[HN Gopher] Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
___________________________________________________________________
Turning Off Autoplaying Previews
Author : dylan604
Score : 301 points
Date : 2020-02-06 21:29 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (help.netflix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (help.netflix.com)
| [deleted]
| Nican wrote:
| This might be related to a popular reddit thread that got 28.5k
| upvotes on reddit the other day:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/exkrij/you_know...
| ccostes wrote:
| Getting 5 seconds when the credits start to stop it from auto-
| playing the next episode bothers me sooo much more than the
| previews (also not a fan of those, but mute is good enough for
| that).
| ehsankia wrote:
| I love how the news of it being changed is also on top of HN,
| /r/television and /r/movies right now (and probably more
| subreddits too).
|
| Goes to show how hated autoplay was.
| ukyrgf wrote:
| I imagine a large percentage of discussions about Netflix on
| Reddit have at least 1 upvoted comment about autoplay. I think
| you are an outlier if it doesn't bother you.
| fmajid wrote:
| I'd settle for a "I don't ever want to see this movie, do not
| show it to me again" button. But of course, if we used it to
| winnow away the chaff, it would show in stark detail how sparse
| their catalog really is.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I transferred my to-watch list from IMDB to reelgood.com (wrote
| a script to do it), which shows what is available on what
| service I subscribe to. This has cut out the time I spend
| browsing the catalog.
| ben174 wrote:
| I was actually watching TV last night and found myself hesitant
| to switch from Hulu to Netflix because deep in my head I was
| saying "oh that's the one with the noisy menus".
| _sbrk wrote:
| Thank the Almighty Bob. About time they did this.
| 4ec0755f5522 wrote:
| I hated this SO MUCH when they rolled it out but now I love it,
| because I can get a quick sense of the look of the actual movie
| instead of trying to judge it based on the cover or thumbnail. I
| think it's actually a good use of video in a video app and makes
| sense and a fix of sorts to the discovery problem.
|
| But happy it's optional for those who never warmed up to it.
| pgrote wrote:
| Excellent.
|
| Now, I'd like to see them do this:
|
| 1) Quit emailing me/sending notifications to keep watching shows
| I start and don't like.
|
| 2) Bring back a purposeful, decent recommendation system.
|
| 3) Allow filters so only movies/shows in your language or dubbed
| in your language are shown. (...or just some kind of filter.)
|
| Thanks.
| mr_custard wrote:
| The in-app notifications are nnoying for sure, but I've never
| received emails from them.
|
| Email prefs are here: https://www.netflix.com/EmailPreferences
|
| Marketing prefs are here:
| https://www.netflix.com/MarketingCommunications
| pgrote wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I should have clarified my response. When I contacted netflix
| they told me you cannot unsubscribe to one part of the
| notifications ... it is all or nothing. So, if you turn it
| off you aren't alerted when new shows are added, etc.
|
| This is what it looks like with an episode list at the
| bottom.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/gpcrgeI.png
| jonplackett wrote:
| Thanks Netflix!
|
| Next feature request:
|
| AUTO-SKIP-ALL-INTROS-AND-RECAPS-WHILE-BINGING
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| I like the intros too many series. The intro to House of Cards
| really set the mood for me.
| skynetv2 wrote:
| I like to watch intros and recaps sometimes. I like the current
| design where I can choose to skip if I want to.
| mirroregami wrote:
| ______FINALLY __ __ __
| paxys wrote:
| Now PLEASE give an option to turn off autoplaying the next
| episode like 3 seconds into the end credits.
| Smaug123 wrote:
| That is an option demonstrated on that very Netflix help page,
| if I understand your request correctly.
| myhf wrote:
| There is an option for "off" or "on (when the credits start)"
| but not "when the music finishes" or "when the video
| finishes".
| paxys wrote:
| Yeah, this. I don't mind autoplay, but end credits (and the
| accompanying music) are an integral part of a show for me.
| The Witcher, which is Netflix's own show, had amazing
| original songs in end credits which were all skipped by
| default.
| aidos wrote:
| I was excited then for a second but I don't think this means what
| I think it does. Does this mean it's possible to disable the auto
| play on trailers for something unrelated when you finish a
| series?
