We’re wasting more than 2,4 million years of chill time on scrolling
A streaming-discovery platform powered by humans through AI.
There are multiple reasons why we scroll so much but they all serve one master and the master goes by the (not so sexy) name ‘Recommender Systems’ like the NRS (Netflix Recommender System). These systems have become a key competitive feature for every major video streaming platform.
Disney+, Apple TV+, NBC Universal’s Peacock, Warner Media’s HBO Max were all launched between November 2019 and May 2020, paving the way for what media calls the ‘Streaming War’.
Needless to say the competition has become tougher over the last couple of years. In order to attract new users the content on each respective platform doesn’t seem to be the main trigger for people anymore, but rather the platform’s algorithmic technology. Meaning how the content is organised, how accessible it is and the way it is presented on the platform.
These algorithms are also called a ‘sociotechnical process’ by scientists and have over the last decade emerged as a crucial part of shaping our culture and personal taste through complex relationships between human and non-human players.
Unlike other major streaming platforms, Netflix’s financial success depends on their ability to attract and retain subscribers. In other words, their platform does not funnel users into larger media ecosystems like Apple TV+, it is not tied to additional services or products like Amazon Prime Video, and it does not generate revenue from advertising like NBC Universal’s Peacock. Netflix’s main focus is the need to prevent existing users from unsubscribing from their service to join the competition. The NRS plays a crucial role in achieving this and is currently one of the most advanced recommendation systems offered by any streaming platform.
The combination of NRS, according to themselves, the world’s best recommendation system, and the pressure to find new ways to compete due to the harder competition is the intersection where things become interesting. Disney recently announced that an ad-tier subscription of their platform will be available to their users by the end of 2022 and rumours have it that Netflix has started to consider doing the same. In order to maintain as much data as possible big tech needs to feed their algorithms with behavioural data. Their users in other words need to interact, meaning the longer a user spends scrolling the more data they collect and the better targets for ads they can sell.
The burning question is this: if NRS is the best recommendation system in the world, why do people feel like they spend more time scrolling the platform than actually enjoying it? Just trying to calculate how many hours Netflix users in total are spending on scrolling alone makes us a little dizzy. Netflix has 214 million users, according to reports users spend on average around 100 hours per year scrolling on the platform, that’s a total of over 21 billion hours per year. 21 billion hours in turn is 2,4 million years. Multiple that with all the scrolling going on on other platforms and try doing the math for how many years that ends up becoming.
See why it’s making us dizzy, and why humanity should request their free time back from these tech giants? Imagine if we could use all of those hours on actually getting the rest our brains need in order to live a life where streaming is quality time rather than brain dead weight. Even if the platforms started out as services that allowed us to be more efficient and enjoy life, they have turned into an overwhelming experience.
Netflix just reported their first negative report, losing subscribers and signalling a major shift in the industry. They now need to compete with the abundance of platforms in a way that wasn’t around just a few years back. Their two main solutions are first banning password sharing, then potentially taking on ad supported plans to make up for the loss. Sounds like they will be busy with other things than easing up the path to discovery for the users for quite some time…
It feels a bit off to be talking about a streaming war when there is actual war going on but the problem is that people are tired. This is where we are today, I would even go so far and say that this is damaging humanity.
Just living on earth these last couple of years has been exhausting and guess what, spending 100 hours just trying to find something to watch is not really what we are in the mood for at the end of yet another day in covid/war/climate crisis-times or any time for that matter. Streaming platforms are undeserving their users’ need for a fast and uncomplicated path to discovery. We believe in a scroll-free world and Hint will provide not just one way to deal with this but many.
So, will the future of streaming require us to scroll and jump in between platforms in the same way as we do today? Not if we get to decide!
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