I wonder if we're picking on Netflix a bit unfairly here. As far as I can tell, this phenomenon is omnipresent. Every service is like this, nearly all content is drek, and advertising is just what...
I wonder if we're picking on Netflix a bit unfairly here. As far as I can tell, this phenomenon is omnipresent. Every service is like this, nearly all content is drek, and advertising is just what professional liars do for a paycheck. It also aptly sums up just about everything that's ever been broadcast on television - let's not pretend that a trip through a TV Guide from the 80s would do better. Cinema is in the same boat, movies are just tepid reboots that make a mockery of the originals.
Perhaps, just perhaps, people could try turning it all off and finding better uses for their time and money.
Clickbait article. I really enjoyed early netflix where I could see what other people that liked movies I liked also watched. It's a shame they moved away from that, but compared to search and...
Clickbait article.
I really enjoyed early netflix where I could see what other people that liked movies I liked also watched. It's a shame they moved away from that, but compared to search and discovery on prime, which is a fucking nightmare, netflix imo is doing okay. Using the example of "Heist," which btw I am watching, I easily hovered over the thumbnail and saw a preview which seemed like something I might like - chick rolling in money, cool, but the rollover showed more depth than that, and cost me seconds.
And at the end of the day, Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, and etc, are entertainment, I don't care if they are clickbaity. News on the other hand, I feel differently, and the two things, entertainment and news, are very different beasts, and shouldn't be held to the same standanrds. IMO.
I found that the key to Netflix is to have a separate profile for discovery that gets completely trashed and then your main which is stuff you're actually watching. Since they count a few minutes...
I found that the key to Netflix is to have a separate profile for discovery that gets completely trashed and then your main which is stuff you're actually watching. Since they count a few minutes as a watch, if you get sucked into something on the discovery profile, just watch a few minutes again on your main and you're covered.
Prior to doing this I found that the suggestions were alright, but not great. I don't watch a lot of stuff on Netflix in favor of having everything offline, but at least the recommendations I get are pretty spot on to what interests me.
Interesting, you're describing how i use YouTube (except i use incognito instead of a separate profile for random trash). It does make for great discovery on YouTube when well curated.
Interesting, you're describing how i use YouTube (except i use incognito instead of a separate profile for random trash).
It does make for great discovery on YouTube when well curated.
Third party youtube clients can help with this as well. I'd been using SmartTube - that project was just a reskin/clone of the youtube client without ads. The fellow who wrote that deprecated it...
Third party youtube clients can help with this as well. I'd been using SmartTube - that project was just a reskin/clone of the youtube client without ads. The fellow who wrote that deprecated it and started a new project, SmartTubeNext. Now it's got sponsorblock built in for that wonderful auto-skip past embedded sponsoring. I haven't seen a single ad, sponsored or otherwise, since I installed it - glorious.
What I wasn't expecting with this reboot was a vastly faster, better presentation layer that the old client. This app even makes a mockery of the official client with how well it sorts and pulls up the content. It's better at surfacing new content and browsing by topic categories, it digs a lot deeper into the content available with API calls than the official client does. It doesn't run out, or start recycling the same stuff after a few lines like the official one. Using it I feel like youtube's algorithm gets a much needed curation upgrade in the background - same stuff, just more of it, more recent, and more relevant.
It doesn't even require any permissions or google services, either. My kind of open source project. The beta gets a dozen or more updates a week and hasn't glitched out on me once yet. :)
That looks fantastic! I wish I had supported hardware so I could give it a try. I'd love something like that for my Raspberry Pi or my desktop computer.
That looks fantastic! I wish I had supported hardware so I could give it a try. I'd love something like that for my Raspberry Pi or my desktop computer.
If you want an alternate YouTube client, your best bet would probably be something like Invidious for web based stuff or Freetube for a local application.
If you want an alternate YouTube client, your best bet would probably be something like Invidious for web based stuff or Freetube for a local application.
I'd looooove to get a clean start with youtube. The trouble with IRC is that you end up watching braiding machine videos for a night and it doesn't play well with the other rabbit holes others...
I'd looooove to get a clean start with youtube. The trouble with IRC is that you end up watching braiding machine videos for a night and it doesn't play well with the other rabbit holes others have lured you into.
I'd love to have a button for 'add this to my recommendations set'
You can disable search and view history on YouTube and have something close enough. Or just clear those out and start fresh if you rather have the curated recommendations.
You can disable search and view history on YouTube and have something close enough. Or just clear those out and start fresh if you rather have the curated recommendations.
oh nice. That'd be handy. Right now I have all of those elements blocked with uBlock Origin. I'd bet money that my recommendations are going to be directly related to David Lynch's daily number...
oh nice. That'd be handy. Right now I have all of those elements blocked with uBlock Origin. I'd bet money that my recommendations are going to be directly related to David Lynch's daily number drawing and Star Trek Intakes :)
What I would do for an incognito version of Netflix, it was so annoying when I watched 10 minutes of a pilot and then it was added to my list of shame that couldn't be easily removed. To have no...
What I would do for an incognito version of Netflix, it was so annoying when I watched 10 minutes of a pilot and then it was added to my list of shame that couldn't be easily removed. To have no viewing history at all would be pretty neat.
well, you can create and burn profiles as much as you want. Make a new one every few days if you want to :) It's nice to go into these services clean. I'm thinking about doing the same with a...
well, you can create and burn profiles as much as you want. Make a new one every few days if you want to :)
It's nice to go into these services clean. I'm thinking about doing the same with a Spotify family account. Have one main account that is mostly indie stuff, then sub accounts for hip hop, jazz, and vaporwave. As it sits, the recommendations are all over the board and not very good.