|
| I literally finished Bojack Horseman after years of watching 30
| minutes ago. End it's left hanging there in a poignant moment but
| I have to jump up to stop the trailer for god knows what, and the
| a minute later I have to do it again after the credits have
| finished. Years of investment in a show, but I'm not allowed 10
| seconds to stop and digest it. (PS amazing series)
| brundolf wrote:
| I'd just stopped using Netflix unless I knew exactly what I
| wanted to watch. When I had to use it, I'd bounce around between
| tiles constantly to prevent the clips from playing, knowing full
| well that they must record every interaction you have with the
| app. For once I was glad they did.
| Ayraa wrote:
| Finally! Whenever Netflix features a scary show or movie on their
| homepage and their preview auto-plays, it always make me jump.
| g051051 wrote:
| I'd love to see the tracking for the rate that people turn it
| off.
| mrbonner wrote:
| Great! The best feature of years of Machine Learning practices.
| The machine finally learns what I want.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Official announcement:
| https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1225506511184703493
|
| > Some people find this feature helpful. Others not so much.
|
| > We've heard the feedback loud and clear -- members can now
| control whether or not they see autoplay previews on Netflix.
| all_blue_chucks wrote:
| Bless you, OP.
| minikites wrote:
| I was satisfied personally when they added a mute button for
| previews, but I'm glad an even "stronger" option now exists.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| Didn't ever expect to see this capability.
|
| A bit unrelated, but: anyone remember in the "early" days when
| Netflix held competitions to develop the most accurate
| recommendation and ratings engines? Giving out million dollar
| prizes? And held possibly state-of-the-art tech for this?
|
| And then one day completely gutted the star rating system,
| replacing it with a much-despised "thumbs up/down" system, giving
| up their "so good it's magical" recommendations for something
| that feels less accurate than a coin flip...
| mr_toad wrote:
| I only recall them ever giving out one one million dollar prize
| on Kaggle. As far as I know they never implemented the winning
| system because it would have been too difficult to engineer the
| pipeline.
|
| I'm not sure whether you're trying to imply that non-ML based,
| non-personalised simple average ratings are better or worse
| than ML. Regardless, I have nothing nice to say about
| anecdotes.
| loudandskittish wrote:
| I really don't get what's up with that...2012 or so, Netflix
| was suggesting movies I'd never heard of that I ended up
| loving. Now when I log in, it just demands I watch Family Guy
| (ugh) ...and starts auto-playing it, of course.
| psychometry wrote:
| They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either generated
| better training data or more training data. They wouldn't
| intentionally make their recommendations worse just for the
| sake of it.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| > They obviously determined that thumbs up/down either
| generated better training data or more training data.
|
| I'm guessing that the definition of "better" changed at some
| point, perhaps when they went from 1-5 stars to +-1 thumbs.
|
| In Netflix's early years, I was confident that their
| classifier's goal was to predict my future rating for a given
| video. I.e., it was part of a larger system designed around
| my viewing pleasure.
|
| Around the time they switched to thumbs, I started suspecting
| the classifier was being used to manipulate me towards
| optimizing Netflix's profitability, instead of my viewing
| pleasure.
| EpicEng wrote:
| >They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations worse
| just for the sake of it. reply
|
| As has been mentioned before, there is at least some
| motivation for doing so. One, it means their originals don't
| rate below third party titles (as far as we can tell), and
| two, as they lose content the average rating of what's left
| will likely fall.
| cle wrote:
| > They wouldn't intentionally make their recommendations
| worse just for the sake of it.
|
| Why not? Every big platform that I know of has eventually
| done this with either 1p or "sponsored" content (Google,
| Amazon, Apple, etc.). In this case their incentive would be
| to push their own content above 3p content. What matters to
| them is their revenue, not maximizing the accuracy of their
| recommendations model.
| elamje wrote:
| A small detail many forget is that Netflix pays very different
| prices for different shows. I don't know the exact negotiated
| rates, but basically you can envision a blockbuster is going to
| cost more per stream then a Netflix Original. Eventually
| Netflix was/is bound to game their own recommendations since it
| saves them costs.
|
| The only case I can see where this incentive doesn't exist is
| for shows that Netflix pays a fixed price to stream rather than
| a unit price per stream.
| bostonfincs wrote:
| I believe most if not all shows/movies on Netflix are
| acquired through a general use license for a period of time
| rather than a "royalty scheme" based on number of views. So
| while they definitely want to promote original content as in
| the long run it saves them money (in license acquisition
| costs) the per stream cost is relatively homogenous.
