof of concept demo to rate
comments as positive or negative.

~~~
always_good
Why take someone's word for what they like or don't like when you know what
they actually watch?

~~~
iforgotpassword
How do you know a user liked a movie or TV show after watching it? I think a
movie has to be really really bad for people to actually stop halfway through.
For TV shows it might be more likely that people drop out after a couple
episodes but if it's just "meh" or the show's finale was disappointing, how do
your algorithms know?

~~~
bastijn
They won't watch the next show in the same category or series. Or the next.
Seeing one 'meh' to the end is one thing, seeing two to the end is unlikely,
seeing three and they are lying in their comments. I fact I believe minutes
watched are more accurate than ratings. Very few people take time to rate, and
of that category even less rate properly for algorithms to make sense.

Still, they could have left it in and just collect the data. Even if for
providing a false sense/feeling of choice and ownership in the matter ;).

------
hak8or
Wow, what a massive total waste, shame on netflix. In the early days people
relied heavily on those reviews, and spent hours writing those reviews. I
understand them wanting to keep that data for data analysis purposes, and I
understand them wanting to not share it, but to delete it?

At least make it rate limited tied to a paid Netflix account or something, not
wipe it away for ever. What a shame.

~~~
parent5446
How is it a shame if nobody uses the reviews and they're basically useless?
Sounds like they're just deleting an unmaintained and unused feature.

~~~
evfanknitram
Maybe it's just me but my experience is that except for the actual streaming
(after you started to watch a movie), the Netflix UI is super bad. It
recommends movies which I hate, it shows series which have been on Netflix for
years under "New on Netflix", it doesn't provide any usable sorting, the
searching is crap and so on. I would put zero faith in a statement by Netflix
saying that something is "useless". The actual streaming experience is super
good but when it comes to everything else they seem clueless to me.

~~~
derefr
I find it interesting that there isn't yet a sort of "streaming-service
library discovery/manager" app that doesn't do any streaming of its own, but
rather just offers a good discovery UI for the streaming services you connect
it to, where clicking "watch" in the service deep-links to the individual
content item in the respective streaming app.

This has been done to death in other content areas (I think there are more
emulated-game library browsers than there are emulators!) so why not for
streaming services? Is it that the streaming services don't expose the deep-
linking ability?

~~~
prades
This app already exists for Netflix (25 countries) and Hulu:

[https://www.coollector.com/#netflix](https://www.coollector.com/#netflix)

------
ghaff
It's hard for me to get too upset. Personally, it seems a bit conspiracy
theory to think it's people might read negative reviews. Seems more likely it
was a poorly used resource and Netflix didn't see the value in continue to
support, maintain, and screen it.

That aside, it points to a couple of issues.

There is a lot of bad content on Netflix. It never had a good film catalog and
their TV strategy has clearly evolved from at least a supposed "mine data to
create great shows" (which always seemed a bit unlikely create all sorts of
content, including niche content, throw it at the wall, see what sticks, and
plump up the catalog in any case.

Second. No one has come close to solving recommendation. If Amazon, Apple,
Netflix, etc. can't (and Facebook ads are a form of recommendation too), I
think it's fair to conclude it's a really hard problem that no one knows how
to solve well at scale. There are a few people whose taste in movies are very
well aligned with mine. But that's not a general solution.

~~~
derefr
> their TV strategy has clearly evolved from at least a supposed "mine data to
> create great shows" (which always seemed a bit unlikely create all sorts of
> content, including niche content, throw it at the wall, see what sticks, and
> plump up the catalog in any case.

Are you sure? I feel like Netflix is making more data-driven decisions now
than ever. If they aren't producing a constant crop of "HBO-quality" show, I
would guess that that's because the data is telling them not to.

Consider: television networks have been in Malthusian competition for decades.
You'd think the quality of the median TV show would increase. Instead, it
seems like the quality of the _best_ TV shows (on every network) consistently
increases, but the _median_ show stays the same. Why?

