Netflix Pulls the Plug on Feature Designed to Get Kids Addicted to Netflix

Lots of folks&#x2F;companies are going to lose long-term as a result of bad A&#x2F;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&#x27;s twitter practices[1]). Generally these sorts of things don&#x27;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&#x2F;B testing to the failure of the SnapChat redesign[2].<p>Is there anyway to do this properly? I can imagine the problem will get worse and worse as we reduce human evaluation of A&#x2F;B test results and automatically make real-time decisions through software and ML.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;poll-shows-trump-appears-to-be-losing-somewhat-supporters-with-antics-2018-12" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;poll-shows-trump-appears-to-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;snap-evan-spiegel-app-redesign-rushed&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;10&#x2F;05&#x2F;snap-evan-spiegel-app-re...</a>

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.

Several Netflix UI changes have been pretty anti user. I&#x27;m more upset at the way they mask an incomplete catalog by pretending most Hitchcock films or French new wave don&#x27;t even exist. I&#x27;m more upset about auto play. I&#x27;m more upset at the retooling of the recommendation engine away from finding gems you didn&#x27;t know you would like to just finding ways to convince you to watch Netflix owned content.<p>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.<p>Netflix has so many other sins that they have raised the bar on my outrage. That in itself is sad...

Netflix&#x27;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 &#x2F; mobile &#x2F; eyeball counting user interface fail.

This was a silly product feature, it would have killed the quality of their viewership data.<p>As soon as you reward someone for watching, they&#x27;ll figure out how to script it. They&#x27;ll load it up, set it going turn off the speaker and the monitor and go to bed.<p>It wouldn&#x27;t have increased my engagement, but it would remove me as a data point!

Hindsight is 20&#x2F;20 but this idea is definitely one of the worst ideas I&#x27;ve heard when it comes to applied gameification. Perhaps unlocking some sort of extra content would&#x27;ve been better, but handing out badges is such a deliberate way to signal to parents that &quot;we are trying to hook your kids&quot;.

Yuk. Speaking of dark design patterns; the link hijacks my back button in Safari. So when I go back, I&#x27;ll get a popover with some ad.

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.

What’s the reasoning behind this?<p>The subscription is so cheap I don’t care about it. There is enough stuff I want to watch that I regularly use it.<p>But if I never used it, why care? Wouldn’t I be the perfect customer? Pays the subscription but doesn’t consume resources?

I recently added some plugins to Kodi so I can watch Netflix from within Kodi.<p>It has improved the experience so much I am actually using it more.

The article wasn&#x27;t really worth the time. It tried to make a mountain out of a molehill: Netflix gave badges for watching children&#x27;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 &quot;Netflix is evil and out to zombify your children&quot; 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.

Note: The article is from March 2018

Explain to me how there is even such a feature in the first case?<p>Adults sure, but what decent human sets out to get kids addicted???

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

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.

&gt; 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.”<p>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?

Off the topic:<p>Beautiful website design! Very elegant use of space above the fold. I likewise love Nautil.us design too.<p>Which themes (Wordpress or some static site generator) would be similar?

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

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

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.

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

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.