| joncp wrote:
| Remember when you didn't have to wade through that awful
| carousel view to find what you wanted to watch? Or when they
| didn't try to hide your "continue watching" list in a steaming
| heap of inaccurate recommendations?
|
| Except for a couple of shows, I've almost completely switched
| to Prime.
| wvenable wrote:
| The Prime interface is _way_ worse than Netflix. Admittedly
| it didn 't have this awful autoplay but even continuing a
| show I'm currently watching is a game of Where's Waldo.
| ehsankia wrote:
| "continue watching" being deep down is my biggest pet peeve.
| Nothing gets me angrier than having to scroll and search just
| to continue watching the same show every single day.
|
| Statistically, if each show is 8 episodes, then 88% of the
| time when I come to the homepage, I want to "continue
| watching" not "find a new show". Why the hell is continue
| watching not always the very first row.
| forrestbrazeal wrote:
| They deliberately switch around the placement of the
| homepage queues. The goal is to keep you engaging with the
| product and discovering new things. They don't want you
| holding a Netflix subscription just for Friends, or
| whatever.
| wvenable wrote:
| But why? Isn't watching Friends a viable reason to own
| that subscription?
| paxys wrote:
| 1. They didn't want their originals to be rated below third-
| party titles
|
| 2. They didn't want users to see that highly rated content was
| slowly disappearing from the service
| pgrote wrote:
| The supposedly killed it when the Amy Schumer special was
| bombed.
|
| https://www.whas11.com/article/news/entertainment-news/poof-...
| hanniabu wrote:
| They really messed up by not giving that to Andrew Schulz
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Was going to post this, but you beat me to it. It was
| neutered very quickly after her special was down-voted into
| oblivion, not long after it was gutted.
| Carpetsmoker wrote:
| I don't really like star systems because I spend way too much
| time deciding if something is 3 or 4 stars, or 4 or 5 stars.
|
| I much prefer textual descriptions; for example "Terrible",
| "Don't like", "Okay", "Like", "Favourite", which has the same
| options as a 5-star rating system, but choosing between 3/4 and
| 4/5 is much easier IMHO.
|
| I don't really know of any system that uses this, except this
| one music player I wrote myself (which has "Crap", "Meh",
| "Okay", "Super").
| ehsankia wrote:
| Yep, as much as people hate it, when it comes to
| recommendation, up/down is all the data you need. Trying to
| build a system out of a 5 star system just adds unnecessary
| complexity, and the reality was that people used the star
| system differently making it even harder. up/down thumb is
| explicit and cleaner to work with.
| glitcher wrote:
| The problem with the up/down system for me is not my own
| ability to like/dislike specific titles, but more the fact
| that Netflix no longer displays the average of all user
| votes. Sure different people used the 5 star system in
| different ways, and there were some who may have misused it
| by giving poor ratings to things they never intended on
| watching, but it was a great signal to me for the extremes.
|
| Scenario: I'm considering some odd looking sci-fi movie to
| watch that I never heard of before. Ratings between 2-4
| stars might not tell me much, but very reliably titles with
| only one star were terrible movies. Now Netflix happily
| recommends any and all sci-fi titles, saying they are a
| "98% match" for me! Sure by category, but when the movie is
| a low budget dumpster fire I no longer have that instant
| signaling that the previous rating system gave me.
| jaymmartin wrote:
| Netflix used to define the ratings as "Hated It", "Didn't
| Like It", "Liked It", "Really Liked It", and "Loved It". I
| didn't find it difficult to memorize.
|
| What's to stop you from applying whatever textual
| descriptions you want to the numbers?
| huebomont wrote:
| Because I might apply different ones, making them useless
| in aggregate if I assume anything I like has to be a 4 or
| 5, but you assume that you'll rate anything you like as low
| as a 2, and reserve just 1 for "don't watch it"
| kelnos wrote:
| This is why the Uber/Lyft rating system is effectively
| useless. Five stars is basically "was not unsafe", and
| four and below indicate significant safety, cleanliness,
| rudeness, or other problems.
|
| If each star rating had a textual description of what it
| meant, and drivers didn't have to maintain something like
| a 4.3 (or whatever it is) in order to stay on the
| platform, the ratings would actually mean something.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Yes, it was discovered that when you had to order movies in the
| mail, you had different preferences.