I would personally hypothesize that it's down to a not-oft-mentioned part of
consumption psychology: people don't actually _want_ to consume an indefinite
stream of high-quality content that they need to give their full attention to
at all times, any more than they want an indefinite stream of world-class
meals or a radio station that consists only of their favourite music. Nobody
has the time, or emotional capacity, to devote to consuming it. People want
"bland" content just as much (if not more!) than "rich" content.

And, as licensing deals fall through and Netflix loses both bland and rich
content from their catalogue, they have to replace _both_ of those with their
own offerings to keep viewers satisfied.

(Have you ever looked in the fridge, and seen that you have the ingredients to
make several great meals—but those meals, you are planning to have at specific
times with your significant other later in the week; and then realized that
you have "nothing to eat" because there are no _non_ -great meals you can
make? Consider the television equivalent. That's the problem Netflix is trying
to avoid here.)

~~~
ghaff
Sure. They need a variety of content. The number of heavily serialized "great"
shows I'm going to watch that may require me to rewatch once or twice and head
to the recaps and discussion boards to totally grok what happened this week is
extremely limited.

But beyond that, while I'm sure Netflix uses data to allocate money for genres
and other types of planning (and help determine whether to keep shows on the
air--maybe it's a small audience but they watch every episode 3 times), shows
are ultimately creative processes. Casts don't click. Leads become toxic. The
audience just doesn't warm to it. No matter what the data said.

~~~
derefr
> shows are ultimately creative processes

Sure, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm not claiming that
Netflix is doing what would look like "intentionally _trying and failing_ to
make good content"—because that would produce qualitatively _different_
content than the kind I'm referring to.

An attempt at rich food that _tries and fails_ isn't bland food; it's _bad_
rich food. A bad lasagna or a bad steak isn't going to suddenly taste like
nothing. It'll just taste weird. Whereas a bland food is, say, a cucumber
sandwich on white bread. Purposefully nothing-y. It won't ever taste exciting
_or_ weird.

Netflix is making "Netflix Original" bland TV, purposefully. Daytime soaps,
"ghost investigations", prison documentaries, and other low-budget schlock.
The data says people want it, just as much as the data says people want rich
TV like Black Mirror or OitNB or whatever-else.

------
api
I've noticed for a while that Netflix seems to be making it a lot harder to
rate content and find high quality content. It's like they want you to watch
junk. Maybe junk has lower licensing fees so it increases their margins.

I've found some amazing gems digging through Netflix and relying on user
ratings. They were films I probably never would have found otherwise. A few
somewhat recent examples that come to mind are _Enter the Void_ , _The
Discovery_ , _Upstream Color_ , and _A Dark Song_.

~~~
throwaway0255
> Maybe junk has lower licensing fees so it increases their margins.

It has to be something like this. Licensing fees based on views, or maybe the
license terms stipulate that they're not allowed to promote it or something.

Often I'll be browsing around in some deep page in Netflix and randomly see
some AAA major Oscar title that's not mentioned or promoted anywhere. It just
makes no sense.

Maybe these are expensive views, so Netflix reserves surfacing them only for
people who have taken actions that indicate they're having trouble finding
anything they like?

To kind of "rescue" users who are on the verge of cancelling?

~~~
cptnapalm
I've noticed that too. Looking and looking for a certain type of thing, can't
find anything worthwhile until, randomly, something good in the you might like
trio which should have obviously shown up in the genre browsing.

------
rdtsc
I can see why they would do it. When I cancelled them 2 years ago their
selection was kind of limited. Lots B movies and average or below titles. A
lot of reviews were the same. Reading made me not watch a lot of them.
Deleting the reviews hides the below average movie selection under the carpet
in a way.

~~~
ajmurmann
I believe this as well. Since years now I have the very strong suspicion that
they aren't all optimizing for me finding something great but rather to waste
my time on their platform and hide that I in fact might have already watched
everything I'll like. But then I'll sometimes find something in there only
after some digging that obviously should have been heavily suggested to me.

