Netflix no longer gives us the choice
With an ever-increasing amount of content, we feel like we have more and more choice in what we watch, yet Netflix makes it a point of honour to choose for us what we will watch by standardizing its suggestions.
A powerful suggestion algorithm
By dint of knowing our consumption habits for series and films, Netflix offers us content that is increasingly adapted to our tastes, on this point it looks quite attractive. However, as the machine learning analyses our every move, an algorithm is built that undermines the diversity of the offer.
The system is based on recommendation rather than choice. Indeed, we are more often led to stroll on the home page rather than in the category pages or the search bar. Through its use, Netflix knows its users and offers films or series close to its initial choices. Thus, the choices are no longer dictated by a desire, but by a calculation which will reinforce what the user already likes, without discovering other contents.
It is also questionable whether the algorithm is still very relevant and loyal to the user’s choices. Netflix could grant itself the right to also promote content it produces for the benefit of others, just because it wants to boost it.
Social pressure
Account sharing between friends
Who has never lent a Netflix account? Some formulas offer the connection of several devices simultaneously and this allows to reduce the hits for many by creating a profile on a friend’s account.
Except that we may not know it, but by logging into your friend’s account and viewing some content, you will influence the future content that will be associated with your friend’s account. All this be able to make the series talk about it among you, at your next meeting or on social networks.
Indeed if on a group of 4 friends, you are the only one who has not watched the series about which the other 3 talks, you will surely, the next time the platform suggests it, let yourself be tempted by it. This leads to some social pressure since it will be necessary to catch up and stay connected so as not to get spoilt.
The Netflix name associated with your daily life
The American giant has understood this well by trying to be omnipresent in our daily lives. They are multiplying advertising operations in their original content with many major brands such as Stranger Things, which has partnered with Coca-Cola, Burger King, and H&M. You can, therefore, drink Netflix, eat Netflix, and dress Netflix.
Not to mention their well-managed presence on social networks and the Netflix button on your remote control for even greater speed. Looking at a series you don’t feel like you’re acquiring, but rather you don’t miss something, as if it were a kind of norm.
Control over content
Hidden categories
Netflix’s catalog is gigantic and growing, but the number of categories remains the same since the service only offers 15 categories on all its films.
Netflix engineers have listed other categories and even subcategories that are normally invisible as links. To access a specific category, simply enter the secret code after the address www.netflix.com/browse/genre/ (for example for Thrillers: /46588)
As these codes are not listed and only available on blogs, we can wonder about Netflix’s desire to make different content discover with a more limited audience.
Adapted thumbnails
When Netflix wants you to watch content, it will surely do so, by adapting the presentation of content to each user to better appeal to them, when in the end the content is the same.
If you have just watched a teenage series then the Stranger Things vignette will highlight the three main characters because they are young, if you are watching horror movies then a more creepy or bloody vignette will be offered.
The same strategy applies to trailers. For House of Cards, Kevin Spacey fans were offered videos featuring him as the main character, while women who had seen Thelma and Louise were treated to videos focusing on the female characters in the series. Subscribers identified as cinephiles were able to watch sequences featuring the “touch” of director David Fincher.
Even worse, as African-American subscribers complained that they were deceived by the call photos in 2018. They watched films or series in which Netflix highlighted black actors, while they played very minor roles.
But it seems to work pretty well because one in seven Black Mirror viewers had never tried science fiction, just as one in five Stranger Things fans had never watched a movie or horror series on Netflix before.
The quest for a perfect series
By dint of analyzing our behavior, when we pause in an episode? Why don’t we watch the end of a show? Why are we looking at some of the passages again? The American giant is trying to establish a recipe for the perfect series. They are creating more and more “Original Netflix” content to stand out from the competition and build subscriber loyalty.
It is sometimes even at the expense of creation, as revealed by Cary Fukunaga, the director of the Maniac series, who said that on the Netflix shoot, he allowed himself to give remarks based on their statistics to influence the progress of certain scenes, and avoid losing potential future spectators.
Control of the subscribers ?
It would be a little easy to summarize all this as negative, so first of all Netflix thanks for allowing us to do without the DVD player and watch a lot of content as we want. The American platform being free to offer what she wants to her 140 million subscribers, I am just as free to ask myself how the company standardizes our choices and tastes by influencing us.
Wishing to please too many people, won’t Netflix make the content too smooth and predictable? What animates the debates around the series are the clear-cut opinions, the tastes of everyone, the anecdotes and what we can discover with friends. By trying to promote the same content for everyone, the platform tends to make the series that everyone watches the same, standardize our tastes and more generally the market, by imposing new rules for the creation of content.
Even if we can say that Netflix raises awareness by also offering committed documentary content and whistleblowers such as The True Coast, Save Capitalism or more recently The Great Hack, it may be that they have something to gain. For example, to make our ability to be outraged work, to create the debate on social networks and indirectly mediatize and make this content viral.
The platform makes it appear to maintain our critical thinking and to be fiercely opposed to the system. But isn’t it a little strange to stand by those who fight against capitalism and consumerism when you’re called Netflix? Even if we should not see evil everywhere, it is sometimes difficult to separate ethics from business strategy.