|
| If you could only watch one movie at a time, sure you want to
| make it good. But when it's streaming, people mostly just want
| to binge watch garbage. Who needs million dollar prizes when
| you can do just fine recommending 50 different shows, until the
| user gives up finding anything good and watches a Netflix
| original.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I suspect there was a really good justification for this that
| they can't directly share with us. These sort of decisions tend
| to be like that.
|
| Probably getting rid of recommendations led to some massive
| increase in viewership that couldn't be ignored.
| ehsankia wrote:
| One person probably rated a movie they hated 1 star, whereas
| someone else rated it 3 star or 4 star. The inconsistency
| makes it hard to build a model that works for everyone. Also,
| the current one technically has 3 state, down, up and no
| vote. That's much more explicit and easy to build a model
| around.
| jfengel wrote:
| Netflix now has much better sources of information than the
| self-reported star ratings.
|
| Self-reported ratings fail in a lot of ways. Users can upvote
| what they think they're supposed to upvote. They'll downvote
| something, then go watch the sequel, because "It's terrible but
| I love it". And since they're seeking out stuff that they
| suspect they're going to like, they either compress all of the
| ratings into the top tier, or they end up "hating" things that
| they actually thought were merely so-so.
|
| I suspect that even the up-down ratings get little attention in
| their recommendation engine. They have far more information,
| especially in the streaming service. Did you watch all of it?
| Did you watch it all at once? Did you watch it more than once?
| Did you watch it immediately after discovering it?
|
| That's all stuff that users can't fake or be confused about.
| You don't get users saying, "Citizen Kane is the greatest film
| of all time, but I really don't want to see it." It's more
| likely that you can tease out what it is that a user actually
| wants to see, rather than what they tell you they want.
|
| Netflix did run a competition back in the DVD days, when they
| had less interaction with the user. They did get a slight
| improvement, but at about the same time, they introduced
| streaming, and a whole lot of Big Data techniques appeared that
| could take advantage of that new data.
|
| So it wouldn't surprise me if the up/down buttons were
| completely ignored by the recommendation engine. Maybe it's
| just a reminder to you: "Oh, yeah, I did see that. It sucked."
|
| The new system clearly misses some things, but a lot of the
| problem is that the DVD catalog is immense and full of
| classics, but the streaming catalog is weak and full of crap.
| The whole thing may be back-ported into the DVD recommendation
| engine, but that's the redheaded stepchild at Netflix these
| days. They tried to spin it off entirely.
| reaperducer wrote:
| All current user ratings systems for movies are terrible
| because new users can bury a great movie.
|
| There are classic, important, society-changing movies from
| the previous century that were highly praised by contemporary
| critics and won scads of awards. But then people today watch
| them with zero context or understanding of what was happening
| or what the world was like and give them bad ratings because
| they can only compare them to the latest shoot-em-up sequel
| of a sequel of a sequel.
|
| It's one of the reasons Rotten Tomatoes is worthless for
| anything more than 20 years old, and why the voices of movie
| critics are needed so badly today.
|
| See also: Yelp.
| pjc50 wrote:
| What we need is something more like Amazon's old "people
| who liked this also liked"; we have to give up on the idea
| of a rating being an absolute thing for all time for all
| people. Some people want "critically acclaimed" movies, a
| lot of people don't. Both are valid.
|
| The situation gets even worse from a diversity and
| internationalisation standpoint. You have to consider what
| different national and language groups want.
| philipkglass wrote:
| The Netflix Prize competition launched in 2006, before they had
| started streaming anything. The problem was to recommend a huge
| DVD-by-mail catalog to millions of users. By the time the
| competition finished in 2009, streaming was already growing
| rapidly. Nowadays their DVD business is a small footnote to
| their streaming business. The streaming catalog is much smaller
| than the DVD catalog and the consequences for starting to
| stream a show/movie you don't like are much smaller; you can
| back out and immediately start something else. You don't have
| to wait days to return your unsatisfying DVD and get a
| different one in the mail.
|
| Netflix has ~6,000 items to recommend to streaming customers in
| the US [1]. This is about 6% as much content to recommend as
| the DVD-by-mail service has. Their streaming catalog size is
| actually shrinking over time [2]. Fine grained rating systems
| and better recommenders aren't going to move the needle much
| for Netflix's current business, because they now have a content
| availability problem much more than a discovery problem.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1013571/netflix-
| library-...
|
| [2] https://www.streamingobserver.com/netflix-movie-library-
| shri...