~~~
meesterdude
That's exactly what it feels like for me too! I get suggested all sorts of
terrible stuff, but sometimes I'll be digging about in a category and find
something interesting. But then the show has 7 seasons and netflix only has
season 3, and calls it season 1.

I've started to just let the lapse in membership run for longer; that way i
can (hopefully) come back to some worthwhile stuff in 6 months.

------
humantiy
> “Netflix customers were able to leave reviews on Netflix.com until mid-2018,
> when reviews were removed due to declining use.”

I still think this was done on purpose to an extent. In the beginning the
reviews were really easy to find when you were looking to see if you wanted to
spend time watching something. As they "upgraded" their UI on the web they
really buried it and made it more difficult to find. I had to use the netflix
help a few times just to find it near the end. And with most people now using
the app on a smart tv or roku, fire tv, ect, they never integrated the reviews
into those apps. So to me its saying declining use is of course it was, the
only way to get to it was having a laptop handy to check. At that point you
can read reviews from any other site.

------
blubb-fish
Are there alternatives to Netflix? Amazon Prime certainly isn't. Serious
question - especially for German audience. I would like something with older
and more niche movies. F.x. on Netflix Germany neither is nor ever was a
Fellini flick ... actually "Federico Fellini" is not even suggested upon
searching for "Fellini".

[https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-
radio/shortcuts/2017/oct/...](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-
radio/shortcuts/2017/oct/23/more-niche-than-netflix-nine-specialist-streaming-
services-you-should-try)

\- Fandor: only US and CAN

\- Mubi: also Germany

\- Filmstruck: not Germany

\- Yaddo: apparently worldwide

(skipped what didn't appeal to me)

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Kind of. I run Streama
[https://github.com/streamaserver/streama](https://github.com/streamaserver/streama)

Combined with ripped dvds and/or pirate bay, can make for a refreshing video
streaming service you own and host.

~~~
628C6l0
Chinese here. How do you guys reconcile your own torrenting, usage of sci-hub
etc with the tendency to portray us as monsters for "theft of American
intellectual property"?

I'm granting that we did (and on a large enough scale) for the sake of
argument.

Is the idea that it's okay to steal so long as it's stealing from the rich and
powerful (netflix, disney, record labels whatever)? If so, do you see how that
argument might be something _we_ can also appeal to?

(I would add "genuinely curious", but I feel it's become a device not for
canceling for but for indicating sarcasm, so I won't do it)

~~~
burfog
I don't think normal Americans would portray you as monsters for this. Of
course, the MPAA and RIAA would complain, since it is their business.

There are other types of intellectual property that are much more likely to
upset normal Americans. This includes trade secrets, trademarks, and possibly
patents. Trade secrets are stolen by hacking, by forcing American companies to
give them up in exchange for market access, and by employees who fail to abide
by non-disclosure agreements. Trademarks are stolen by simply making clones,
or sometimes by unauthorized operation of a legitimate factory in China. For
example, I have a USB power adapter marked "SAMSUNG" that clearly isn't made
by Samsung. This is very common, and these devices often catch fire or damage
the electronics that are attached. Patents can sometimes be an issue, with
Chinese companies able to evade enforcement.

------
mygo
Let's be real. They didn't delete the user reviews. They just stopped showing
the reviews to the user.

------
singularity2001
While not legally 'censorship' we should develop a culture where such
arbitrary deletions are heavily frowned upon.

------
was_boring
I'm glad they did this because: 1) I didn't realize there were written
reviews; and 2) I have found Netflix's move to up or down, and a percent
recommendation a good move. For instance, I'm a sucker for space movies of any
sort, I just love them, and they have picked up on that and recommended me a
few movies I would have never watched if I just went to rotten tomatoes. I
don't need social validation to enjoy or not enjoy content.

It's not a perfect system, but it's better then anything else out there.

------
tokyodude
I found the star ratings useful and wish they were on the main browsing page
so I do have to click into a movie to see the details.