It'd be nice if these services offered a quick 'start over' button, but ditching profiles seems to be the most effective route.
I like that, but let's be a bit more honest. Facebook would have us all strapped into chairs, clockwork-orange style, mainlining a cocktail of opiates and truth serum while they scanned our...
But if Facebook was running our diets, their algorithm would long since have "optimized" its way to junk food for all of us.
I like that, but let's be a bit more honest. Facebook would have us all strapped into chairs, clockwork-orange style, mainlining a cocktail of opiates and truth serum while they scanned our brainwaves, had them analyzed by AI, and tried to find someone to buy that data.
I wonder if we're picking on Netflix a bit unfairly here. As far as I can tell, this phenomenon is omnipresent. Every service is like this, nearly all content is drek, and advertising is just what professional liars do for a paycheck. It also aptly sums up just about everything that's ever been broadcast on television - let's not pretend that a trip through a TV Guide from the 80s would do better. Cinema is in the same boat, movies are just tepid reboots that make a mockery of the originals.
Perhaps, just perhaps, people could try turning it all off and finding better uses for their time and money.
Clickbait article.
I really enjoyed early netflix where I could see what other people that liked movies I liked also watched. It's a shame they moved away from that, but compared to search and discovery on prime, which is a fucking nightmare, netflix imo is doing okay. Using the example of "Heist," which btw I am watching, I easily hovered over the thumbnail and saw a preview which seemed like something I might like - chick rolling in money, cool, but the rollover showed more depth than that, and cost me seconds.
And at the end of the day, Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, and etc, are entertainment, I don't care if they are clickbaity. News on the other hand, I feel differently, and the two things, entertainment and news, are very different beasts, and shouldn't be held to the same standanrds. IMO.
They had a list of similar movies to the current on, then they removed it for year and I see this feature back now. In Android app and on the TV app.
I found that the key to Netflix is to have a separate profile for discovery that gets completely trashed and then your main which is stuff you're actually watching. Since they count a few minutes as a watch, if you get sucked into something on the discovery profile, just watch a few minutes again on your main and you're covered.
Prior to doing this I found that the suggestions were alright, but not great. I don't watch a lot of stuff on Netflix in favor of having everything offline, but at least the recommendations I get are pretty spot on to what interests me.
Interesting, you're describing how i use YouTube (except i use incognito instead of a separate profile for random trash).
It does make for great discovery on YouTube when well curated.
Third party youtube clients can help with this as well. I'd been using SmartTube - that project was just a reskin/clone of the youtube client without ads. The fellow who wrote that deprecated it and started a new project, SmartTubeNext. Now it's got sponsorblock built in for that wonderful auto-skip past embedded sponsoring. I haven't seen a single ad, sponsored or otherwise, since I installed it - glorious.
What I wasn't expecting with this reboot was a vastly faster, better presentation layer that the old client. This app even makes a mockery of the official client with how well it sorts and pulls up the content. It's better at surfacing new content and browsing by topic categories, it digs a lot deeper into the content available with API calls than the official client does. It doesn't run out, or start recycling the same stuff after a few lines like the official one. Using it I feel like youtube's algorithm gets a much needed curation upgrade in the background - same stuff, just more of it, more recent, and more relevant.
It doesn't even require any permissions or google services, either. My kind of open source project. The beta gets a dozen or more updates a week and hasn't glitched out on me once yet. :)
That looks fantastic! I wish I had supported hardware so I could give it a try. I'd love something like that for my Raspberry Pi or my desktop computer.
If you want an alternate YouTube client, your best bet would probably be something like Invidious for web based stuff or Freetube for a local application.
Thanks for the recommendations!
I'd looooove to get a clean start with youtube. The trouble with IRC is that you end up watching braiding machine videos for a night and it doesn't play well with the other rabbit holes others have lured you into.
I'd love to have a button for 'add this to my recommendations set'
You can disable search and view history on YouTube and have something close enough. Or just clear those out and start fresh if you rather have the curated recommendations.
oh nice. That'd be handy. Right now I have all of those elements blocked with uBlock Origin. I'd bet money that my recommendations are going to be directly related to David Lynch's daily number drawing and Star Trek Intakes :)
YouTube has an option to clear your watch history somewhere. It might be in myactivity.google.com, can't check now. Let me know if you find it.
What I would do for an incognito version of Netflix, it was so annoying when I watched 10 minutes of a pilot and then it was added to my list of shame that couldn't be easily removed. To have no viewing history at all would be pretty neat.
well, you can create and burn profiles as much as you want. Make a new one every few days if you want to :)
It's nice to go into these services clean. I'm thinking about doing the same with a Spotify family account. Have one main account that is mostly indie stuff, then sub accounts for hip hop, jazz, and vaporwave. As it sits, the recommendations are all over the board and not very good.
It'd be nice if these services offered a quick 'start over' button, but ditching profiles seems to be the most effective route.
Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28291338
I like that, but let's be a bit more honest. Facebook would have us all strapped into chairs, clockwork-orange style, mainlining a cocktail of opiates and truth serum while they scanned our brainwaves, had them analyzed by AI, and tried to find someone to buy that data.
I hate, hate, HATE this argument. It's a fucking cop-out for something you helped create.