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm sure there was a narrow window when you could stream
| seemingly every film, ancient and modern, legitimately. Then
| the studios twigged and had to kill it.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I don't even mind paying on demand to stream a film. I
| don't watch _that_ many. But it 's annoying and
| economically baffling when you can't stream a film even if
| you have your credit card already in hand, willing to pay.
|
| Last weekend I tried to find To Live and Die in L.A. --
| from the 1980s but hardly obscure. I couldn't find it
| legitimately available to stream _anywhere_ , for _any_
| amount of money.
|
| I even tried Kanopy, which has been my go-to source for
| films I can't find on paid streaming services, but they
| didn't have it either.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live_and_Die_in_L.A._(film
| )
| Someone1234 wrote:
| It was right around the time their first "Originals" came out.
| I guess accurate recommendations is less important than shows
| with cheaper licensing costs or home-grown originals.
| hanniabu wrote:
| While I'm sure this had a lot to do with it, I wouldn't be
| surprised if they also came up with a better rating system
| using statistics on the amount of views, how long it's been
| out, what percent watched it all the way through, etc.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| If that were true, wouldn't the actual recommendations be
| better rather than substantially worse?
| dwighttk wrote:
| better for Netflix or better for us?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I sometimes think that they make it harder to discover
| content, so that it's also harder to discover that there is
| nothing you'll actually like. This will keep you browsing
| longer and starting some movies you'll stop watching. Shitty
| customer experience, but as far as I know they optimizer for
| time you spent with the platform.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| They coulda just made their originals part of the simpler
| rating system instead. As jacked up as it is, it would be
| nice to find shows that I'd more than likely actually like.
| scrooched_moose wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the new recommendation algorithm is basically
| just "recommend Netflix originals in a random order".
|
| Edit: I feel like I should add something besides a snarky
| comment:
|
| I was searching for a mid-2000s Best Picture Nominee a few days
| ago (something like Munich or Capote, but don't remember).
| Results 1 & 2 were The Irishman and Marriage Story. None of the
| other non-Netflix best picture nominees were anywhere in the
| results if that was the connection they were making.
| gdulli wrote:
| There's a law of conservation of advertisement. It's not like
| you were going to get away from ads forever when switching
| from real TV. I prefer the purely interstitial (untargeted)
| commercials from real TV. With a DVR I can fast forward them,
| or always at least mute. Having Amazon/Netflix "recommend"
| things to me through what should be a functional unbiased
| system is more insidious.
| spidermango wrote:
| lol, the sheer stupidity in the mental gymnastics people
| will employ to back their outrageous behaviors in avoiding
| the "targeted ads" bogeyman
| scarejunba wrote:
| It's so out of touch with how most people think, it's
| genuinely fascinating to see. I wonder if it's a true
| belief or some sort of facade.
|
| I think I'd easily bet 3:1, $1000 that if you polled
| people they'd rather have targeted end-of-show ads than
| untargeted mid-show interstitials.
| briandear wrote:
| Ads in the middle of the show? No way. It's literally an
| interruption.
| reaperducer wrote:
| If it's for free OTA television, I'm OK with that. I
| don't know why people never rose up against it in
| cable/satellite-only channels that they pay for.
|
| /I'm OTA, Netflix, and the library. But I mostly only use
| Netflix for the DVD service. I'm fortunate enough to have
| enough going on in my life that I watch very little
| video.
| [deleted]
| 1123581321 wrote:
| A lot more people use the thumb system than were using the star
| system.
| what_ever wrote:
| Source?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/why-netflix-replaced-
| its-5-s...
|
| "Netflix settled on "thumbs up/down," which is widely
| understood to imply that you are training an algorithm to
| know what you like, [Netflix' Cameron] Johnson said.
|
| "That simple change led to an over 200% increase" in
| ratings, Johnson said. The inclusion of a "percent match"
| number also reinforces the idea that these recommendations
| are personalized, he added."
| ixwt wrote:
| They used the equivalent of the thumb system. Many people
| give 5 stars, or 1 star. There are some that give in between.
| Many places consider anything less than 5 star to mean there
| was a problem (Uber, Amazon, reviews for phone support).
| t-writescode wrote:
| Do you have statistics on that? I'm not sure I believe you,
| given Amazon ratings seem to have quite a broad range, so
| the pattern is established.