That said I actually loath Netflix's UI. I'm sure they have some metric which
shows it works but I hate hate hate the instant preview/playback. I want to
browse quietly reading the descriptions and then possibly checking the
internet but the distraction of Netflix starting the auto play makes that
impossible for me so I end up just turning it off and googling for things to
watch. This usually fails so I watch nothing.

My current pattern is wait for a friend to recommend something and then
subscribe and a few days later cancel my subscription. In the month I have the
service i rarely turn it on the browse because of the aforementioned issue.
When I do convince myself to try to browse the issue comes up again and I just
turn it off. I probably pay for 1 to 3 months a year. Kudos to Netflix for not
forcing a yearly subscription otherwise I'd just find other sources

------
novaRom
For me, the value of Spotify is much higher than Netflix, because it gives me
access to the best music while former contains a small collection of mostly
shitty TV shows. I cancelled Netflix few years ago and never regret it. There
are much better video content providers, for example The Great Courses Plus is
my favorite even if it's twice more expensive than Netflix

------
amelius
Offtopic: there's nothing more hilarious than to read the reviews after having
watched a bad movie. However, I use IMDB for that.

~~~
__s
IMDB also got rid of their forums. Such gold in there

------
throwaway0255
The biggest problem with the Netflix content discovery algorithm is that it's
in total conflict with Netflix's brand management, and brand management will
always win.

By far their most prominent platform for brand impressions is what the user
sees when they first log in and view their home page. So what displays on that
screen is of vital importance to their brand management team, and what kind of
content they associate with that brand is everything.

Which is the reason why when I log into Netflix as a middle-aged software
developer who watches war documentaries, true crime series, and old episodes
of Frasier, I see a wall of hot focus-grouped twenty-somethings pulling their
hair out and trying to fuck each other.

Because Netflix is young and cool and I just need to get with it, and if I
can't get with it then that's my problem. Because Netflix is _fierce_. Netflix
is _the pulse of a new generation_.

------
karolg
I didn't know until today that there were user reviews on Netflix.

~~~
noitsnot
I started the free trial maybe two years ago. I can't recall reviews. I
remember the star ratings, though.

------
Svoka
So much negativity. Netflix is doing OK. In watch with pleasure their shows
and movies and don't even miss any of the mainstream TV. But this is not what
my thoughts are: in days of modern data collection votes/reviews are useless.
Self-reported data is notoriously unreliable and replacing it with behavioural
pattern tracking is smart a smart move.

------
joshuaheard
I used to read reviews on a movie I was on the fence about watching. I used
the 5 star rating for the same reason. Now I have no information to guide me
and in the last month, I have started several movies and stopped watching
after 10 minutes because they sucked. Then there's the week delay to send in
the DVD and have another one arrive by mail. This makes the service worse in
my opinion.

~~~
AquaMorph
Why not just look the movie up on an actual review site?

~~~
joshuaheard
I could, but I use Netflix on Tivo, so it's right there on the TV. I would
have to go to another device.

------
cptnapalm
Recently, I watched a few horror movies because they got good ratings (which I
interpret as good-for-a-horror-movie, rather than good per se). Between seeing
the rating, watching (half usually) of them and going to rate it myself, the
ratings had gone from 4-5 stars to 1-2. That's a big drop in star rating in a
period of, at most, 90 minutes, usually, 40.

------
doiwin
For personalized movie recommendations
[http://www.gnovies.com](http://www.gnovies.com) is a nice alternative.

I wonder if movie reviews could be done via ActivityPub somehow.

------
gdsdfe
Netflix's stupid UX and recommendation engine, will be the end of it!

------
phobosdeimos
I love Netflix, I prefer shows being payed for by subs not Burger advertising
agencies. Regular cable TV is about the eyeballs- the shows are just a way to
get them.

------
dig1
Now someone needs to create a site that will collect reviews from imdb,
metacritic or rotten tomatoes, only Netflix related. Will this be legal after
all?

------
JCharante
Wow I've never seen parallax ads before.. I kinda like them, as long as
they're in the minority so they're refreshing.