|
| edit: specifically, that people only give 1 or 5 stars
| ixwt wrote:
| No, it's anecdata. A lot of stuff I see tends to have a
| large amount of 5s and 1s. There is often 2-4s, but the
| amount is very often less than 5s or 1s.
|
| It's mostly just looking at trends. A few things I've
| purchased from Amazon come with a little advertising slip
| that says "if this product is anything less than 5 stars,
| let us know what we can do to make it better!" I've seen
| plenty of stories from people complaining that their less
| than 5 star reviews got removed for X reason (often
| because it's "dishonest").
|
| Maybe that'll be my next learning exercise: scraping the
| count of reviews from Amazon to support this hypothesis.
| taude wrote:
| Yes, I remember those days of the content. But, I don't really
| agree that the thumbs up/down system is giving me bad
| recommendations. I still find the 'percentage' that it thinks
| I'd like is probably really accurate. I have to assume that the
| recommendations work with more data than just the thumbs
| up/down interaction, since they probably don't fully trust the
| user input. And I imagine all the stuff I watched for 10
| minutes but stopped is more valuable in determining usefulness
| than me going out of my way to rate it.
| [deleted]
| minimaxir wrote:
| Netflix still does a ton of statistical experiments. A good one
| is video thumbnail selection.
|
| 2016 blog post: https://netflixtechblog.com/selecting-the-best-
| artwork-for-v...
|
| 2018 presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjQMEjkrUGo
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| But that's more about making people click right? So while
| those experiments serve Netflix well, the old recommendations
| and ratings served both Netflix and users.
| minimaxir wrote:
| True; more was addressing the point about Netflix
| regressing from statistical rigor.
| jdamon96 wrote:
| what causes you to say much despised? I personally enjoy thumbs
| up v thumbs down - I find with 5 star ratings systems people
| resort to extremes and usually use it like a thumbs up/down
| anyway (1 star or 5 star)
| tele_ski wrote:
| I'd prefer up/sideways/down. Sometimes I watch things that
| are brainless, they aren't thumbs up worthy but they are not
| totally thumbs down either. But if this was hiring a sideways
| is always down in my book, so I could see why it's not
| totally useful.
| scott_s wrote:
| "Sideways" exists: don't rate it.
| jstsch wrote:
| Oh, wow. It's always impressive to see how a slow wave of rising
| internet buzz suddenly peaks and affects change in an
| impenetrable multinational organization. Hurray! :)
| joegahona wrote:
| I'd love to know what metrics they were optimizing for when they
| introduced this feature.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Definitely viewthrough rate (i.e. % of people who subsequently
| view the video after hovering over a video thumb and the
| autoplay triggers vs. normal viewthrough rate after hovering
| over a thumb).
|
| Of course, a weakness of this testing is failing to account for
| _negative_ metric impact outside of the one you are optimizing.
| deagle50 wrote:
| I think they correlate engagement to retention.
| mr337 wrote:
| Good riddance!!!!
| msandford wrote:
| I was excited about this for a minute, but then I realized I
| canceled Netflix months ago. This was one of the reasons. Sticky
| things being sticky, I'm not going to magically start paying
| again now that they finally undid something dumb. I'm a lost
| customer for a long time.
| coreyp_1 wrote:
| The Autoplay is REALLY, REALLY, A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G!!!
|
| Actually, I hate most of the current design (UI/UX). It's really
| streamlined when all you want to do is push "play", but
| everything else is, quite frankly, laborious.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Our old Apple TV, which we've had since maybe 2012, finally
| died. Given how much use it gets, I've been amazed how long it
| kept working.
|
| Bought a new one late last year, and the whole UX is a big step
| backwards, but the Netflix app and the automatically playing
| previews is high on the list of annoyances.
|
| It feels like one of those "Do you actually dogfood this? Have
| you actually compared it to previous releases?"
| rconti wrote:
| I know this is going to make me sound old, but so much UI/UX is
| getting worse. I can't even tell which tile is highlighted on
| my appleTV because it's only about 5% larger than the adjacent
| ones. The only way you can tell is by the change as you cursor
| around, you can't tell at a glance (and this is on a 75" TV).
| ianai wrote:
| At this point I think they're just changing stuff to change
| stuff. Like some new hire(s) somewhere(s) are looking to make
| a name for him/herself by changing stuff.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Or the cult of A/B testing has been fully implemented.
| sogen wrote:
| In Apple TV settings I enabled High Contrast. It's in
| Accessibility.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, I really don't know why UI/UX designers feel the need
| to highlighted selection to be so minimal. HBO Go's highlight
| isn't much better than Apple's
| srathi wrote:
| Same issue with many apps on NVidia Shield TV.
| syshum wrote:
| FINALLY
|
| I honestly stopped watching most netflix due to this feature.
|
| I would go there to watch something specific but I would not
| browse around because of that annoying auto-play crap
| herodotus wrote:
| Interesting. I phoned and complained about this as soon as
| Netflix started doing it - I think it was about two years ago!
| What really got me (and I pointed this out to the cutomer service
| rep) was that the first preview that showed included several
| swear words. I thought that that argument alone would be enough,
| let alone how annoying it is to have a stupid light and sound
| show while I am browsing.
|
| So all I can say is "about time"!
| dylan604 wrote:
| > was that the first preview that showed included several swear
| words
|
| From feedback like this, they might have just made a policy to
| not allow cursing in the preview whether that was by choosing
| different scenes or bleeping them.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| They actually for a while have disabled previews for content
| not labeled "family friendly" if you setup a parental-
| controls PIN.
| srathi wrote:
| Thank you so much! I actually stopped my membership due to this
| issue as I was tired of making UBlock Origin filters on my
| laptops.
| phreack wrote:
| DAE know if this would prevent previews for other shows from
| playing during the credits of a filn or series finale? It might
| seem petty but not being able to watch the credits and reflect in
| peace (without a frantic run to disable the auto-trailers) was my
| tipping point and I promised not to go back until it was possible
| disable it.
| goodusername wrote:
| Have only just turned it off so don't know yet, but my bet is
| on no. I'm right there with you on reflecting in peace though.
| Sometimes you want to just take a breath and think about what
| you saw. That same "feature" was one of the things that drove
| me away from flow TV, as they increasingly pushed the next
| program more and more aggressively, until it would actually
| start the trailer/speaker BEFORE the current program was
| finished. Drives me insane. Who watches a 2.5 hours movie, and
| as soon as the credits start rolling, goes "alright next movie,
| play play play!"
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I remember people being over the top thrilled that Disney+ hadn't
| implemented the "feature" of preview auto-play.
| truculent wrote:
| When you put down the wanton AB testing for a minute and actually
| listen to your users, you can make your product better. Glad to
| see this.
| [deleted]
| dmannorreys wrote:
| Finally. I've been so frustrated about the autoplaying previews,
| especially since I've experienced that after a few seconds, the
| menu will fade out and Netflix will play the video as if you had
| clicked "Play". But I haven't clicked "Play", I only happened to
| rise up from my couch, hear the preview starting, do whatever for
| 30 seconds and then come back having to stop or restart the
| episode.
|
| Absolutely terrible. I'm really happy Netflix has given us a way
| out.
| dman wrote:
| This was the primary reason I cancelled my account. Secondary
| reason was the poor search / filtering options - they have
| continually gimped these features in favor of their own
| recommendation engine and homepage. Their recommendation engine
| has a recency bias and a popularity bias. As someone who liked to
| watch obscure world cinema Netflix makes it way too hard to find
| such things and to be honest their catalog doesnt even have a lot
| of such content anymore. I suspect one of the reasons they dont
| have any grids/lists and filtering in their UI is that it will
| reveal just how small their catalog is in most genres now.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Same, and I called to cancel to let them know. For me though
| the autoplaying trailers were the last straw. The UI/declining
| quality of offerings, to the point where i would spend so much
| time looking for something new/interesting I'd get bored and
| close the app. I really dont think this alone will bring me
| back. Sad because I used to love Netflix, had subscribed back
| in the DVD days.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _As someone who liked to watch obscure world cinema Netflix
| makes it way too hard to find such things and to be honest
| their catalog doesnt even have a lot of such content anymore._
|
| These two complaints are actually two manifestations of the
| same complaint. With a shrinking catalog, it is _vital_ that
| the UI be nerfed in order to keep it from being too obvious
| just how little content there is.
| sunkenvicar wrote:
| Finally. Thank you!
|
| I consider the previews spoilers. And autoplay destroys pacing
| because it skips the preroll/credits.
| underbluewaters wrote:
| It's amazing it took this long. I can understand how some people
| might be okay with this feature but it causes me actual anxiety
| to use the Netflix app on my AppleTV. Before autoplay I could
| mindlessly browse looking for content. Now I hurry through to
| check if there is anything new and get out as fast as possible.
| They must know that people use the app less since this change...
| right?
| monk_e_boy wrote:
| Yeah, it's a nightmare when my kids are browing using my
| account -- tons of 18+ horror gets shown in amongst cartoons.
| It's such a dumb system.
|
| Yes, we have more than one account. Mistakes happen.
| joegahona wrote:
| > They must know that people use the app less since this
| change... right?
|
| Whether they make `autoplay=true` default will answer this.
| brundolf wrote:
| I believe I read somewhere that it did result in an overall
| increase in viewership. There's no way they don't have those
| metrics.
|
| My guess is that for some majority of users who weren't super
| bothered by it it genuinely caused them to watch more things.
| Even though a vocal minority was _extremely upset_ about it,
| the numbers still worked out overall. Of course adding a
| preference is easy, and people who aren 't upset won't bother
| to change the default, so this is probably a win/win for them.
| vikramkr wrote:
| How did they define viewership? Because viewership of
| previews definitely increased.
| brundolf wrote:
| Presumably they can tell the difference between viewership
| of previews and resulting viewership of the actual shows :P
| AgentME wrote:
| I often used to leave the Netflix app open when I left my TV
| idle, because it was interesting, not too distracting, and I
| could start something from it quickly later. But with autoplay,
| I quickly stopped doing that because it was too distracting. I
| rush through the app now only after I have something in mind to
| watch already.
|
| While I'm ranting about Netflix, I absolutely hate the feature
| where if you leave a show paused for more than five seconds, it
| starts showing spoilers (the episode description). I often open
| Netflix before I eat a meal, get it to the start of the next
| episode of a show I'm watching, and pause it until I'm ready to
| watch. And then I carefully avoid looking at the screen to
| avoid the episode description/spoilers. The descriptions are
| only useful after I've watched the show and want to find a
| specific episode. I don't want to see them before I've watched
| the episode!
|
| The Netflix app just seems so actively hostile. I'm used to
| apps being unpleasant because of bugs, but being unpleasant
| because of features is unusual.
| pixelrevision wrote:
| Yeah I'm super surprised it took this long. I mean even an
| "audio off on dashboard previews" setting would have sufficed.
| It's the single most irritating "feature" of any of my TV apps.
| abhgh wrote:
| Same with their Roku app - I quickly jump from one thumbnail to
| the next to avoid triggering the autoplay.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I have noticed that the loading of the preview has actually
| made the jumping to the next thumbnail slower on my AppleTV
| app
| Scottopherson wrote:
| If I browse for more than a couple minutes on my appletv,
| the UI becomes super unresponsive. I have to force quit the
| app to return to normal. I wonder if disabling autoplay
| trailers will help prevent this behavior.
| mudlus wrote:
| I miss getting DVDs/whatever in the mail.
| shadow-banned wrote:
| Some awful growth marketer who took a Reforge class is crying
| today.
| lbj wrote:
| Imagine growing your platform to a size, where its frontpage news
| when you add a setting :)
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| This is fantastic news! More times than I can count I have
| decided that it wasn't worth the effort to peruse through the app
| before my ears get assaulted if I forgot to mute my TV
| beforehand. It is anxiety-inducing and unpleasant to have to keep
| the selection moving just so audio doesn't blast from my TV when
| I just want to browse.
|
| Perhaps we can thank the fact that streaming services now have
| competition, and the quality of their UX matters quite a bit.
| jlv2 wrote:
| > Changes to these settings are specific to a profile and will
| take _affect_ across all devices.
|
| > Note: There may be a delay before the setting takes _affect_.
|
| > Note: There may be a delay before the setting takes _affect_.
|
| "Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means
| what you think it means."
| yeahboats wrote:
| I have come to despise this "feature" but without it I would have
| never watched Kung Fury. I am glad I can now turn it off but
| wonder what I may miss going forward.
| ijidak wrote:
| Praise the day!!! The tyranny of auto-preview has ended!
|
| On a serious note, I get why they added it.
|
| For some, it saves a few button presses.
|
| But boy was that an annoying feature.
|
| Literally made browsing Netflix stressful.
| tacticaldev wrote:
| Awesome! auto-playing previews has always caused issues on my
| Roku devices
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